Posted on 06/04/2002 6:43:39 AM PDT by Cagey
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In his memoir "Barrio Boy," author Ernesto Galarza wrote about "skinny Italian" and "fat Portuguese" boys, but in an examination given to New York State high school students 30 years later, the Italian kid has become "thin" and the Portuguese boy is now "heavy."
So what happened?
According to an angry coalition of authors, academics and civil libertarians, the New York State Education Department has committed "intellectual cowardice" by bowing to political correctness and censoring literary works used in questions in its statewide examinations.
The group wants the New York State Legislature to schedule hearings on the matter and the Board of Regents to stop using adulterated works in its English language examination, which all students must pass to receive a high school diploma.
"This is political correctness run amok," said Arthur Eisenberg, legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The NYCLU and several other groups said at a news conference Monday that changing portions of literary works by authors ranging from Anton Chekhov to B.B. King because they may be potentially offensive stripped the works of their cultural, historical and social context and meaning.
Eisenberg accused state officials of imposing "a narrow political and cultural orthodoxy."
NYCLU said 20 out of 26 literary pieces in the last three annual Regents tests had passages adulterated or deleted.
In Elie Wiesel's "What Really Makes Us Free," passages such as "created in God's image" and "as God is free" were deleted from the test question.
A reference to skinny-dipping in Frank Conroy's memoir "Stop-Time" was cut, as was a passage from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in which he said, "The United States is the biggest debtor (to the U.N.), as is well known."
Roseanne DeFabio, New York State alumni assistant commissioner for testing, stood by the changes.
"We do have to excerpt them for the length of the test, and have to follow our own guidelines for fairness, to ensure that ... a student isn't put at a disadvantage because they've encountered material that could be offensive to their cultural or ethnic group," she said.
DeFabio added the "fair use" provision of copyright law allowed the excising of passages for testing purposes.
But Cathy Popkin, Lionel Trilling Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, disagreed, and said the Board's practice of altering original works showed "an academic disloyalty for which Columbia students would be subjected to dismissal. The Regents are truly unwriting these works."
Popkin said in a test question involving Anton Chekhov's short story "An Upheaval," a reference to a strip search is removed and the resultant story made no sense.
Author Judy Blume, who saw some of her titles banned by school libraries because of sexual-oriented material in books aimed at pubescent girls, said, "In this so-called quest to show sensitivity to all, they show respect for no one."
Authors, academics and the ACLU are upset? Bulletin: The chickens are home and they like to roost.
Great line, Ms. Blume.
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