5/6/03 -- Reading some of today's textbooks, one might think evolution doesn't exist, that women are never secretaries or nurses, and minorities are never poor.
It's no secret that various religious and special interest groups have pressured textbook publishers over the years to strip controversial topics from their products. But the problem is far more extensive and pernicious than many realize, warns Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Education Department.
According to Ravitch's new book, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, many textbook publishers and test designers -- as well as state and federal education agencies and professional organizations -- have put together sizable "bias guidelines" that literally ban hundreds of words, images, and topics. For example:
• A mother cannot be portrayed as bringing lunch to the father working on a house roof. That would support gender stereotypes. It's the mother who must be shown working on the roof.
• Evolution, fossils, dinosaurs, and the origins of the universe are banned in some circles. The topic is too controversial and offends some religious groups.
• Unhealthy foods, such as cakes, candy, and doughnuts, must be replaced in pictures and stories with more healthy fare, such as fruits and vegetables.
• Passages depicting quarreling parents, divorce, or disobedient children are taboo because they are not "uplifting."
During a recent talk in Washington, D.C., Ravitch said: "I found this to be an alarming story because of the extent of the censorship . . . and the extent that it's hidden from public view. We're seeing a sanitizing, dumbing down, and falsification of textbooks."
The current state of affairs began in the 1960s, when people rightly objected to demeaning, discriminating, and offensive textbook passages and images about women and minorities, she says.
But since then, various pressure groups have continued to protest and demand change for an expanding list of words and ideas they don't like. That pressure has led state agencies, education groups, and others to become similarly sensitive to the dangers of controversy.
For textbook publishers, such pressure is especially hard to resist because of the textbook adoption process in many states, particularly California and Texas, Ravitch says.
These two states alone purchase so many books that publishers learned it's simply good business to avoid conflict by meeting the demands of pressure groups, she says. "It became so easy to intimidate publishers. And it was easier to capitulate than to lose books sales."
But the result, she says, is that textbook publishers also have stripped away thought-provoking ideas, the complexities of good literature, and the ambiguities and unpleasant but important lessons from history.
Today, it's quite possible to find classic literature replaced by boring works -- simply because more thoughtful passages contain ideas that could offend someone, she says.
Meanwhile, stripping controversy from history textbooks and tests sometimes distorts the facts. Ravitch recalls one treatment of the late Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung that described him as "a friendly, inclusive leader who listened to the peasants, cut taxes, reduced inflation, and built roads and schools and hospitals." The fact that Mao's policy led to the death of millions was never mentioned.
According to Ravitch, both sides of the political spectrum share blame for the problem. The far right has targeted for criticism of such works as the popular Harry Potter novels.
Those on the left, in turn, are so concerned about stereotypes that everyone in textbooks live in a bland, utopian world where the elderly are never ill, all minorities are affluent, and people in wheelchairs face no obstacles.
Ravitch recommends an end to the current textbook adoption process in states, and says pressure groups should no longer have the power to threaten publishers at state adoption hearings. She says there also needs to be more openness in how textbooks and tests are written.
"No part of society should have language police," she says. "We should trust parents and the school boards and the teachers to have good sense, discretion, and judgment -- and not have these censorship codes where states tell kids what to read."