littlemissattitude
Super Moderator
Brown Rat said:
That's a fascinating book, Brown Rat. I read it soon after it was published, and I'm afraid that while I was reading it, I had a bad habit of stopping, asking whoever happened to be around when I was reading, "Can you believe this?" and reading passages of the book aloud at them. Horrible of me, I know, but I just couldn't help myself.
One of the most amazing things in the book was the part about the depiction of our elders...can't say senior citizen, can we? There was a prohibition against picturing older individuals as frail or sickly or using a wheelchair or walker or cane. Well, that is my mother they are erasing from existence in school books...she appears frail (although she's a lot stronger than she looks), and she uses a walker to get around sometimes. The reality is that some folks become ill and infirm as they age.
Then again, the information in Ravitch's book leads me to believe that textbook publishers have only a glancing familiarity with reality and don't want school-age children to have any knowledge of the real world.
Sorry. I still get angry when I think about the social engineering that lists like those reported by Ravitch. Of course, we don't want sexism and ageism and racism promoted. But they are going about achieving the goal of defeating those attitudes in the wrong way. Grrrrrrr.
