Entry #10 -- "Even these pictures are foreign to us..."

High School Students' Rights

I opened with this link because I thought it was a good supplement to the Reichman article. The article discusses the importance of establishing written guidelines to try to avoid censorship in the schools. This article supplements the reading because it provides an example of a written policy put into place to protect students from censorship. The language, as suggested by Reichman, is easy for students to understand, and it also informs students about possible courses of action if they feel they are being censored or their rights violated. This link provides an example of similar information on rights to distribute pamphlets, etc.: Information Distribution at High Schools. These examples are policies which can be used to help maintain intellectual freedom in educational settings because they inform the students of heir rights to material, however controversial, while also explaining some of the possible limitations that may be experienced.



This video relates to our readings in showing the importance of having a range of textbooks available for particular subjects -- especially textbooks that consider some of disadvantages experienced by students who are not of the culture primarily depicted in most standard textbooks. I included this video (the sound quality is poor so you'll have to probably turn your volume up all the way to hear it) because I thought it was interesting to hear the students discuss how traditional textbooks can be discriminatory in their material towards students from "under-resourced" or "under-privileged" backgrounds. "In effect, we learn that schools teach those who already know and fail those who need to be taught." I think the video made an interesting point when it showed how much better the students were able to understand the material in the textbooks about prisms after they were actually able to see one in real life. I think the point of this video is a good example of illustrating one of the dangers in textbook censorship that Ravitch discusses. This type of censorship fails to recognize the cultures and backgrounds of different students. Instead of including multiple perspectives, the type of censorship Ravitch discussed involved limiting perspectives and ideas and creating books that are very dull and often even more inaccurate in their information because so much is left out.

Ravitch explained that textbooks (below college level) are reviewed by “bias and sensitivity” panels that regularly remove words that “might offend someone.” Publishers, who want to avoid controversy and sell lots of books, “agree to everyone’s objections.” Publishers believe sales and profits are best realized by giving in to pressure groups and end up producing bland and homogeneous textbooks.

According to Ravitch, lists of words, pictures, etc. have been generated to avoid using in books and tests. She discusses implications, especially forms of censorship, involved when pressure groups have control over which textbooks are selected and even wording used on tests. For example, in some history and literature books, women are not shown in the kitchen or sewing, etc. because those kinds of pictures depict "traditional" gender roles -- even if this was a reality of the time period being presented. Ravitch wrote, “When you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong.” What I find interesting about this approach or practice of banning/censoring the words, pictures, etc. in their entirety is that they fail to recognize how these banned items can, instead, be used as a teaching opportunity. Some of the slurs (racial, gender, whatever) can be used to teach people about social injustices or even as a means of addressing and talking about them, but so much is removed from textbooks now at the risk of offending someone. They'd rather just leave the material out all together than recognize that students can learn a lot more from discussing them than ignoring them. If they continue to add to these lists every word, etc. that might offend someone, what will students actually be able to learn? Just imagine how dry and boring those books will be to read...

By allowing censorship in the schools, we are removing learning opportunities. How can students learn about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and how to be active in social and political change, if their learning materials and chances to act are censored? How can they learn to critically analyze and think about any situation when they are not exposed to multiple perspectives? These are skills that will help them make decisions throughout their lives, yet censorship stifles the learning of these skills. How can we teach students to avoid peer (or other forms of) pressure when schools have to bow to political pressure when it comes to censoring intellectual freedoms?