The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts
How can educators justify altering literary texts, without even the author’s permission? Why would educators do this? What are they afraid of? I’m so glad my Regents are two decades behind me; I’ll have to teach my children how to correctly answer an altered text, scores be damned.
From the New York Times article:
“Even the most wonderful writers don’t write literature for children to take on a test.”
Based on this quote one might think it would be simpler to not use the texts at all, rather than mutilate them.
The whole thing is so much bullshit. Are people so fragile that seeing certain words in a test, not even “profanity” but simple references to ethnicity, wine, or anything will cause them to faint? If so let’s pack it in folks. The human experiment is a failure, and we should just give it up to the roaches.
Obviously I don’t think that’s the case, there are just a lot of idiots in positions of authority, as there have always been, and unfortunately, always will be.
Hmmmpphh! Where’s december? You’d think that he’d have wanted to break this story so that, for once, he’d be in the majority while decrying PC.
tomndebb, I was going to label the testers liberal, but then I remembered that it’s usually conservatives trying to get books banned. Both ends of the spectrum need to be cut off and set adrift in space, separate from the (steadily shrinking) rational part of soceity.
You’re absolutely right, D_Odds.
If we have standard classic texts that say “nigger” and “kike” and “weaker sex,” we should also have standard classic texts that say “shit” and “fuck.” Both forms of censorship are a namby-pamby wimp-out.
Correct. I was at a meeting all day. Work! :mad:
Since I’m back, I will expand the OP to what I see as the real topic (which should also get a debate going.)
Although few, if any, posters will support the New York State Regents in this decision, I assert that it’s a natural result of political correctness. We must de-emphasize PC or we’ll get more and more of this nonsense. An unhealthy focus on PC must inevitably produce excesses like this.
Remember the song from Once Upon a Mattress?
Sensitivity, sensitivity, I’ve got plenty of that.,
So I expurgate any story that calls chubby people “fat.”
BTW another unhealthy application of PC is abandoning Huckleberry Finn in some schools, because it uses the “n word.”
From the article linked to above:
(bolding mine)
Guess they don’t agree with Kafka, who said, “'fiction should be an axe to break up the frozen seas within us”. IMO, if it doesn’t make you feel ill at ease in some way shape or form, it’s probably not literature. Removing these things from the texts also removes depth of meaning. How in the hell can you test reading comprehension when you have flattened everything into meaningless drivel?
Considering the vast body of widely varying works that we call “literature,” don’t you think they could find a few passages that could test the students’ knowledge without having to be bowlderized?
Its fine with me (I took my English regents this January) as long as they have the original author’s permission. I mean, they did talk to Chekov, etc. before hand, right?
If anyone ever edits anything I’ve written without my permission after I’m dead, I will haunt them. And not in the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” way. In the “The Shining” way.
Seriously, though, they should just use passages that are originally unoffensive.
Come to think of it, on the Regents I took, the passage was about Native American culture, but there was no direct reference to being Native American. It actually made it more difficult since in the essay I was less sure about the culture, and which was, IIRC, a focus of the essay.
I would think that with some literature, you’d WANT to see the remarks that are gender/ethnicity insensitive. A study of literature is never done out of context, unless your reading popular trash like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Any good study of literature includes a study of the person who wrote it, his culture, his time period, his motivations…these things put the work into context and enhance its meaning. Racial slurs and remarks demeaning to women are part of the era. Frankly, they’re still a pretty good part of this era, and it would be the height of naivete to sterilize literature of this element of the language. If a character is of the sort that would normally say “Fck that shthead ni**er-lovin’ k*ke”, then those words are necessary to define the character. The day we see “Screw that goshdarned African-American-advocate follower of the Jewish faith” come out of the mouth of a 1930’s street tough is the day we know literature has been forever coopted.
A sanitized New York State Regents?
Opposing the Pledge of Allegiance?
PC is at fault.
It’s time to assault!
For, liberty never is free, gents.
I would agree with that - but (if I understand what the Regents Exams are) this isn’t a study of literature. It seems to be a highly stressful timed test that has some kind of impact on students’ futures. And I don’t think that the students going through it should have to read racial slurs and sexist remarks.
I also don’t think that they should have to read over-sanitized versions of the text - but there seems to me that there should be enough literature in the world that could be used without that kind of editing.
Quite apart from the issue of altering texts without permission, or the silliness of sanitizing literature to avoid over-active sensitivities, it seems from some of the questions that the text was chosen to require the student to not only comprehend but do some thinking about the meaning of the text. The question posed appears to require the unaltered text to properly answer. This makes me think that the person who creates the question does so based on an assumption that the text chosen will be printed verbatim, and the alteration comes at a later stage.
For example, the question based on the Chekov passage seems to require the unaltered text to give the answerer some grist for the mill of rational thought processes. The result of the alterations isn’t just predigested pap, it is a series of questions rendered unanswerable by the lack of any actual text to which thought must be given.
How pathetic.
I took New York State Regents exams in high school 1957 - 60. At that time, one could graduate from high school with a “Regents Diploma” if one passed appropriate Regents Exams. Otherwise, one could still receive a HS diploma.
My friends and I considered the Regents exams to be a lot easier than our regular finals. The only (slight) worry might be if we hadn’t covered some aspect of the state syllabus, but that rarely happened. We were good students in a good public high school. The Regents exams may well have been more challenging for some others.
I do not know whether the Regents exam structure has changed since then/
I took the Regents exams 1979-82, and the exams were slightly more difficult than other final exams, most especially the English one, which I believe was the only one required of all students back then. (As of 1996, local districts could set the standard for passing this exam with a score as low as 55.) The test covers all aspects of English taught throughout High School, including “literature”, whatever is meant by that in this context.
Graduation requirements have changed. Beginning with students entering the 9th grade in 2001, there is now no such thing as a local diploma and a regents diploma, as was the case when december and I attended high school. All students are required to take regents exams for core subjects. An advanced regents diploma is available, which requires additional math and science regents exams. In any case, the English regents has been required for a HS diploma of any kind for some time now.
A few people have pointed out that the exams feature questions which would require the deleted information in order to form an answer. It seems this problem is not limited to regents exams. Frequently, my son (grade 6) is confronted with homework assignments which ask questions about reading assignments, and the answer is nowhere to be found in the text. Two recent examples spring to mind, which he came to me to ask for help with. He was asked some questions about the Spanish Armada’s defeat in 1588. In particular, the teacher wanted the name of the battle. In the text given, the Spanish Armada was referred to as the name of the fleet, but no mention was made of the battle having a name (and I’m still not sure if it does!?). On another night, there were questions from a chapter on the reformation. One question asked for the names of two churches founded as a result of this movement. The text named only one, the Anglican Church. Though it did discuss Martin Luther and Calvin and a few others, nowhere did it mention that these people founded any church, let alone what it’s name might have been. Maybe these are intended more as trivia questions than as a way to reinforce learning?
Perhaps the changes to the regents aren’t some form of censorship, but part of a larger trend toward a game show quiz method of teaching?