The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
Language: English
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used

Seller: Sessions Book Sales, Birmingham, AL, U.S.A.Sessions Book Sales
AbeBooks seller since June 1, 1999
Condition: Used - Good
US$ 5.95
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Add to basketItem description from seller
255 pages. Ex-library. Rear endpaper removed.
Seller Inventory # 77802
- Title
- The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
- Author
- Ravitch, Diane
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf, New York
- Publication year
- 2000
- Condition
- Good
- Dust jacket
- Good
- Book Type
- Textbook Censorship
- Binding
- Hard Cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0375414827
- ISBN 13
- 9780375414824
- Edition
- 1st Ed.
Diane Ravitch maintains that America’s students are compelled to read insipid texts that have been censored and bowdlerized, issued by publishers who willingly cut controversial material from their books—a case of the bland leading the bland.
The Language Police is the first full-scale exposé of this cultural and educational scandal, written by a leading historian. It documents the existence of an elaborate and well-established protocol of beneficent censorship, quietly endorsed and implemented by test makers and textbook publishers, states, and the federal government. School boards and bias and sensitivity committees review, abridge, and modify texts to delete potentially offensive words, topics, and imagery. Publishers practice self-censorship to sell books in big states.
To what exactly do the censors object? A typical publisher’s guideline advises that
• Women cannot be depicted as caregivers or doing
household chores.
• Men cannot be lawyers or doctors or plumbers.
They must be nurturing helpmates.
• Old people cannot be feeble or dependent; they
must jog or repair the roof.
• A story that is set in the mountains discriminates
against students from flatlands.
• Children cannot be shown as disobedient or in
conflict with adults.
• Cake cannot appear in a story because it is not
nutritious.
The result of these revisions are—no surprise!—boring, inane texts about a cotton-candy world bearing no resemblance to what children can access with the click of a remote control or a computer mouse. Sadly, data show that these efforts to sanitize language do not advance learning or bolster test scores, the very
reason given for banning allegedly insensitive words and topics.
Ravitch offers a powerful political and economic analysis of the causes of censorship. She has practical and sensible solutions for ending it, which will improve the quality of books for students as well as liberating publishers, state boards of education, and schools from the grip of pressure groups.
Passionate and polemical, The Language Police is a book for every educator, concerned parent, and engaged citizen.
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About the Author
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Sessions Book Sales
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AbeBooks seller since June 1, 1999
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Located in the Greater Birmingham area of central Alabama, our store offers for sale via mail order and through the internet, almost entirely to customers found through Internet contacts, thousands of books and other media of both popular and academic research interest. Focusing primarily on non-fiction books, we have a high concentration of items in such subjects as political science, philosophy, economics, religion and theology, science, literature and literary criticism, Alabama and Southern history,the American Civil War, Military History and War, Americana and many more such areas. We have many items pertaining to ideology, whether it be conservatism, libertarianism, free market economics, socialism, or communism, including many congressional reports on communist activities. We also have quite a few reference books, especially bibliographies.…
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