50 Banned Words?

Don Herold, The New Yorker

But I simply couldn't believe anybody would try to ban words.

I simply couldn't take it in when someone I know posted a Facebook link to a site called Staten Island Alive or silive.com. (Admittedly, this story ran in March of 2012. But just because something happened in the past doesn't make it untrue). Anyway, in reading the article to which the link sent me, I discovered that "the [New York] city Department of Education is aiming to get 50 words removed from some city-issued standardized tests, and some of them are real head-scratchers."

"Head-scratchers" here has nothing to do with how these problematic words might challenge juvenile spellers or contribute to a rise in juvenile head-lice. It's meant more like the way a dog cocks its head when hearing an inexplicable sound, in this case the sound of a banned word.

I know the "n" word is more or less a banned word and I won't get started on that. Okay, maybe I will, just a little: words can be ill-used, or used to hurt or alienate. But any word itself is merely a signifier; it is not really what is signified. And attitudes of hurtfulness or prejudice can be signified with any number of words (or gestures) that don't employ the use of--in the case of the "n" word--the "n" word. So it's not as if words qua words are bad. But they can be used to cause bad hurt. And banning them won't stem that.

And now--back to the fifty banned words. Apparently the thinking is that these words will cause the test-taking students to feel excluded, threatened or victimized and that would distract them from being able to perform to their highest ability on these standardized measurements.

Harrumph, indeed. I remember a word problem from my 9th-grade Regents math test in which we had to calculate some kind of data about how the Martians performed a task as compared to the Venusians. I've spent the next few decades wondering who the hell the Venusians are. I mean, they're not from Venice, of course, because those are Venetians, like Marco Polo and Casanova and Peggy Guggenheim and the pastries. But we all learned in science class that Venus is uninhabited. Are math and science incompatible? Do mathemeticians not know what astronomers know? Shouldn't they be talking? Was I distracted on my math Regents? Sure was! (Did I pass? Yes, with an A.)

So why do the educators in the New York City Department of Education think students will be distracted--and bow to the corollary argument that distraction is necessarily a bad thing--by the following selection from their list of fifty banned words? Let's sample:

abuse - perhaps the issue here is that if we don't say the word, it won't happen;
birthdays - perhaps it's that for those of us past age thirty, if we don't say the word, we won't get older;
bodily functions - perhaps if we don't say the word, they will continue to function just fine--no matter what;
divorce - perhaps if we don't say it, it won't happen;
Hallowe'en - perhaps if we don't say it, we won't get egged;
junk food - perhaps if we don't say, we will not actually have eaten it
poverty - perhaps if we don't say it, it will go away;
sex - perhaps if we don't say it, teen pregnancies will simply disappear--pouff!;
slavery - perhaps if we don't say the word, it will not have happened/be happening;
weapons - perhaps if we don't say the word, we will not have to confront the question of gun control.

Tomorrow: a geography lesson about a very, very long river in river in Egypt. You know the one.