I've been devoting a lot of space lately to the case of John Bonnell, the Macomb Community College English professor who has been suspended by his school for allegedly turning his classroom into an X-rated scene of profane language, naughty anecdote, and lewd gesture. At the same time, I've been reading Diane Ravitch's wonderful new book, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (for more, check out this Washington Post review). Ravitch, a distinguished historian of education, details the hidden censorship at work in our textbook and testing industries, showing how publishers and testing organizations have yielded so completely to both right- and left-wing ideological demands that they have effectively turned teaching and testing materials into agents of social engineering. Ravitch doesn't go anywhere near the sort of strong language and racy subject matter that is at issue in Bonnell's case--she doesn't have to. The censorious guidelines--and there are guidelines--governing what kinds of words, ideas, and images can and cannot appear in school books and standardized tests are so thoroughgoing, so minutely particular, so picky, and so petty that they guarantee not only that textbooks and tests will be G-rated, but also that they will be exemplary models of multicultural inclusion, tolerance, and sensitivity.

Examples from a standard publisher's bias and sensitivity guidelines:

ï Women cannot be depicted as caregivers or doing
household chores.
ï Men cannot be lawyers or doctors or plumbers.
They must be nurturing helpmates.
ï Old people cannot be feeble or dependent; they
must jog or repair the roof.
ï A story that is set in the mountains discriminates
against students from flatlands.
ï Children cannot be shown as disobedient or in
conflict with adults.
ï Cake cannot appear in a story because it is not
nutritious.

Ravitch's book is full of examples of the absurd length to which the K-12 education industry will go in pursuit of its bland utopian ends. Dumbing down education in the name of counterbalancing the long history of oppression has meant, for example, that "the New York State Education Department omitted mentioning Jews in an Isaac Bashevis Singer story about prewar Poland, or blacks in Annie Dillardís memoir of growing up in a racially mixed town." It has also led California to reject "a reading book because The Little Engine That Could was male." Ravitch lists over 500 words banned by publishers, among them "authoress," "actress," "geezer," "landlord," "senior citizen," "dogma," and "yacht."

But the book is just the beginning. Last week, Ravitch reported in a Wall Street Journal editorial that since the book was released she has received a flood of letters detailing ever more absurd antics by the language police. Some examples:

In Michigan, the state does not allow mention of flying saucers or extraterrestrials on its test, because those subjects might imply the forbidden topic of evolution. A text illustrator wrote to say that she was not permitted to portray a birthday party becausse Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in celebrating birthdays. Another illustrator told me he was directed to airbrush the udder from his drawing of a cow because that body part was "too sexual."

A review of my book in the Scotsman, and Edinburgh newspaper said that a well-known local writer for children sold a story to an American textbook company, along with illustrations. The U.S. publisher, however, informed her that she could not show a little girl sitting on her grandfather's lap, as the drawing implied incest. So, the author changed the adult's face, so that the little girl was sitting on her grandmother's lap instead. A contributor to a major textbook series prepared a story comparing the great floods in 1889 in Johnstown, Pa., with those in 1993 in the Midwest, but was unable to find an acceptable photograph. The publisher insisted that everyone in the rowboats must be wearing a lifevest to demonstrate safety procedures.

Even more palpable, ironically, is the prurience produced by the overzealous attempt to sanitize content of any potentially sexual reference. How is it that an udder is supposed to make kids think of sex and not of, say, milk? How is it that a grandfather is supposed to make girls think of being raped rather than, say, of being held by a dearly loved family member? What kind of mindset must one adopt to be able to design such materials? And what sort of mindset does such material produce in kids?

Could it be that the policing prurience of the publishers and testers produces a comparable prurience in the kids who are taught and tested with this bowdlerized material? Bonnell's troubles began when a woman student decided that she could not handle--and should not have to handle--hearing certain words uttered in class. Odds are that in that moment, Bonnell was not only bumping up against an unusually sensitive young woman, but one who had been taught to be so, one who had learned well the lesson that she is first and foremost a victim of men. Perhaps her primary trauma came in the form of an insensitive textbook image or a badly designed test question. Or perhaps the trauma of encountering an unbridled Bonnell was set up by twelve years of blandified, gutted, ever-so-sensitive non-schooling. What is certain is that in an educational context that defines grandfathers as rapists and cow udders as pornographic, John Bonnell's pedagogy was a ticking time bomb.