Any company submitting
proposals to the state must exclude references to such topics as dinosaurs,
birthdays, Halloween, slavery, swimming pools (and other allusions to wealth,
such as mp3 players, video games, etc.), certain forms of dance (ballet is okay),
among others. And there’s junk food of course, which unfortunately wasn’t fully
defined. This means that there is great editorial debate going on in conference
rooms around the country as publishers try to discern exactlywhat constitutes
junk food (I know; I’ve sat in on such meetings. Pretzels? Frozen yogurt? No
one is ever quite sure. Cookies? Pies? Those always yield a consensus)…
The reason for the list coming
out of New York, according to one education official, is that these and other
listed references have the potential to “evoke unpleasant emotions in
students.” Unpleasant emotions in students? When was the last time a written
reference to a dinosaur or a cupcake or an ipod left your child emotionally
harmed? I suspect it’s more likely that the unpleasant emotions aren’t so muchevoked
in as projected upon students by much older
voices---parents and others with personal agendas, as well as those with legal
credentials who are always on the hunt for anything that has the eensiest
potential to offend the smallest minority in the most insignificant way. The
thing is, even if these things aren’t mentioned in a state test, students are
still exposed to many of these topics on a daily basis beyond the classroom. So
why are they affected so dramatically only when exposed to such topics on tests
but not in everyday life?
Most of the items on New York's
list aren’t new to publishers. When it comes to junk food, we haven’t been able
to use the words cake, cookie, cupcake, and ice cream for
as long as I can remember. The only reason pizza is allowed—veggie with a wheat
crust, please…
Certainly some topics make sense
to avoid—terrorism, divorce, disease. No one wants to upset the poor kids any
more than they already are on testing day. But even a Jehovah’s Witness has to
live in a world where most of the population celebrates birthdays, and an
evangelical has to live in a world of museums that generally include things
like, say, dinosaur fossils. Halloween? Is there a child alive who doesn’t
either know about the existence of this holiday or participate in the
celebration of it? Are there scores of students standing up en masse declaring,
“I’m offended by this reference to paganism.” Or course not. Most don’t even
know what paganism is. But those with agendas do. The more we try to sanitize
education to appease a one-size-fits-all mentality, the more we’re going to
create a one-size-fits-none curriculum which does nothing to advance what
should be the goal—academics, not politics….
