Language police bar 'old,' 'blind'

[Nija]

Linky Dinky (http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/05/28/life.language.reut/index.html)


LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Oh heck: Hell hath no place in American primary and high school textbooks.

But then again you can't find anyone riding on a yacht or playing polo in the pages of an American textbook either. The texts also can't say someone has a boyish figure, or is a busboy, or is blind, or suffers a birth defect, or is a biddy, or the best man for the job, a babe, a bookworm, or even a barbarian.

All these words are banned from U.S. textbooks on the grounds that they either elitist (polo, yacht) sexist (babe, boyish figure), offensive (blind, bookworm) ageist (biddy) or just too strong (hell which is replaced with darn or heck). God is also a banned word in the textbooks because he or she is too religious.

To get the full 500-word list of what is banned and why, consult "The Language Police," a new book by New York University professor of education Dianne Ravitch, a former education official in President George H.W. Bush's administration and a consultant to the Clinton administration.

She says she stumbled on her discovery of what's allowed and not allowed by accident because publishers insist that they do not impose censorship on their history and English textbook authors but merely apply rules of sensitivity -- which have expanded mightily since first introduced in the 1970s to weed out gender and racial bias.

Ravitch's book is taking people by surprise the same way that Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" did in the 1960s in exposing the effects of pesticides.
*snipped*


That's just going way too far. :disa:

[Cantacuzene]

I've been hearing about these contrversies for a while. I wonder if these bans apply to history text books. I guessed you could say "visually impaired" or "aged" but if a person in history was blind then he was blind, its not like you can opt to leave an important person out of history.

Well I suppose schools have been editting history to be politically correct for years. Hopefully teachers will take it upon themselves to say what they believe really happened, I know I will.

[ChrisMG187]

In which case you are left with an opinion. Skewing the truth even more isn't going to help.

[Cantacuzene]

I trust the historical opinion of someone with a degree in history than a special interest group in the state capitals who try to dictate what can and cant be said.

[whitak24]

i'm surprised sbp hasn't yet weighed in on this topic ;)

this, obviously, is going a little too far.

i can't think of where a term like "babe" or "boyish figure" would be used except in primary sources (in other words, a history figure isn't going to say "joan of arc was a real babe, but she had something of a boyish figure"). to edit or discard primary sources simply because they contain a word we don't like is just stupid, counterproductive, and an insult to the very idea of education.

as for words like "blind", i think it may be possible to replace these with more accurate words in some cases, but if someone is "blind" (cannot see any light), then "visually impaired" is an innacurate term. the vision is not impaired, it does not exist.