Textbooks Distort History, Critic Says

Plenty, says prominent education historian Diane Ravitch. In a critical new analysis, the former assistant U.S. secretary of education contends that publishers routinely sanitize textbooks and instructional materials in California and around the country, distorting history and literature to satisfy school officials and special-interest groups.

But the argument in her book -- "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn," released this week -- is raising its own debate.

Many publishers -- but not all -- say Ravitch misrepresents their efforts to fairly portray girls, minorities, people with disabilities and others who previously were ignored in textbooks. And education officials in California and other states stand by policies that they say are designed to eliminate stereotypes and biases.

Still, Ravitch, who is a professor at New York University and serves on a national panel on academic testing, said "sensitivity and bias guidelines" of publishers, exam developers and states have spawned a censorship culture in the nation's schools. "The result of all this relentless purging," she writes, "is dishonesty, a purposeful shielding of children from anything challenging, controversial or just plain interesting."

In an interview from her New York home, she contended that the problem is widespread.

"There is not a state in this country, nor a publisher, that is not using a sensitivity review process to weed out words," Ravitch said. Such censorship, she said, is a result of pressure from both conservatives and liberals.

Ravitch pointed to the experience of Open Court, the popular elementary school reading program used by many California schools.

State education officials rejected the program's textbooks in the 1970s, saying the texts did not adequately represent girls and ethnic minorities. The originals contained numerous selections of classic children's literature in which many main characters were men. Some texts were then dropped or changed.