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Under the guise of “sensitivity” analysis, a long string of everyday concepts, ideas, beliefs, arguments, accounts and just plane historical description is banned outright from textbook publication. The theoretical
idea of sensitivity recommendations does sound helpful: avoid writing about
subjects in a way that would deeply distress students who are required to read
them. But when you discover to what extreme this lovely idea has been taken, you
realize that something very much different than sensitivity is being protected.
The result is that practically everything that is written in textbooks about the
world, the public, notable people, historic events, religion, war, and society
has been tampered with, excised, rewritten, or eliminated to the point that
familiar subjects are often unrecognizable. In March 2006, the California
textbook review board gave to publishers a 126-page list of "suggested
(sic) tweaks, trims and fixes" for the next buying season editions. (NY Times 10
Mar 07) When you try to find out how or why any particular word or concept violates sensitivity guidelines, you come up against a wall of official silence or professional evasion. This code of silence extends to a novel technique called “silent editing:” “To placate state education officials, the publishers omitted and revised objectionable material," Ravitch writes. "None of the omissions was marked by an ellipse or note”[7]to show it had been altered.
The people doing the squeezing, cutting and pasting are a highly secretive, self-selected band of censors drawn from the outer limits of the political arena: hard-core “family-values” conservatives, outré leftwing multiculturalists, man-hating feminists, God-fearing anti-Darwinism religious fundamentalists, creationists, white-skinned defenders of Native Americans, black Egyptologists, prohibitionists—-in short, every True Believer with time on his hands has successfully jammed his personal monkey wrench into the process of writing textbooks. The result is an educational disaster that has swindled a generation of schoolchildren. And it is still going strong.
How can we parents restore sanity to our children’s education? Throwing more money at this problem will do absolutely nothing. There is only one way to rectify the crazy world of school textbook publishing, and that is to eliminate these self-appointed censors root and branch. But that will not be easy.
However, Ms Ravitch points out that the strongest aspect of textbook censors is actually their weakest link. Two states (with large populations)-- Texas and California--specify what textbooks all schools in the state may buy by means of a statewide textbook adoption committee. Ms Ravitch suggests[8]:
What these two states decide has a huge impact on the fate of individual textbooks and their publishers. This is cartel-like behavior; the publishing marketplace has been warped by the adoption process, putting too much power into the hands of these two states. This concentration has raised the cost of publishing, favored the publishers with the deepest pockets, driven small publishers out of business, and concentrated the industry into a small number of publishing giants. The dearth of competition has not been good for the textbook industry, which now operates like a procurement process rather than a competitive marketplace. It is easy for an aggressive pressure group—no matter how small and unrepresentative—to threaten a textbook company with public humiliation and the loss of market share. It is this leverage in the two big states that has enabled extremists to manipulate the states' requirements to fit their own political agenda.
So, first and above all, discontinue the state adoption process for textbooks .There is no reason why every school district in a state should be required to use the same textbooks or to choose their books from a list approved by state officials. The states should publish their standards for different academic subjects and then let schools and teachers decide how to spend their funds for materials . Some may want to buy textbooks; they should buy the ones they think are best. Some may decide to spend their money on trade books or software or other teaching tools. The state (and the districts) should not tell them which textbooks to buy.
Opening up the market to competition would free teachers to choose biographies, histories, or anthologies, rather than textbooks. Competition would encourage textbook publishers to seek out livelier writing. It would encourage writers to break free of the dull formulas that now make most of the textbooks look like peas in a pod, with interchangeable literary selections and conventional, politically safe opinions. With a real market, instead of state regulation, textbooks would be free to differ from one another. Competition is the first prong of the strategy to end the reign of censorship in education. The second strategy is sunshine.
The strongest protection for censorship is public ignorance. The public needs to know what the publishers, the states, and the federal government are doing to educational materials. Whether it is textbooks or tests, we have a right to know what the authorities are censoring and to force them to bring their decisions into the open for public scrutiny. They do not believe that the public has a right to see their censorship practices. When I asked the Connecticut Department of Education to show me reading passages that had been rejected for bias and sensitivity reasons, the head of the state testing program wrote back to say that "it wouldn't be appropriate to share that material with you."Public outrage has a tonic effect. When the press revealed that the New York State Education Department was censoring literary excerpts on its examinations, officials were so embarrassed that they immediately pledged to stop doing it. As a result, the exams will be closely watched by the press in the future to see if the censorship does end.
