Shakespeare Isn't P.C. (Thought Police Rewrite Textbooks)

NewMax.Com ^ | Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2003 | staff writer

[yankeedame]

How the Thought Police Rewrite Textbooks and America's History

NewsMax.com Wires

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2003

MIAMI – Diane Ravitch hammers away and hammers away, and even a reader going into her book with a healthy dose of skepticism comes away with the conviction that the "language police" must be fired.

It's hard to believe when she says guidelines by the Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley textbook publishers demand that people "over the age of 65 must be fully represented in text and illustrations; there must be a larger number of older women than older men, because 55 percent of older persons are women."

But the book "The Language Police" is so relentless and so well-documented that after a while you have to believe.

Ravitch says there is an institutionalized system among the four major book publishers - two U.S.-owned, one Dutch and one British - to keep anything the least bit offensive out of textbooks produced for kindergartners through 12th graders.

The same is true for the producers of tests.

Some of the examples are not only appalling, they're funny, including:

-"Adam and Eve," should be replaced with "Eve and Adam" to demonstrate that males do not take priority over females.

-"Birth defect" should be replaced with "people with congenital disabilities."

-"Busboy" should be replaced with "dining room attendant."

-"Cowgirl" and "cowboy" should be replaced with "cowhand."

-"Deaf-mute" should be replaced by "person who can't hear or speak."

-"Huts" is branded as ethnocentric and should be replaced with small houses.

-"Majority group" is banned as offensive reference to cultural difference.

-Dinosaurs are banned because they evoke the subject of evolution.

And on it goes.

Works of literature written before 1970 are almost always taboo because they are bound to have something politically incorrect in them.

Shakespeare Isn't P.C.

Goodbye Mark Twain, goodbye Ernest Hemingway, goodbye Chaucer and goodbye Shakespeare, to mention only a handful....

[Humbug]

This kind of stuff really bugs me. Especially since i've noticed it filtering down to everday writing/talking the last few years. For instance, the other day i was reading some guy's post in another forum (not politcal) and, instead of using "he" or "he or she" to indicate some non-specific person, the guy kept using "she". I imagine he felt smugly enlightened by doing that too but i had nothing but contempt for him.

Also i was reading one of those "For Dummies" books the other week. It was about classical music and whenever they would refer to a non-specific musician the authors would go with "she" each time. I guess it was done to counter the fact that - horror of horrors - nearly all composers are male and so they were forced to go with "he" when talking in generalities there.

Sheesh, it's all become so convoluted. It was much simpler back in the days when everyone was smart enough to discern that "he" could mean either he or she in some cases. Instead we now have too many people with too much time on their hands, people who probably are quick to jump to the defense of someone who says something truly offensive (as long as the offending remarks weren't aimed at people/groups left of center, that is) but when it comes to this nonsense they are all-too-willing to censor.

[IowaHawk]

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Correction "it is a tale told by a person with learning disabilities, full of sound and fury, signifying unique communication strategies.

More Shakespeare modernized for contemporary PoMo sensibilities:

"Good night, sweet person of monarchical descent, and flights of socio-religious semiotic icons sing thee to thy rest"

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, but most are priveleged oppressors of the ruling phallocentric patriarchy"

"Let me have men and/or women and/or transgendered about me that are differentially-sized,
Persons of diverse hair, and such as are victims of sleep disorders.
Yond Cassius has a look of improper nutrition;
He thinks too much: such persons are at-risk..."

[jjm2111]

LOL! I thought I goofed when I clicked on the link. I couldn't find it on Newsmax or I woulda posted it myself. Thanks.

[Gorzaloon]

Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley textbook publishers demand that people "over the age of 65 must be fully represented in text and illustrations; there must be a larger number of older women than older men, because 55 percent of older persons are women."

One publisher went on to say,

"Where the Bee suck, there suck I.

(In a cowslip's bell I lie)".

I just cannot stop thinking about these, I am so revolted and disgusted by PC in general, and this literary vandalism in particular.

I suppose our struggle will be in vain, as we" groan and sweat like asses beneath the wheel of Business".

[yankeedame]

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

(I know, I know...this isn't from - or have anything to do with - Shakespeare, but I've always kind of liked this quote.)

[talleyman]

but first we need to "...kill all the lawyers."

[cookiedough]

Ah, yes. Do you have any idea why the lawyers needed to be killed *first*?

[aculeus]

LOFL

(F = Freaking)