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Page Turners: Interview With Diane Ravitch

Aired June 05, 2003 - 15:21   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: In our ongoing series of interviews with authors, we focus today on education expert Diane Ravitch. Her latest book is "The Language Police," how pressure groups restrict what students learn.
I spoke with Ravitch recently and began by asking her about what the censorship of school textbooks and how initially she viewed this as a beneficent process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANE RAVITCH, AUTHOR, "THE LANGUAGE POLICE": Well, it's well intentioned. That's what I meant by "beneficent." The purpose of the censorship, which is both for textbooks and tests, is to protect people's feelings. It's meant to be very sensitive, and to avoid giving offense. But it has gone way beyond its original purpose of weeding out racial bias and gender bias, and it's become a very well -- just a very well established regime of censorship.

WOODRUFF: Your research turned up some amazing lists of words that are not permitted. I mean, just a few of them jumped out at me. "Snowman," "girls," "waitress," "Navajo." What are we to make of this?

RAVITCH: Well, I found, looking at the guidelines issued by different test publishers and testing publishers that there are over 500 words, and scores of topics that are not supposed to be mentioned on tests or in textbooks, and many of these are words that we use every day. You're not supposed to say that an actress is an actress. You're not supposed to use the word "brotherhood." "Brotherhood" is now considered sexist.

You're not supposed to refer to the "founding fathers." They're to be the "founders" or the "framers." It just goes on and on with words that you see all the time, and words that people use every day, and they're not -- there's not a single word in there that's an ethnic slur or a racial slur, or really even a gender slur.

WOODRUFF: And yet there are some gender stereotypes and racial stereotypes that we don't want used, right? I mean, isn't -- aren't there some lines that need to be drawn here?

RAVITCH: I think that most of the lines that are drawn are drawn by common sense or good judgment or discretion. You know, the nature of our language, the English language, is that it's constantly changing. It changes as society changes, but what I discovered is not a natural evolution of language, but rather a list of words that have been banned and some of them probably we wouldn't want used -- and I can't even think what they would be, like "dames." I mean, we don't ordinarily in the classroom refer to women as "dames," and so that might be a good word to drop. But I would rather see it dropped by common sense rather than by an outright ban on the language.

WOODRUFF: You say that this is the result of pressure from the left wing and the right wing, but it seems that much of it is coming from a -- a left wing, multicultural mindset, wouldn't you say?

RAVITCH: Well, there's two different kinds of censorship, and I did -- one of the chapters in my book is about censorship by the left, and that's kind of feminist, multicultural mindset that says, don't use these words. These words are a problem for us. We don't want to ever see them again.

And then there's the censorship from the right, which tends to affect testing more, and that would be about topics that people on the right don't like to see. So they would say, we never want to see anything about witches or new-age religion or evolution or fossils because fossils suggest evolution, and nothing about pumpkins or Halloween because they suggest witches.

WOODRUFF: Very quickly in the little bit of time we have left, what has to be done about this?

RAVITCH: Well, I think the first thing that needs to be done is that every state is doing this, every textbook publisher, every testing publisher. They should put out on a Web site where the public can see it, a list of all the words and topics that they ban. And where these -- where the censorship is ridiculous, people should laugh at it so that it will stop. The only way it's going to stop is if people become outraged and bring public ridicule onto the practice where it's inappropriate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Diane Ravitch, author of "The Language Police."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired June 5, 2003 - 15:21   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: In our ongoing series of interviews with authors, we focus today on education expert Diane Ravitch. Her latest book is "The Language Police," how pressure groups restrict what students learn.
I spoke with Ravitch recently and began by asking her about what the censorship of school textbooks and how initially she viewed this as a beneficent process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANE RAVITCH, AUTHOR, "THE LANGUAGE POLICE": Well, it's well intentioned. That's what I meant by "beneficent." The purpose of the censorship, which is both for textbooks and tests, is to protect people's feelings. It's meant to be very sensitive, and to avoid giving offense. But it has gone way beyond its original purpose of weeding out racial bias and gender bias, and it's become a very well -- just a very well established regime of censorship.

WOODRUFF: Your research turned up some amazing lists of words that are not permitted. I mean, just a few of them jumped out at me. "Snowman," "girls," "waitress," "Navajo." What are we to make of this?

RAVITCH: Well, I found, looking at the guidelines issued by different test publishers and testing publishers that there are over 500 words, and scores of topics that are not supposed to be mentioned on tests or in textbooks, and many of these are words that we use every day. You're not supposed to say that an actress is an actress. You're not supposed to use the word "brotherhood." "Brotherhood" is now considered sexist.

You're not supposed to refer to the "founding fathers." They're to be the "founders" or the "framers." It just goes on and on with words that you see all the time, and words that people use every day, and they're not -- there's not a single word in there that's an ethnic slur or a racial slur, or really even a gender slur.

WOODRUFF: And yet there are some gender stereotypes and racial stereotypes that we don't want used, right? I mean, isn't -- aren't there some lines that need to be drawn here?

RAVITCH: I think that most of the lines that are drawn are drawn by common sense or good judgment or discretion. You know, the nature of our language, the English language, is that it's constantly changing. It changes as society changes, but what I discovered is not a natural evolution of language, but rather a list of words that have been banned and some of them probably we wouldn't want used -- and I can't even think what they would be, like "dames." I mean, we don't ordinarily in the classroom refer to women as "dames," and so that might be a good word to drop. But I would rather see it dropped by common sense rather than by an outright ban on the language.

WOODRUFF: You say that this is the result of pressure from the left wing and the right wing, but it seems that much of it is coming from a -- a left wing, multicultural mindset, wouldn't you say?

RAVITCH: Well, there's two different kinds of censorship, and I did -- one of the chapters in my book is about censorship by the left, and that's kind of feminist, multicultural mindset that says, don't use these words. These words are a problem for us. We don't want to ever see them again.

And then there's the censorship from the right, which tends to affect testing more, and that would be about topics that people on the right don't like to see. So they would say, we never want to see anything about witches or new-age religion or evolution or fossils because fossils suggest evolution, and nothing about pumpkins or Halloween because they suggest witches.

WOODRUFF: Very quickly in the little bit of time we have left, what has to be done about this?

RAVITCH: Well, I think the first thing that needs to be done is that every state is doing this, every textbook publisher, every testing publisher. They should put out on a Web site where the public can see it, a list of all the words and topics that they ban. And where these -- where the censorship is ridiculous, people should laugh at it so that it will stop. The only way it's going to stop is if people become outraged and bring public ridicule onto the practice where it's inappropriate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Diane Ravitch, author of "The Language Police."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com