A nyone interested in the health of either the English language or American education might already have caught wind of a book that caused a stir when it was published in the United States in April. For those who haven't, "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn," by Professor Diane Ravitch of New York University, is worth looking up. Targeting groups on both the left and the right, Ms. Ravitch provides evidence of a development that many have long suspected was under way: the dumbing down of American English -- and social perceptions -- by the forces of political correctness and, to a lesser extent, religious fundamentalism.
As often happens, something that started out as a reasonable idea -- in this case, the attempt to correct for bias, insensitivity and stereotyping in classrooms and school textbooks -- escalated into an exercise in self-parody. If Ravitch's examples are to be believed, the screening, censoring and bowdlerizing that American educational publishers now engage in is so extreme it would be funny if the results were not so alarming.
Here are some of the most egregious, culled by Ms. Ravitch from textbook and test guidelines followed by major U.S. publishers and state boards of education. A snowman is now a "snow person." Owls can't be mentioned because they are taboo for Navajos. Cake is out because it is not nutritious. It is patronizing to refer to people with disabilities as "courageous." "Huts" is too ethnocentric; better to say "small houses."