Paula Marantz Cohen writes an excellent review of Diane Ravitch’s book The Language Police (from April 2003), which shows how today’s textbooks conjure up a world so sanitized of reality that they turn students into cynics. The politics of victimhood and absurd levels of PC predominates over learning and even plausibility.
The book sounds excellent, even the analysis of the institutional factors that go into the production of such unimaginative textbooks, but what the review (and the book?) leaves out would seem like an obvious point: the public sector is the major buyer of these textbooks. That’s why they are politicized in the extreme. That’s why they dominate the market (such as it is). That’s why the usual market feedback mechanisms don’t seem to work. And that’s always why this book is not likely to make a difference in public institutions. Private ones (commercial, home-based, religious institutions, etc.) are another matter. (Pointer from A&LDaily)
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You will notice that it doesn’t occur to either the author or the reviewer to question the entire existence and necessity of a public school system.
You’ll also notice that the children’s parents are barely mentioned. This is a core belief of socialists: that parenting is far too important to be entrusted to parents.
1. ‘Pressure groups’are legally threatening only because legislation gives them the power. Under common law, only individuals could bring cases – on the basis of specific, individual damage. And the results could only be used by other individuals in similar situations.
2. Virtually all of the new private, fee-paying, English-medium schools in India use only graduate teachers who do not have ‘teaching’ qualifications. These teachers say that ‘education’ courses are the equivalent of making swimming motions in the air, without ever getting into the water.
3. The entire ‘problem’ discussed in the review is solely the outcome of the activities of govt officials/’democratic’politicians: tax-funded ‘schools’ & ‘anti-discrimination’ legislation.
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