Gen: Censorship on State Tests (VICTORY)

[edward nizalowski <enizalowski@NVCS.STIER.ORG>]

Hello,
        New York State Education Commissioner Richard Mills announced on
Tuesday that the state would stop the practice of altering literature
selections used on state exams.  This is wonderful, of course, but what
makes this incident even more disturbing is that the practice has been going
on for decades and that of 30 passages examined 19 had been altered.  Here
are some of the topics that the "literature police" felt would be
potentially upsetting to students and thus put their mind into such a state
of turmoil that they would not be able them to perform their best:
eliminating any mention of God in a Elie Wiesel essay, eliminating any
mention of race in a memoir by Annie Dillard and removing references to
Judaism from work by Issac Bashevis Singer.  Maybe they were planning on
throwing in a few cereal box blurbs to see if anyone would notice the
difference.

        As I mentioned before, a Brooklyn mother and anti-test activist,
Jeanne Heifetz, did the work of tracking down the alterations.  This brings
up another question: we have hundreds of English teachers reading these
passages along with students for years on end and yet none of them realized
something was amiss?  My personal experience has been that English teachers
tend to be a very dedicated breed, are very knowledgeable and hard working
and have a love of the written word.  How is it that someone not from the
"educational fraternity" turns out to be the one who tells the Emperor that
he has no clothes?  Does anyone have an answer?

Ed Nizalowski, SMS
Newark Valley High School
Newark Valley, NY
Enizalowski@nvcs.stier.org

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