Entry 90, on 2004-11-24 at 14:50:05 (Rating 3, News)
I heard an interview this morning with a visiting American campaigner on the subject of political correctness. We often complain about the amount of PC we have here in New Zealand, but it seems negligible when compared with what's happening in the US, at least according to her.
The specific area under discussion was school text books. Apparently these books are reviewed by a panel to block anything which could be construed as disadvantaging any group - especially "minority" groups such as women (political correctness is alleged to have started with feminism) and blacks. For example, a book cannot portray a black person as having trouble solving a math problem, but its OK to portray a white male in that situation.
There were some extreme examples which reached the point of being amusing. For example, a story about the history of peanut growing, which was going to be used in a reading test, was rejected because some kids are allergic to peanuts.
Another article about owls was rejected because the owl is a symbol of death to some native American tribes. In fact nothing mentioning owls is allowed in school publications - its as if they don't exist! Obviously, if you look hard enough, you will be able to find something objectionable about any subject you care to name. This is insanity - no wonder education standards are so poor.
It gets a lot worse in some states where religious fundamentalism is strong (the worst form of insanity, in my opinion). In places such as Texas there is pressure to ban anything which encourages imagination. I'm not quite sure what the justification is. Presumably the church doesn't like competition from other forms of fantasy apart from its own!
The bizarre thing is that all of this sanitization happening in schools isn't echoed in outside society where TV can broadcast almost anything. Another point made was that the situation being portrayed is not what the world is like, but what some people would like the world to be like. There is also no evidence that this sort of intervention helps in any way with educational achievement.
The interview was quite disturbing but in some ways it was also a relief to see that other countries are far worse off than us when it comes to political correctness.
Comment 1 (998) by Freddo on 2007-12-10 at 05:13:51:
An interesting summary of the situation here. I really liked your comment about the church not liking competition in the area of fantasy... nice one!
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