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June 6, 2002 - Newsday Clip

Subject: Fwd: Newsday Clip
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2002 11:30:42 -0400
From: Maud Abeel

Newsday.com Archives

Regents Are Serving Up Bland Exam Fare
Sheryl McCarthy

Newsday; Long Island, N.Y.; June 6, 2002

I'm relieved to know that New York's education commissioner, Richard Mills, has ordered an end to the practice of censoring literary passages that appear on the state Regents exams.

A study by the mother of a high school senior uncovered numerous instances in which the words of established writers were changed or deleted outright, so as not to offend members of various racial, religious or gender groups.

Authors from Anton Chekhov, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel to Frank Conroy, Annie Dillard, June Jordan and B.B. King had their words tampered with so they'd conform to the state Education Department's so-called sensitivity guidelines.

References to "god," the "soul" and any form of religion were removed. So were descriptions of cultural differences between people of different nationalities or ethnic groups, references to racial prejudice, ethnic slurs that appeared in memoirs and works of fiction, and mild profanity (in one passage the word "hell" was changed to "heck.")

Outright censorship took the life out of the original passages, subverted the authors' messages and rendered the passages intellectually dishonest. But after a hubbub in the press, the commissioner announced that on future tests the authors' words won't be tampered with.

Until now, the state Education Department has used "sensitivity" guidelines that allowed it to dumb down and bland out any material that could be considered controversial. Among the factors to be considered in deciding what went on any Regents exams were: whether the material stereotypes females or males; if it portrays one or more racial or ethnic group in a perjorative manner; if it uses language or content that is "not accessible" to one or more racial or ethnic groups (whatever that means); and whether the material is offensive to one or more religious groups.

Presumably, under these guidelines, you couldn't quote a passage by Mark Twain that describes prejudice against blacks, or by Richard Wright, describing negative feelings blacks feel toward whites. You couldn't quote male writers who made unflattering references to women, even though their work accurately conveyed the sentiments of a particular time and place.

One guideline said any reference to reproduction that "cannot accord the full dignity required for human reproduction" should use animal examples instead, and that any reference to artificial reproduction use animal examples only. Did this mean a description of artificial insemination could refer only to mice? And if so, why?

A spokeswoman for the state Education Department said yesterday that the old guidelines are now out and that the new criteria will require only that material used on the exam have literary merit (be well-written) and that it be "accessible" to students of all backgrounds and "fair" to all students - although it's not clear to me what the last two criteria mean. This could be progress, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Public school officials walk a tightrope, trying to satisfy many constituencies, all of whom think they know what's best for public school children. But schools are supposed to teach kids about the real world, broaden their frame of reference beyond their own families and communities, even show them that profanity and ethnic slurs are part of life. That's called educating them, regardless of whether some of it is offensive or not.

The recent controversy was sparked by a group of parents and educators at 32 small, public, alternative schools, who until recently used different kinds of tests to determine if their students met the state standards. The schools, which form The New York Performance Standards Consortium, are waging a battle in the state courts against being forced to use the Regents exams.

With the next round of exams coming up in a few weeks, the revelations about how they've been dumbed down and blanded out makes me think an alternative form of testing might not be a bad idea.

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

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