The Language Police: The Testing Companies

Not only has this impacted the publishing corporations, but this has impacted testing companies as well.  Ravitch explains that a “top official at the Educational Testing Service told me that his company and other testing agencies deleted test items whenever anyone complained about them; items might be dropped not only on grounds of bias, very broadly defined, but also if they make a student feel ‘uncomfortable’.” (Ravitch, pg 50)  The problem with this is, as Ravitch explains, is that “good literature is supposed to make readers uncomfortable, and accurate history includes tragic events and horrifying behavior.” (Ravitch, pg 50)

Both sides have a say in the censorship: “Conservatives have persuaded the testing companies to avoid topics like evolution, abortion, and divorce.  Feminists and multiculturalists have convinced them to exclude any language that offends them.” (Ravitch, pg 50)  With this in mind, it is no wonder so many people my age know little about natural selection, reproduction, & relationships, & additionally cannot abide challenging views on gender & other cultures, given that it was largely my generation that was fed this sanitized information more than any generation before or after.

This began with the Civil Rights movement, in which there was demand for a change of cirriculi, because “the language of the tests, the critics said, was more familiar to middle-class white children than to disadvantaged black children.”  (Ravitch, pg 51)  A noble intention perhaps, but a spokesman for McGraw-Hill explained that “the evidence about the effectiveness of these procedures is so thin that one might well wonder how we got into this.  The answer is more political than scientific, as one might suspect given the short time period during which the matter has drawn serious study: technical innovation usually takes longer to be applied.” (Donald Ross Green, “Methods used by Test Publishers to ‘Debias’ Standardized Tests,” Handbook of Methods for Detecting Test Bias, edited by Ronald A. Berks [Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982], pp. 233-35)

Then the Feminists chimed in.  Interestingly, “girls typically had higher reading test scores than boys, the claims of gender bias focused on mathematics, which was there was a test-core gap in favor of boys.” (Ravitch, pg 51) They gleefully ignored the fact that girls were doing better in reading tests than boys, which points at least somewhat to the innate strengths & weaknesses of men & women.  

But after left-leaning Feminist voices had an impact on cirriculi, the right-leaning forces soon struck afterwards, attacking “topics such as witchcraft, satanism, fantasy, abortion, animals rights, or anything that carried a political message that they disagreed with, or that might make their children feel uncomfortable.” (Ravitch, pg 52)  This effectively removed any topics relating to the politics of the present day & recent history, instead only having controversial past elements in cirriculi, which of course would be soon done away with by left-leaning activist groups.  More on that later.

To solve both problems at once, testing companies adopted their own version of bias guidelines, which “addressed the concerns of feminists, civil rights groups, and religious fundamentalists in an evenhanded way.” (Ravitch, pg 52)  Given that this covers at least three-fifths of all of the major controversial topics that may be present in cirriculi, this was a major step towards the total sterilization of education in America.

So what was left? There were some left-leaning talking points, but mostly it was just “basic skills, reasoning skills, and problem-solving skills.”  (Ravitch, pg 52)  Anybody who is familiar with public school cirriculi in a period from 1999 to 2003 would know that even these would essentially disappear, temporarily, though they would make a comeback that is now already slowly being undone.  We are looking into the most sterilized education that we have had in almost 18 years.  But more on that later.

In this rough road from the 1970s to the 1990s, the slow, steady rise of censorship had two major causes:

First of all, “there is no standard curriculum in the United States, no agreed upon course of study that includes certain facts of history and certain works of literature, thus making it impossible to base test questions on what students should have learned.”  (Ravitch, 52) As such, the extreme standards that were being implemented from 1999 to 2003, standards which are now coming back, were not being forced by the federal government.  They were implemented by many other factors, such as state governments, major coporations, & politically charged advocacy groups (kind of like the censorship we see today, which is largely caused by state governors, megacoporations, & advocacy groups for Leftist causes). 

Secondly, it proved to be so difficult to make a truly culturally neutral test that they had to “replace tests of achievement with tests of aptitude, tests of thinking skills, tests of the student’s abstract intelligence.” (Ravitch, pg 52)  Any of you who are neurodivergent will know that these are the tests that only neurotypiucals win.  It is not much of a wonder that these days, many autists learn more from homeschooling & special ed, & those who undergo these two experiences in some ways become more well-adjusted that many public school students of the same neurotypes. #publicschoolfuckedupChrisChan

Speaking of culture in tests, it is difficult to use testing questions to encourage students to analyze cultures because that are often considered “ethnocentric”.  For example, “Analyze difficulties inherent in exporting technological progress from advanced nations to less developed societies.” (Ravitch, pgs 59-60)  This was considered a biased question.  However, this is a very good ethical question to discuss, & to remove such questions would surely deny students a chance to consider their nation’s place in this world.

This has affected physical education, because as it turns out, “an example of biased objective for a physical education test: ‘Identify techniques of exercise appropriate for maintaining a youthful appearance and attitude’.” (Ravitch, pg 60) The trouble with this is that it denies nature itself.  Age can wear away at a person’s health.

As Ravitch herself claims, “there is a saying among educators that what is tested determines what is taught.” (Ravitch, pg 60)  Considering that the tests were pititfully neutral, & are becoming pitifully neutral, this naturally affected what was being taught as well.