tomeboy's take





The Language Police



The issue of censorship is much like a rented mule, used and beaten six ways to Sunday. My contention has been that the "jackass" of soccer moms and deacon dads is disingenuous and that "hidden" liberal censors are as much, if not more guilty of wielding a black Sharpie.

Diane Ravitch's, The Language Police (A. Knopf 2003, 0375414827) vindicates my position with a cogent and clearly documented history of her personal experience working with the bias review boards within American test and textbook publishers. The travesty of this "censorship" is its scope and impact upon our children as compared to the flavor of censorship ALA prefers to attack. The "censorship" Ravitch exposes is much more insidious, involving a captured audience of nearly all American school age children to be "educated" by social engineering review boards.

Ne're a word from ALA.

The Council on Interracial Books for Children, National Organization for Women, American Library Association, NAACP, and bias review boards for every major textbook and test publisher are all major players in "censoring" what our children read. For the edification of my "freedom of speech" colleagues this book is a must read. Anything less is willful ignorance.

Some Language Police nuggets:

(tests)

(textbooks)

Not only are McGraw-Hill illustrators required to maintain a 50-50 balance between sexes in their art, they are required to include captions when women were not full participants. George Washington crossing the Delaware must include a caption pointing out women were excluded from important military roles until the late twentieth century. Some other guidelines forbid:

The list of "outlawed" words is lengthy. In fact it is a dictionary in and of itself. A sampling:
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