That is why it is important to create mechanisms to expose censor-ship to public review. Many things that are done surreptitiously cannot withstand the light of day. So we must shine that light on the bias and sensitivity review process to make sure that it does not serve as a mechanism for imposing censorship and stopping "thoughtcrimes."
Every publisher and every state should publish, if they have not done so already, their bias guidelines.
They should publish on their Web sites the names of the members of their bias and sensitivity review panels, along with their curricula vitae.
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Every bias and sensitivity review panel, whether analyzing textbooks or tests, should include teachers of the subject, not just diversity specialists. Teachers of English, history, science, and mathematics should be part of the review process.
Whenever bias and sensitivity reviewers propose the deletion of words, phrases, and stories, their recommendations should be reviewed by a panel of laymen (such as a state or local school board). Nothing should be deleted until it has passed the test of common sense.
We can stop censorship. We must recognize that the censorship that is now so widespread in education represents a systemic breakdown of our ability to educate the next generation and to transmit to them a full and open range of ideas about important issues in the world.
This reign of censorship must end. [Bold face emphasis added.]
A CALL TO ACTION
How do you get past the near-perfect bulletproof vests that the state adoption committees have so expertly managed to pull around themselves? Here is a strategy:
1. Recognize that this is not a conservative-liberal issue. It is an across-the-board rejection of the imposition of all secret, political extremism in the schools. We are fighting for all our kids’ future as educated citizens. Save the battle for textbook content after you have regained the power to exercise it--when the purchasing monopolies are broken. If we begin by first fighting each other in order to gain more leverage for our own ideology—-we will have lost the battle before we begin.
2. Arm yourself for the fight by buying (and distributing to like-minded friends) Daine Ravitch’s book, The Language Police.
3. To get them fired-up, tell your friends to read this essay (at: schoolbooks.shtml ) Then plot with each other about how you are going to take concerted action.
4. Write a formal letter (which is better than an email) complaining of this travesty of education to:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633
To send an Electronic Mail please visit:
http://www.govmail.ca.gov
(If she is a better contact for you, write Ms Maria Shriver to get her support.)
5. Investigate the textbook buying process in your state, and if it is also a secret, unelected monopoly, write letters to the editors and swing your weight around anyway you can.
Here are the arguments to make in your letters to the Governors of these two states:
A. We protest that non-educators with extremist views are preventing our kids from getting a decent education. (See the educational argument above.) What are unqualified non-educators doing eviscerating the content of our kid's textbooks?
B. The state textbook adoption committees are secret, unelected, unaccountable to the public. This is not how the educational process is supposed to work; this is not how democratic government is supposed to work.
C. Eliminating these secret monopolies will save the states money--One less committee to fund—and open up textbook publishing to the diversity and economic efficiencies of free enterprise. Diversity will result in textbooks that are interesting so kids will read them and get smart.
D. By eliminating the Texas and California textbook adoption monopoly, this monstrous special interest stranglehold will be broken, and each school district will—once again—be able to chose its own textbooks. You, the parent, can then be heard--a right currently denied to you by these secretive committees.
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O.K., you’ve got what you need to get started. Now—get started! (And good luck.)
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A Note from the Boss:
Dear Mr. Holzel, I was thrilled to learn about your website! This is the kind of grassroots, citizen action that can truly make a difference. There are literally hundreds of people who have asked me for advice about what to do next. Now I can send them to your site!
Dane Ravitch, 2 August, 2004
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NEWS FLASH. Check
out the new (2006) book The War Against Hope, by former Secretary of
Education, Ron Paige. Subhead: "How teachers' unions hurt children, hinder
teachers." and endanger education
A second work of required
reading is: The Fall of the Ivory Tower, by George Roche, President
of Hillsdale Collage, Regnery Publishing, 1994. This book describes how
Federal funding of higher education has nearly completely eviscerated quality
higher education, and perversely, driven so many collages to near bankruptcy.
