NYC Dept. Of Education Wants 50 ‘Forbidden’ Words Banned

[dead0man]

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NYC Department of Education.....between this and $65million a year "rubber room" (which is also an offensive phrase) fiasco, the ridiculously overpowered teachers unions and I'm sure a million other horrible stories we probably don't know about....how do they manage to teach anything?

[dead0man]

How does the word "dancing" make a test inaccessible?

[dead0man]

These words are already banned from big standardized tests like the ACT and SAT.

cite?  Google is giving me nothing except new standards to combat cheating links...and my Google Fu is normally pretty strong.

[dead0man]

The word "dinosaur" does not suggest evolution.  As most things like this, they didn't talk to people from the groups that they thought might be offended.  Not mentioning divorce is probably sensible.

How is "divorce" bad or offensive.  Do children of divorce need to avoid the word?  I can understand keeping honestly offensive words out of standardized tests (3 Heebs walk into a deli with $5.45 between them...), but words that are in our common lexicon shouldn't be avoided because it might make some kid somewhere remember that his parents got divorced last year.

[dead0man]

Some of those make perfect sense, there is no reason to expect every 9 year old (or hell, 15 year old) to know what a "regatta" is.  That kind of word shouldn't be on a test.  But "elderly" should be avoided when talking about the elderly?  How is "deaf and hard of hearing" better than "hearing impared"?  It don't make no sense to me.

Just to be clear, on the scale of 1-100 on the "outrage" meter, this scores about a 11.