Censorship: The ELA Exposed
The Paper Trail: Correspondence about censorship

IT'S NOT LIKE THEY'RE SENSITIVE

We've heard a lot about the New York State Education Department's use of "Sensitivity Review Guidelines" to censor literature on English Language Arts Regents Exams. The SED defended the censorship on the grounds that it was trying to make students "comfortable" during the mandatory, six-hour exam that determines whether or not they graduate from high school.

But just how "sensitive" has the State Education Department been to the comfort of English Language Learners and low-income students?

Here are the SED's Sensitivity Guidelines for English Language Learners and students from low-income backgrounds:

4. Considerations for English as a Second Language
a. Does the material contain language that is either unclear or not comprehensible?
b. Is the vocabulary inaccessible or needlessly unfamiliar?
c. Are there any false cognates?
d. Do the questions or stimuli require cultural knowledge that is irrelevant to the subject matter?

7. Socio-economic Considerations
a. Do the constraints of socio-economic access to material resources interfere in a student's ability to relate to the material?

Is it sensitive to ask English Language Learners:

• To give a synonym for "retrograde, troglodyte, antediluvian"? (8/99)
• To write about a pair of texts that contains the following vocabulary: "begoggled"; "biplane"; "mote"; "arabesques"; "hammerheads" (land formations, not sharks); "pirouettes"; "surcease"; "compass" (as a verb); "inspiriting"; "cumuli-nimbi"; "armada"; "monolith"; "buttes"; and "elephantbacks"? (1/01)
• To understand exam instructions that include the following: "Provide a valid interpretation of the critical lens that clearly establishes the criteria for analysis. . . . Indicate whether you agree or disagree with the statement as you have interpreted it. .
• Use the criteria suggested by the critical lens to analyze the works you have chosen"?
• To analyze an article about heating costs that contains vocabulary like "heat pumps," "registers," "deflectors," "thermal comfort," "mean radiant temperature," and sentences like this: "The 'clo-value' of clothing closely corresponds to the R-value of fiberglass and other building materials"? (The text never explains what an "R-value" is.) (8/99)
• To analyze an article about the history of the Department of Parks and Recreation contains sentences like this: "New York's earliest parks were established in response to the need to protect specific threatened natural and cultural assets, such as 19th-century actions to protect Niagara Falls, the 'forever wild' clause of the State Constitution in 1894 to protect the forest preserve in the Adirondacks and Catskills, and the turn-of-the-century actions to protect the Palisades"? (4/01)
• To analyze a text written in the 16th century that begins, "To see the wind with a man his eyes it is unpossible, the nature of it is so fine and subtile; yet this experience of the wind had I once myself, and that was in the great snow that fell four years ago"? The passage also contains this sentence: "For I should see one stream within a score on me; then the space of two score, no snow would stir; but, after so much quantity of ground, another stream of snow, at the same very time, should be carried likewise, but not equally, for the one would stand still, when the other flew apace and so continue sometime swiftlier, sometime slowlier, sometime broader, sometime narrower, as far as I could see." (1/00)

• To "prepare a report on successful management techniques in the workplace" for a "school-to-work seminar"? (1/00)
• To write a letter "explaining the Suzuki violin method" and whether or not it should be included in the school curriculum? (6/99)
• To analyze a poem that compares a woman to a bonsai tree? (8/00)
• To "use a tone and level of language appropriate for a letter to the Research and Exploration Committee of the National Geographic Society"? (1/02)
• To write an essay that demands familiarity with the Internet and the concept of computer networking? Here's part of the essay assignment: "As a frequent Internet user, you believe the grant money should be used to provide access to computer networking in sites outside of school." (1/01)
• To analyze an article about heating costs in private homes that includes information like this: "House-tightening measures can significantly reduce air movement in a house. The blower door is an effective tool in identifying leaks. Note that house-tightening (that is, weather-stripping, leak-plugging, and other infiltration-reducing measures) saves energy two ways. Since it reduces air infiltration, less air needs to be heated. Of secondary importance, the slower air movement permits a lower thermostat setting. After a major house-tightening, the retrofitter should recommend a 1° to 3° thermostat setback for maximum savings"? (8/99)
• To analyze an article that refers to "Riverbank, an innovative and highly praised 28-acre park on top of a sewage treatment facility on the Hudson River in New York City" when students who live near Riverbank know that local residents refer to it as "Toilet Park" due to the overwhelming odor of the sewage? (4/01)
• To analyze a graph that refers to golf courses, boating access sites, cross-country ski trails, fitness trails, nature trails and campgrounds? (4/01)
• To write a letter to the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation "recommending steps it can take to meet the changing needs of visitors to parks, recreation facilities, and historic sites in your geographic area"? (4/01)