If that sounds contradictory,
check out
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133006, an article (23 Aug
09) which describes how Yale (University) Press has banned the publication of a
book that
includes 12 cartoons spoofing Mohammed which appeared in a
Danish newspaper four years ago. Its decision also affects any future pictures
of Mohammed after consultations with Muslim clerics, diplomats and
counterterrorism officials.
The Yale Press rejected the title as
being too sensational, and afterwards it ruled that
the book could not include the cartoons or even
pictures of Mohammed, in deference to some Muslim
clerics who rule against the practice.
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We know that liberals never really cottoned up to the
Second Amendment. But now the First, too? What's going to be left? A
return to Democratic Royalty?
End notes:
[1]The language Police, Diane Ravitch, Vintage books, 2004
[2]Ibid, p 175.
[3]For tests by the National Assessment of Educational Progress for 1994 and 2001. Ibid, p. 156.
[4]Ibid, beginning on page 183.
[5]Who we all recall wrote : A person who is older catches a fish, (previously known as The Old man & the sea. Ibid, p 116
[6] Ibid , p. 157.
[7]Ibid, p.114.
[8]Ibid, p. 165-7 About a dozen states use these committees, but the populations of California and Texas are so large as to make them the de facto czars of textbook content.
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Additional websites with similar information: http://mwhodges.home.att.net/books.htm
http://www.cei.org/gencon/025,01843.cfm , and a Forbes report:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/1030/6612178a_print.html
Here is another
report on another magic educational bullet that misfired (Washington Post on
line, 7 April 07):
Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry
that has become the darling of school systems across the
country, has no significant impact on student
performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department
of Education.
The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of
educational technology, a business whose growth has been
spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the
testing mandates of President Bush's No Child Left
Behind law
The technology -- ranging from snazzy video-game-like
programs played on Sony PlayStations to more rigorous
drilling exercises used on computers -- has been
embraced by low-performing schools as an easy way to
boost student test scores. [Click
here to go to report.]
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Good Lord! Just when you thought Political Correctness
couldn't get worse--it does:
Why Johnny Can’t Add
School kids in Newton, a Boston suburb, aren't measuring up in math tests, writes Tom Mountain in the Newton Tab. 32% of sixth-graders are in the "warning" or "needs improvement" category in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, and school officials are flummoxed:
The school department offered no tangible explanation for these declining scores other than to admit that they have no explanation, as articulated by Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Carolyn Wyatt (salary $106,804), "[The results] have decreased, incrementally, each year and continue to puzzle us." She went on to admit that this downward trend is peculiar to Newton and "is not being seen statewide." Again, she offered no explanation, but she did assure the School Committee that her assistant, Math Coordinator Mary Eich (salary $101,399), is currently investigating the problem.
But according to Mountain, it turns out that between 1999 and 2001, Newton adopted an "anti-racist multicultural math" curriculum:
In 2001 [Superintendent Jeffrey] Young, Mrs. Wyatt and an assortment of other well-paid school administrators, defined the new number-one priority for teaching mathematics, as documented in the curriculum benchmarks, "Respect for Human Differences--students will live out the system wide core of 'Respect for Human Differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors."
It continues, "Students will: Consistently analyze their experiences and the curriculum for bias and discrimination; Take effective anti-bias action when bias or discrimination is identified; Work with people of different backgrounds and tell how the experience affected them; Demonstrate how their membership in different groups has advantages and disadvantages that affect how they see the world and the way they are perceived by others . . ." It goes on and on.
"Nowhere among the first priorities for the math curriculum guidelines is the actual teaching of math," Mountain observes. "That's a distant second." It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out why Newton's kids are falling behind.
BY JAMES TARANTO
WSJ.com, Opinion Journal
Thursday, January 13, 2005 11:14 a.m. EST
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id="110006153"
Here is a short history of the Newton Math Department Tests
Teaching Math In 1950
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
Teaching Math In 1960
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
Teaching Math In 1970
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?
Teaching Math In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20 Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
Teaching Math In Newton, MA in 2004
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)
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It never rains, but it pours. Here is Time Magazine's take on that other major educational problem-- nutty parents!
(Read it & weep.) ___________________________________________________________________
Multicultural feel-good malarkey palmed off as history? See the short false textbook history of the Underground Railroad.
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