Censorship » Liberal and Special Interest Groups » More about the guidelines
Diane Ravitch explains that “the guidelines regulate what writers are permitted to say about specific groups in society, including women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and members of racial and ethnic minorities. Anything that is published in textbooks must be satisfactory to representatives of these groups [which] must be presented only in a positive light.”1
These guidelines have become increasingly complicated and dictatorial to the point that they include a list of over 500 words that are banned from all textbooks. For example, to satisfy the feminists, according to Ravitch, “words that include the prefix or suffix man or men must be excluded; such words as manpower, chairman, forefathers, freshman, businessmen, and mankind are banned.”2
Also, the guidelines are contradictory and hard for publishers to follow. For example, Ravitch explains that “all educational materials [must] have a fair and balanced representation of people with disabilities. They must be shown with devices such as walkers, crutches, canes, wheelchairs, and braces.” However, none of these people portrayed with such devices can be elderly—because that image would imply a negative stereotype of the aged, which must always be portrayed as “healthy, happy, and able to run a marathon.”3
Discover how these guidelines affect secular textbooks.
1 Ravitch, The Language Police, p. 32-34.
2 Ravitch, The Language Police, p. 38.
3 Ravitch, The Language Police, p. 38-39.