Doug Johnson

Most of my Head for the Edge columns, updated and edited, can be found in my latest book. Buy it and I might be able to afford a nicer nursing home one day. Thank you.

Foiling the Language Police
Head for the Edge, Nov/Dec 2003

So what do these stories have in common?

• A tale set in the mountains
• A passage in which a character eats ketchup
• A story about fossils

Each of these was excluded as a test item or as a textbook reading selection. Being asked to react to a tale set in the mountains discriminates against those who live on the flatlands. Having to read about ketchup (Minnesota’s state condiment, I believe) is tantamount to endorsing junk food. Including material about fossils validates the theory of evolution. At least according to Diane Ravitch’s fascinating book The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Knopf, 2003).

This is self-imposed censorship by textbook and standardized test publishers caused primarily by state-wide adoption of textbooks in conservative Texas and liberal California. With eighty percent of the textbook market dominated by four publishers, the failure to have a textbook series adopted by a large state can be financially disastrous, making these publishers highly sensitive to even small pressure groups.

The right doesn’t want witches and evolution; the left won’t accept depictions of women in traditional roles or minorities treated in any fashion that might be construed as demeaning. Literature textbooks are routinely bowdlerized and history texts paint all cultures as having equal value, except our American culture of rapaciousness and greed. With political conservatives wanting children to read about an idealized past that never was and political liberals wanting children to read about an idealized future that may never be, distortion, dullness, and unreadability in textbooks result. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has recently read a textbook. I am only amazed that it has taken this long for someone to bring it to national attention.

The solution to these extreme censorship problems lies, Ravitch believes, in more local control of the textbook adoption process and common sense. Since my cynical side says that both of these may be more than a few years in coming, we library and technology folks need to step up to the plate and recognize that we are indeed the front line against the Language Police. (I hate to think this makes us “language criminals!”) We must recommit to:

1. Building and maintaining good library collections with items of high interest, different points of view, and engaging writing styles. Library reading materials are the true antidotes to dumbed-down, plain vanilla, and incomplete textbooks. Students of all ages must have the chance to read compelling fiction, consider the arguments of writers with differing viewpoints, and, heaven forbid, be exposed to materials that may be historically accurate, but not politically correct by today’s standards. We need to make sure our selection and reconsideration policies are current and enforced.
2. Keeping Internet filtering, if it is to be done, at local level, not a state or regional one. State-wide filtering, like state-wide textbook adoption, is more vulnerable to the attention of special interest groups. The farther away the decision is made from the user in the school, the more difficult it is to challenge an inappropriately blocked site and have it placed in an override list. Keeping the Internet a place where many voices can be heard should be top priority for all of us.
3. Supporting a variety of learning experiences and assessments of student learning. Stephanie Rosalia, a recent MLS graduate from Queens College, comments, “[Ravitch’s conclusions] are an excellent argument to support authentic literature- and resource-based instruction, for which library media specialists are essential.” In other words, it’s not enough to have interesting and divergent materials on the shelves. We librarians and technologists need to help teachers use them with students in meaningful ways.

Rabblerouser Shonda Brisco of Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth says it nicely:

I understand that we must choose materials based upon our community standards and the needs of our students; however, we must also make certain that our history, culture, and future do not disintegrate because we want to create a vanilla environment that does not offend anyone. If we sit back and allow things to happen (textbook creation, adoption and selection) without speaking out against things that we feel might hurt us (vanilla-coating of terms, ideas, and national problems), we deserve what the future gives us.

Our profession has always been a bastion against censorship, protecting children’s rights to read the Twains, Blumes, Rowlings, and Sendacks of the publishing world. We openly question and monitor the ethics and efficacy of Internet filtering attempts. We consciously work for student access to multiple views and consider many voices on controversial topics so that evaluating and forming supported opinions can be taught. Our role as intellectual freedom fighters is more important than ever.

(Permissions from Stephanie and Shonda given.)