Happy talk: School textbooks play it safe : Pittsburgh Indymedia

Happy talk: School textbooks play it safe
by HEIDI PRICE Monday, Oct. 13, 2003 at 6:19 AM

tell children the truth

In Judy Totty's 11th-grade Advanced Placement English class, she delves into a little history.

One assignment, for example, asks her students to examine accounts written by those who witnessed history instead of just accepting what they read in history books.

"I try to teach them to go to primary sources to search for the truth themselves," said Totty, who teaches English and drama at Washington High School.

Among the books stacked on Totty's desk is Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," which takes a critical look at the American story from the viewpoint of oppressed social classes, such as blacks, Native Americans and women.

"The history books are written by the winners of the war in the past," said Totty. Examining different viewpoints helps students approach not only history but learning from a different perspective, said Totty in an interview one afternoon after classes had ended.

As acting chairwoman of the English department, Totty recently led a group of teachers on a two-year expedition for a new textbook series for grades six through 12.

The search proved difficult for many reasons. The series not only had to meet state standards but also address the unique needs of students in the district. Students at Wash High are sharply divided between high achievers and below-average students, with few falling in the middle, Totty said.

"Boring, boring, boring," is how Totty described many of the textbooks the group encountered. "They were all pretty much the same, all the textbooks."

Totty's own class syllabus is heavily supplemented with books like Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," which students read after their parents sign a permission form.

But she's most concerned about the effect of banal textbooks on students who don't take advanced placement or honors courses.

"I feel, especially for the slower, general student. How do they keep focused on something that's so boring?" Totty asked.

As director of curriculum and instruction in Peters Township School District, Mary Ann Battaglia said she and a 40-member committee of teachers, parents and community members search for textbooks imbued with multi-cultural references.

"We live in a homogenized kind of community. We want to make sure our children have exposure to cultural things," Battaglia said.

If a textbook falls short, teachers address those gaps or inadequacies in other ways, including with online research, multi-media tools and supplemental readings.

"Because we give teachers an array of materials, I don't look at textbooks as the be-all, end-all for any children," Battaglia said.

In "The Language Police," published earlier this year, educational historian Diane Ravitch examines the abridgment, modification and censorship of textbooks willingly undertaken by educational publishers to remove words, topics or imagery that may be offensive. The result, Ravitch found, is textbooks that sell, do not offend, but nor do they engage, either.

Educational publishers follow bias and sensitivity guidelines often as expansive as the books they publish. Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley, for example, takes books through a 161-page set of guidelines before they are published.

As a result, "heroine" is no longer an appropriate word for a school book. It's sexist. "Honey, jam, jelly or preserves" don't fit the mold of acceptable word choices, either. Their nutritional value comes into question. Men can't be portrayed as attorneys or plumbers; that is considered stereotyping. It's taboo to show a women more concerned with a family and home, instead of a career. People of color cannot be shown living in poor, urban areas. Nor, can they be angry about it.

Stories about mice, according to one set of guidelines, upset children.

Ravitch, assistant secretary in charge of research in the U.S. Department of Education under former President Bush, first began researching the subject after being asked by President Clinton to develop a national reading test for fourth-grade students.

In developing the test, Ravitch encountered guidelines for tests as extensive as those she later found in publishing.

For example, students who live in warmer regions shouldn't be subjected to test passages about blizzards because that constitutes regional bias.

Britnee McCandless, a student in Totty's AP English class, recently took the Pennsylvania assessment in reading, said she encountered generic reading passages on the test.

"It's insulting when you get the test, how mindless some of it was," McCandless said.

Too often, people aren't aware bias and sensitivity reviews even take place, said Ravitch in a recent phone interview.

"This type of review has been turning textbooks into watery mush, all the bite and controversy taken out of them," Ravitch said. "They know something is missing, but they don't know where it is. You can't see the censorship. The censorship is what's not there."

Instead, children are being fed "happy talk" books, which they put down to watch television, go to movies or play video games.

"We're censoring the good stuff while the bad stuff is flourishing," Ravitch said. "I do think there's something to be said with grappling with the reality of evil and doing this through literature and history and not pretending it doesn't exist."

To combat censorship, Ravitch calls for better-educated teachers, ones who will discard bland textbooks in favor of histories, biographies and original-source documents.

Dr. James Longo, chairman of the education department at Washington & Jefferson College, said this is the mindset he tries to instill in students studying to be teachers: Approach every textbook critically. "They need to figure out what is the bias of this textbook because every textbook is going to have a bias," Longo said.

Longo said the bias stems from a problem also addressed in Ravitch's book - statewide textbook adoptions.

Pennsylvania does not have a statewide adoption process, nor does the commonwealth issue guidelines on bias or sensitivity, according to Shawna McClintock of the state Department of Education.

But Pennsylvania students suffer from the statewide adoption process. California and Texas are among about two dozen states that adopt textbooks on a statewide basis. Educational publishers try to create a product that appeals to both states, which make up a huge portion of the market. To do so, they must placate a more conservative mindset in Texas and a class-conscious, more liberal approach in California.

"The way they approach things is going to be noncontroversial," Longo said. "The results is a lot of textbooks are dumbed down. They're written by committees."

In the end, Totty and other teachers in the Wash High English Department recommended a series published by Prentice Hall. District superintendent Roberta DiLorenzo reviewed the series, and it was approved by the school board.

Totty said the series was well-researched, and Prentice Hall also offered more than 300 novels like "Tuck Everlasting," "Catcher in the Rye" and "Huckleberry Finn." The mix of middle school and high school literature will allow teachers to supplement anthologies at every grade level. "Kids love it. They love reading "The Scarlet Letter" or "The Crucible" or "Romeo and Juliet" because it's exciting and so much happens. It's like real life, and they know people like those characters," Totty said.

Totty argues that stories like "Huckleberry Finn" need to be on high school reading lists when it's age-appropriate for children to read it. The novel has an extensive history of being challenged by schools and libraries for its portrayal of blacks and its use of the word "nigger."

"You don't want to forget about the Holocaust in World War II. You don't want to forget about slavery in the United States or Japanese internment camps or genocide of the Indians when the explorers first came over," Totty said. "I think you have to tell children the truth."

PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center