No More Dinosaurs or Dancing in New York City Tests

          We have all heard of at least one controversial book that parents or educators disliked so it became banned. When I was in seventh grade this one book was banned because it was too direct about female puberty. The book was about this thirteen year old girl that was going through what every girl goes through and at one point needed to buy her first bra and she talked about having crushes on boys and all those weird things girls like in middle school. This one mom believed that the book was too graphic for her son. First off, why would her son read about a girl going through puberty?  Secondly, everything mentioned in the book and more her son would learn when the nurses would come every year to teach us our yearly sex education class. So this is about a book and other books have gone through the same scrutiny but did you ever think “loaded” words other than curse words or derogatory terms would be banned from an educational system?

Well, the city of New York has developed a very long and interesting list of words they believe should be banned from the city’s standardized test. They have decided to create a list because they believe some words may evoke feelings that my upset certain students from certain backgrounds, demographics, or religious beliefs. The city of New York does defend its odd actions by saying that they are not the first to do this. They state that California avoids using the word “weed” in their test (like any state would talk about weed in a standardized test) and Florida avoids using the words “hurricanes” and “wildfires.” The only difference between these two states and New York is that New York has created a list with 50 words including words such as religion, politics, and dinosaurs! When asked by reporters why dinosaurs were being banned they casually replied that dinosaurs brings to mind evolution and may upset fundamentalist. Even though I thought standardized test could not get any worse, New York City students are going to have extremely boring standardized test.

Here are some of the words being banned:

·         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 (Dinosaurs)

·         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.

Do you think that the city of New York has a valid point in banning these words? Could keeping these words possibly cause some type of obstruction to the test taking skills of students? Comment away.