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yet another harbinger for .... 9/11 ???????????
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Jun 2 18:08 UTC 2002 |
June 2, 2002
The Elderly Man and the Sea? New York "Sanitizes" Literary Texts
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
At first, Jeanne Heifetz thought she had merely tripped over
one of those quirks that occasionally worm their way into
standardized tests. Words were missing from a book excerpt
she was familiar with on a Regents English exam. But when she
discovered a second extensively altered excerpt, she began to
wonder, "If there were two, could there be more?" Was something
sinister afoot?
So, driven by curiosity and her antipathy to the exams, she
rounded up a batch of recent Regents tests, which New York State
requires public high school students to take to graduate, and
started double-checking the excerpts that serve as the basis for
questions. What she found astonished her.
In a feat of literary sleuth work, Ms. Heifetz, the mother of a
high school senior and a weaver from Brooklyn, inspected 10 high
school English exams from the past three years and discovered
that the vast majority of the passages Q drawn from the works of
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov and William Maxwell, among
others Q had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race,
religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest
profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for
some reason. Students had to write essays and answer questions
based on these doctored versions Q versions that were clearly
marked as the work of the widely known authors.
In an excerpt from the work of Mr. Singer, for instance, all men-
tion of Judaism is eliminated, even though it is so much the
essence of his writing. His reference to "Most Jewish women" be-
comes "Most women" on the Regents, and "even the Polish schools
were closed" becomes "even the schools were closed." Out entirely
goes the line "Jews are Jews and Gentiles are Gentiles." In a
passage from Annie Dillard's memoir, "An American Childhood," ra-
cial references are edited out of a description of her childhood
trips to a library in the black section of town where she is al-
most the only white visitor, even though the point of the passage
is to emphasize race and the insights she learned about blacks.
The State Education Department, which prepares the exams, ack-
nowledged modifying excerpts to satisfy elaborate "sensitivity
review guidelines" that have been in use for decades, but are
periodically revised. It said it did not want any student to feel
ill at ease while taking the test.
After making her discovery, Ms. Heifetz contacted most of the af-
fected authors or their publishers, and found them angered that
their words had been tampered with without their consent. Word
circulated among groups concerned about censorship and literary
affairs, and an assortment of them, including the National Coali-
tion Against Censorship, the Association of American Publishers,
the New York Civil Liberties Union and PEN, jointly sent a letter
on Friday to Richard P. Mills, the state education commissioner,
calling for an end to the practice.
The groups, which plan to hold a news conference tomorrow, con-
demned the editing as intellectually dishonest and a form of cen-
sorship that distorts the content and meaning of the works.
"Testing students on inaccurate literary passages is an odd ap-
proach to measuring academic achievement," the letter said.
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 An-
nan, the United Nations secretary general, in addition to dele-
tions 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.
"When I saw that," Ms. Heifetz said, "I really thought they had
lost their minds."
In undertaking her exploration, Ms. Heifetz was in part motivated
by her low regard for the exams, which have long provoked contro-
versy over their worth and prevalence, though she said she had
always assumed that they were correctly prepared. Rosa Jurjevics,
her daughter, is a senior at the Urban Academy Laboratory High
School, a small school on the Upper East Side. It belongs to a
consortium of 32 schools that educate largely poor children and
that oppose the Regents exams. The consortium had a waiver that
excused its students from taking the exams until last June, and
it continues to battle the Education Department over the issue.
The latest round of the two-day Regents in English will be admin-
istered to seniors on June 18 and 19.
The 10 exams Ms. Heifetz reviewed contained 30 passages, and she
found what she considered significant changes in 19, with minor
revisions in four others. One short story and four poems appeared
verbatim, she said, and she did not bother to investigate two ex-
cerpts because she did not find them literary samples to begin
with. One was drawn from a motivational speech by Chuck Noll, the
former Pittsburgh Steelers coach, and another was a science arti-
cle on leatherback turtles.
Only once, Ms. Heifetz said, did an exam use an ellipsis to indi-
cate that material had been cut, and in no other way did the ex-
ams suggest that words had been substituted.
Roseanne DeFabio, the Education Department's assistant commis-
sioner for curriculum, instruction and assessment, said on Fri-
day, "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 chil-
dren to take on a test."
Ms. DeFabio said that as a result of an objection recently re-
ceived from an author, the department had decided to use ellipses
in future exams. She also said she thought it worthwhile that the
department consider marking passages that were altered, but did
not believe that it was necessary to ask authors' permission to
change their work.
One passage was derived from Frank Conroy's memoir, "Stop-Time."
The changes include replacing "hell" with "heck" in one sentence
and excising references to sex, religion, nudity and potential
violence (in the form of the declared intent of two boys to kill
a snake) that are essential to an understanding of the passage.
"I was just completely shocked," Mr. Conroy said. "It's going
through and taking out the flavor of the month. It's terrible."
A number of the writers and scholars Ms. Heifetz contacted have
written indignant letters that have also been submitted to the
education commissioner. Mr. Conroy wrote in part: "Who are these
people who think they have a right to `tidy up' my prose? The New
York State Political Police? The Correct Theme Authority?"
Cathy Popkin, Lionel Trilling professor in the humanities at
Columbia, wrote: "I implore you to put a stop to the scandalous
practice of censoring literary texts, ostensibly in the interest
of our students. It is dishonest. It is dangerous. It is an em-
barrassment. It is the practice of fools."
Ms. Heifetz, 41, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, is married to a pub-
lisher and has roots herself in the writing world. She graduated
with a degree in English from Harvard and earned a master's de-
gree in English from New York University. In the past, she has
worked as a fact checker, writer and editor. She is a co-
chairwoman of the Parents' Coalition to End High Stakes Testing,
which advocates an alterative to the Regents.
She got onto this literary mischief when she noticed an excerpt
on a Regents test identified as being from a speech by the author
Anne Lamott. Ms. Heifetz knew her work and doubted that it had
been part of a speech. She went to her bookshelf and plucked off
a copy of "Bird by Bird," and found the passage, but it did not
match the Regents excerpt. Among other things, a line that read
"She's gay!" was deleted.
Soon after, Ms. Heifetz looked at another test and saw an excerpt
from Isaac Bashevis Singer that seemed incorrect, because it was
barren of references to Jews or Gentiles. She checked it and
found that it had been substantially changed.
With some help from her husband, Juris Jurjevics, the publisher
of Soho Press, she contacted the authors or publishers and found
that none had consented to the use or the changes.
Annie Dillard was one of them. Responding to the removal of the
racial context of her passage, she wrote to the state, "What
could be the purpose of an exercise testing students on such a
lacerated passage Q one which, finally, is neither mine nor true
to my lived experience?"
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