New York Update

Earlier this week,  NYC Department of Education Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced that henceforth there will be 50 words and concepts that would no longer be allowed on the many standardized assessment tests created by NYC's vast network of standardized assessment test creators. The Committee-That-Knows-Better-Than-You put their collective heads together to created this list because they fear that some student could be so traumatized at the very thought of the concept of "children dealing with serious issues" that they will not be able to perform at their best. They decided that this is the reason for the steep decline in test scores over the last few years. Of course, not learning how to read, write a simple sentence, and to do simple arithmetic may be more traumatizing when faced with a standardized test, but hey that's just me. Some of the forbidden words are predictable, but some are just baffling. Here is the full list:

***WARNING: SOME OF THESE WORDS AND/OR CONCEPTS MAY BE TRAUMATIZING***

FORBIDDEN WORD/CONCEPT LIST

Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological)

Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs

Birthday celebrations (and birthdays)

Bodily functions

Cancer (and other diseases)

Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes)

Celebrities

Children dealing with serious issues

Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia)

Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting)

Crime

Death and disease

Divorce

Evolution

Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes

Gambling involving money

Halloween

Homelessness

Homes with swimming pools

Hunting

Junk food

In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge

Loss of employment

Nuclear weapons

Occult topics (i.e. fortune-telling)

Parapsychology

Politics

Pornography

Poverty

Rap Music

Religion

Religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan)

Rock-and-Roll music

Running away

Sex

Slavery

Terrorism

Television and video games (excessive use)

Traumatic material (including material that may be particularly upsetting such as animal shelters)

Vermin (rats and roaches)

Violence

War and bloodshed

Weapons (guns, knives, etc.)

Witchcraft, sorcery, etc.

My sample question: If traveling (oops, don't use traveling because some kids may not have the means to travel) for 40 miles (what about those kids who only understand the metric system?) going East (oops, what if they live on the East Coast less than 40 miles from open water?) at 40 miles an hour (oops there's that metric issue again) how long will it take you to get to get to your destination in the astral plane (oops, no parapsychology references allowed) ?

It must be frustrating for any test writers. I mean, yeah, before you couldn't write questions based on pornographic images or with those seven words you couldn't say on television, but now you can't write questions based on "parapsychology".  I mean what is up with that?  It's interesting that the one word they do not use is "ban". These words are not "banned", they are just "forbidden". "Banning" is bad, "forbidding" is just fine if done by the most liberal school system in the country. Okay, in all fairness, Chancellor Walcott backed off the "forbid" to a much softer "suggest" four days later, but the list went out and the damage was done.

Next week: Foods and donations that are now banned...er forbidden...er suggested strongly that one not use or do.