The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Vintage) - Softcover

Acclaimed education historian Diane Ravitch answers the question of how the impulse in the 1960s and 70s to achieve fairness and a balanced perspective in our nation's textbooks went so terribly wrong in The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.

Author of seven books, Ravitch served as the US Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993. Her expertise and her 30-year commitment to education lend authority and urgency to this important book, which describes in copious detail how pressure groups from the political right and left have wrested control of the language and content of textbooks and standardised exams, often at the expense of the truth (in the case of history), of literary quality (in the case of literature), and of education in general. Like most people involved in education, Ravitch did not realise "that educational materials are now governed by an intricate set of rules to screen out language and topics that might be considered controversial or offensive."

In this clear-eyed critique, she is an unapologetic challenger of the ridiculous and damaging extremes to which bias guidelines and sensitivity training have been taken by the federal government, the states, and textbook publishers. In a multi-page sampling of rejected test passages, we discover that "in the new meaning of bias, it its considered biased to acknowledge that lack of sight is a disability," that children who live in urban areas cannot understand passages about the country, that the Aesop fable about a vain (female) fox and a flattering (male) crow promotes gender bias. As outrageous as many of the examples are, they do not appear particularly dangerous.

However, as the illustrations of abridgment, expurgation, and bowdlerisation mount, the reader begins to understand that our educational system is indeed facing a monumental crisis of distortion and censorship. Ravtich ends her book with three suggestions of how to counter this disturbing tendency. Sadly, however, in the face of the overwhelming tide of misinformation that has already been entrenched in the system, her suggestions provide cold comfort. --Silvana Tropea, Amazon.com

"It's difficult to exaggerate the importance of this book. [It could] turn out to be one of those rare books that actually influence the way we live." --The Washington Post

"A book of Olympian importance. . . . This book may be the most important document about the future of the American mind in a generation or more." --The Baltimore Sun

"Impassioned. . . . Fiercely argued. . . . Every bit as alarming as it is illuminating." --The New York Times

"Lucid, forceful, written with insight, passion, compassion and conviction, The Language Police is not only hair-raisingly readable but deeply reasonable. It should be required reading." --Los Angeles Times

"Provocative. . . . [It] has broad consequences for one's thinking about all education, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the molding of public discourse in America." --David Bromwich, The New Republic

"Ravitch [is] the country's soberest, most history-minded education expert--and, in this case, a whistle-blower extraordinaire." --The Wall Street Journal

"Revealing and important. . . . Ravitch richly illustrates her case [and] provides telling assessments of historical texts. . . . [Her] compilation of evidence and argument is overwhelming." --The New York Times Book Review

"Stunning. . . . Should send a shiver down the backs of parents with school children." --The Washington Times

"Penetrating. . . . Fascinating and often infuriating. . . . The Language Police is the first step toward ending the absurdities of educational censorship. It should be required reading in the education of every parent." --Mother Jones

"Her criticism is devastating." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Compelling. . . . Convincing. . . . A smart, savage exposé of the absurdities wrought by both sides of the culture wars. . . . [Ravitch's] demand for an educational environment that pushes students to confront, rather than avoid, the larger world is one we ignore at our own peril." --The New Leader

"Spirited. . . . A plea for substance, intelligence, and reason." --The New York Sun

"[The Language Police] could do for the failures of education in the United States what Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin did for slavery. It is a brilliant revelation of an insidious national disease of public policy. . . . It should be obligatory reading for every citizen concerned with the intellectual, moral, and imaginative life of U.S. children and society as a whole. It should be mandatory for everyone even peripherally involved in education. . . . Read it. Get the five most thoughtful people you know to buy it, read it and pass it on." --The Baltimore Sun

"Meticulously researched and forcefully argued. . . . Ravitch's qualifications . . . are impeccable and unassailable. . . . She has no political axes to grind and no ideological agenda to pursue. She is a lucid writer and an absolutely clear thinker." --The Washington Post

"Ravitch writes with enormous authority and common sense. She shows how priggish, censorious and downright absurd 'the language police' can be, and she does so with furious logic." --The New York Times

"A fascinating and comprehensive account. . . . Incisive and lucid. . . . Ravitch is passionate and persuasive." --The Intellectual Activist

"Brilliant. . . . Astounding. . . . A hopeful sign [that] censorship this ridiculous can't last forever." --Reader's Digest