The New York State Regents exam, which is required for all high school students in order to graduate, includes essay questions based on excerpts from literature.
Sort of. It turns out the Regents Board has been sanitizing the excerpts, running the text contents through “sensitivity” standards. Any references to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity, or anything that might “offend” somebody were changed or removed.
The State Education Dept. says it did not want any student to feel ill at ease during the test.
The modifications to the passages ranged widely. In the Chekhov story “The Upheaval,” the exam takes out the portion in which a wealthy woman looking for a missing brooch strip-searches all of the house’s staff members. Students are then asked to use the story to write an essay on the meaning of human dignity.
A paragraph in John Holt’s “Learning All the Time” is truncated to eliminate some of the reasons Suzuki violin instruction differs in Japan and the United States, apparently not to offend anyone who might find the particulars somehow insulting. Students are nonetheless then asked to answer questions about those differences.
Certain revisions bordered on the absurd. In a speech by Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, in addition to deletions about the United States’ unpaid debt to the United Nations, any mention of wine and drinking was removed. Instead of praising “fine California wine and seafood,” he ends up praising “fine California seafood.” In Carol Saline’s “Mothers and Daughters” a daughter no longer says she “went out to a bar” with her mother; on the Regents, they simply “went out.”
In an excerpt from “Barrio Boy,” by Ernesto Galarza (whose name was misspelled on the exam as Gallarzo), a “gringo lady” becomes an “American lady.” A boy described as “skinny” became “thin,” while another boy who was “fat” became “heavy,” adjectives the state deemed less insulting.
There is no indication on the tests that the texts have been abridged, altered, or otherwise are not exactly as written.
Now, it is certainly the prerogative of the NY State Education Board to present “sensitive” texts to teens taking the tests. A silly prerogative, perhaps, but still, they’re the ones putting the test together.
What has me scratching my head, though, is why, if the contemporary literature and writings that are chosen there are so many things that need to be removed (since, damn, it’s probably pretty tough to find any sort of lit that has no references to anything that someone might take offense to), why they bother actually choosing “real” examples, rather than simply making up something blandly acceptable on their own?
Granted, that might require some imagination.
“We do shorten the passages and alter the passages to make them suitable for testing situations.” The changes are made to satisfy the sensitivity guidelines the department uses, so no student will be “uncomfortable in a testing situation,” she said. “Even the most wonderful writers don’t write literature for children to take on a test.”
Then why bother to use such “wonderful writers”? Why not note that the text has been abridged?
I can understand not wanting to add any more stress than a test necessarily carries with it. And I can understand the justification (unstated) that the last thing the Board wants is some parent suing to have Junior’s failure nullified because he was upset over the use of the word “stupid” in one of the essays.
But, come on, people. Again, if it’s that big of a deal, craft your own damned “literature” and test off of that. Otherwise, if it was good enough to teach from, it’s good enough to test from. And if it’s not, it’s not.
