June 23, 2003
Politically correctness has soared to new heights in the American classroom.
Gone like the winds of yesterday’s storm are fictional tales starring dinosaurs, disobedient children like Pinocchio, coffee sipping urban housewives, Irish-American policeman, and all "exemplary upper-class people of bygone days."
All of the above have been excised from American school books, according to a newly-published study on classroom policy in the United States of America.
"The prohibitions are devised and enforced by educational publishers fearful of losing lucrative state contracts if they break the rules of political correctness, or offend Right-wing fundamentalists," writes Julian Coman in the Washington Times. "Their self-censorship is backed up by "guidelines" issued by some state governments."
"The result, according to Diane Ravitch, the author of the study and an assistant secretary of education in the previous Bush administration, is that publishers are flooding schools with bland stories that she dismisses as "pap."
"The state of California, the biggest buyer of education textbooks in America, has instructed publishers not to include references to unhealthy food such as "French (read freedom) fries, coffee, bacon, butter, ketchup, and mayonnaise.
"Apparently innocuous topics are judged too controversial for juvenile consumption. A `bias and sensitivity review panel` employed by one leading publisher recently ruled out the use of a test comprehension passage about owls. The owl, said the panel, is taboo for Navajo Indians, and its appearance in a test may `distract’ a Native American pupil.
"Meanwhile, the Irish-American policeman, a favourite stereotype in 20th century American story-telling, is to be written out of history. Not only the Left is having an impact on American classrooms. References to dinosaurs are being excised because they raise questions about evolution, which offend the religious Right.
"The educational publisher AIR, now lists "dinosaur" in its glossary of banned words. All references in stories to fossils and dinosaurs must be substituted by `animals of long ago.’
…"Classics that have been targeted include John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (both for racial references). Jane Austen and Charles Dickens have been excoriated for perpetuating gender stereotypes.
"Ms. Ravitch spent three years investigating the workings of secretive bodies that censor the literature that reaches American schools for her study, The Language Police.
"Guidelines issued to children’s writers combine `Left-wing political correctness with Right-Wing fundamentalism, and aim `to create a new society, one that will be completely inoffensive to all parties.’
"`The most depressing result of such censorship, says Ms. Ravitch, is the mind-numbingly dull literature that emerges at the end of the review program.
"`The guidelines guarantee the exclusion of imaginative literature from our textbooks,’ she says. `They assume that everything that was not written in conformity with their mandates must be racist, sexist, ageist, and harmful to any group that has ever known oppression and exclusion.
"`Is it any wonder that students who read such pap do not enjoy reading, and that they see little connection between art and life?’
"America’s educational publishers say that they are powerless so long as lobby groups retain such influence."
Peeking into the nonprofit cookie jar
From our colleagues south of the border, the dirty little secret hidden from the beleaguered American taxpayer is that the so-called "non-profit" sector of the U.S. economy accounts for more than $660-billion in annual revenue--$8-billion for environmental tax-exempt groups alone--and no one is policing this huge tax-exempt (taxpayer subsidized) cookie jar.
Attention to the non-profit sector was ushered in by the congressional investigation into The Nature Conservancy, following disclosure that the non-profit has sold scenic properties to its own trustees, internal Conservancy memos show.
The Arlington-based charity has retained Edelman Public Relations, whose Washington office is headed by former Republican and Democrat advisers, as part of a damage-control strategy that includes Capitol Hill meetings, calls to donors, third-party letters to newspapers, full-page advertisements, and attempts to pacify charitable foundations, the memos show. Conservancy staffers also are working to "place stories" in the media that describe successful conservation projects.
If TNC is actually hauled before a Senate committee, it will be interesting to see whether or not the committee members have the spine to ask tough questions, and to delve into the broader question of whether the American taxpayer is being taken to the cleaners by those who claim to be squeaky clean defenders of Mother Earth.