The Language Police: Textbook Publishers

As we go on, we shall continue to prove “that’s what they say” wrong, because “if you are willing to accept unquestioningly what ‘everyone’ says, then the story is over before the investigation begins” (Ravitch, pg 31) Remember, in the Middle Ages, being unhealthily overweight was fashionable among the upper classes, people used to believe that there was absolutely no evolution, not even very basic natural selection-fueled micro-evolution, some black people believe that all white people have something against them, & some incels believe that all women are shallow valley girls who like handsome faces, despite the fact not only are there tons of women who are better than that & want stable partners who can take care of themselves, but that there are also women who are worse than this & want men that they can completely control, & both opposite extremes are completely disinterested in faces. The truth about human beings as a whole is that there’s neither a top nor bottom of the barrel, & as such any one common narrative we’re told is most likely going to be wrong. Don’t ever believe anything just because “everybody knows that”. For all you know, the entire crowd could actually be saying something that isn’t based on reality. Never trust crowds.

Ravitch knew this better than anybody, & went out of her way to get the physical guidelines instead of just asking people for vagueries & opinions, &, interestingly, while some were able to deliver their guidelines, others “pretended that they didn’t exist, but [Ravitch] was usually able to acquire these allegedly nonexistent documents” (Ravitch, pg 32)

Ravitch’s readings of guidelines revealed that they went “far beyond the original purpose of eliminating bias and had developed instead into an elaborate language code that bans man common words and expressions.” (Ravitch, pg 32) Curiously, they combined “left-wing political correctness with right-wing religious fundamentalism” (Ravitch, pg 32)

Point is, you can’t believe something just because everybody else says it.

Bias guidelines are provided by & adhered to by the following agencies:

Educational publishers

Test development companies

States

Scholarly & professional associations

Due to “industry mergers, educational publishing was dominated in the 1990s by four large coporations” (Ravitch, pg 33), which she names as Pearson, Vivendi, Reed Elsevier, & McGraw-Hill. They had absorbed almost every single other company, pointing to the rise of coporatism over capitalism during this decade, & much like today’s big tech phony “social justice” talking points, these megacorporations seemingly used spurious political correctness to justify widespread excessive censorship to boost the careers for the people working for them, as well as a means of diverging from poor corporate policies.

She not only was able to get bias guidelines from most of those companies, but also found just how strict most of them were. Why would a company with stocks owned by much of the public have such strict guidelines? Her own guess was that “companies are happy to have bias guidelines as a form of preemptive capitulation.” (Ravitch, pg 33) Basically, companies do this because that’s a great way to keep people from complaining.

The guidelines “do not fret about censorship.” (Ravitch, pg 34) Educational priorities “all take a backseat to social and political concerns.” (Ravitch, pg 34) Reading comprehension be damned. Fortunately, these were mostly 1999-2003 standards, but these standards are seeming to make a comeback, which is a topic all of its own to discuss. It is actually amazing that it took so long to emerge, however, given that by 1990 Scott Foresman had “created a ‘multicultural steering committee’ to ensure that the company’s editoral products toed that line.” (Ravitch, pg 34-35) These bias guidelines comprise “161 pages” (Ravitch, pg 35) Ravitch criticizes the standards of these guidelines, suggesting that they were made by “people who look at others and see not an individual but a person who represents a group” (Ravitch, pg 35), declaring the bias guidelines to be hypocritical in nature.

The guidelines themselves seem to be made under the assumption that all minorities feel inferior for merely existing as those who justify them claim to be seeking out to make “students get a ‘sense of pride and self-worth’.” (Ravitch, pg 36)

For example, if one is to write about the indigenous peoples of Africa, “it is objectionable for an author to refer to anyon’ language as a dialect; to refer to tribes rather than “African ethnic groups; or to refer to African huts (the dwellings in rural Africa must be described as ‘little houses’.” (Ravitch, pg 36)

As for Native Americans, the guidelines specify that they “must be identified as specific ‘nations’, such as Shochone, Ojibwa, or Choctaw, rather than by the generic term American Indian or Native American.” (Ravitch, pg 36)

Things get really weird when it comes to Asians: “Text book writers must not refer to the academic success of Asian American students because it would imply a stereotype of Asian Americans as ‘studious’ or as a ‘model minority’.” (Ravitch, pg 37) Likely the mentality is that just because they don’t rebel against society, even less so than white people, they are clearly somehow caving into white supremacy, demonstrating totally ignorance of how Asian morality works, which is based on shame & conformity, in contrast to the more guilt-based rebellion of white Americans.

Speaking of white people, they also claim that “children of European American descent need to have their pride reduced”. (Ravitch, pg 37) The guidelines go on to say that whites “have received too much credit for achivements that really belong ed to other cultures.” (Ravitch, pg 37) Here we see the flaws of our guilt-based morality. There are three major lines of morality, guilt, shame, & fear. All have their strengths & weaknesses. The strengths of guilt are many, perhaps the most of the three, but it has a glaring weakness; everything must be equal. EVERYTHING. It’s basically “OCD, the Morality Brand”. Therefore, in order to counter years of cultural favoritism towards whites on the East coast, there must be some disfavoritism to balance it back. As established multiple times, these guidelines are optional, & not everybody uses them. However, they did appear to have been popular in the Coastal & Southern states in the early 2000s, & seem to be making a slow comeback, one that may speed up in response to Orange Man’s recent replacement in favor of Cardboard Cutout.

“Imagine the challenge as she or he sits down with a list of forbidden words and phrases and tries to explain American history or write a story for fifth-grade student that includes males and females, families with one or two parents or no parents, people with disabilities, older people who are jogging, a broad array of racial and ethnic groups, and people of different heights and different weights.”

Think she’s kidding? Exaggerating? Bellyaching? Think again: She quoted a newspaper article for her book: “It’s etched like acid in my mind. They sent 10 pages of single-spaced specifications. The hero was a Hispanic boy. There were black twins, one boy, one girl; an overweight Oriental boy; and an American Indian girl. That leaves the Caucasian. Since we mustn’t forget the physuically handicapped, she was born with a congenital malformation and only had three fingers on one hand. One of the children had to have an Irish setter, and the setter was to be female…they also had a senior citizen, and I had to show her jogging. I can’t do it anymore.” (Susan Chira, “Writing Textbooks for Children: A Juggling Act,” The New York Times, January 17, 1990)

A fat Asian child? Oh, like that isn’t a negative stereotype!

Ravitch firmly believes that writers must be protected, & I wholly agree with her, for “writers of children’s literature, like writers of literature for any audience, must be able to write without fear of the censor, without fear that noses will be counted and sorted, according to their race, gender, disability, age, and ethnicity” (Ravitch, pg 49)

Overall, this has gone too far. As Ravitch herself writers, “our nation prides itself on the principle of freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to our Constitution.” (Ravitch, pg 49). Censorship is odious to American culture.