(no subject)

[teddog]

"Diane Ravitch collected more than 20 sets of guidelines produced by state departments of education, textbook publishers, test developers, educational research organizations, and other interest groups. The guidelines ban words, usages, and written and pictorial images from various educational materials. Much of the glossary aims to purify the past and present to the point that both are almost unrecognizable. The forbidden material includes the truly offensive---such as using the term "dummy" to describe a person who is mute or depicting people of color as universally athletic�some legitimate cautions, such as using "hordes" to describe immigrants, and the thoroughly trivial and even the baffling. What follows is a small sample of Ravitch�s "Glossary of Banned Words" and "Stereotyped Images To Avoid."

The list is here.

Here's some highlights of banned words:

Pop (banned as regional bias when referring to soft drink, replace with Coke, Pepsi [however, note that brand names are banned by California social content review guidelines]) [AIR]

Senior citizen (banned as demeaning to older persons) [SF-AW]

Snow ball (banned for regional bias, replace with flavored ice) [AIR]

Snow cone (banned for regional bias, replace with flavored ice) [AIR]

Snowman (banned, replace with snowperson) [AEP]

Soda (banned for regional bias, replace with Coke, Pepsi [however, note that brand names are banned by California social content review guidelines]) [AIR]

Comments

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

Although it's not clear from the introduction, Diane Ravitch didn't write the list of banned words, but collected and compiled them from various lists for a book she was writing called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. Here's (http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory091603.asp) an interview with her around the time the book was released. She's pretty much going "WTF?" along with us.