The new book “Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn” offers an explanation as to why countless students are turned off reading for good after years of reading dull text books.

Author Diane Ravitch says the call for political correctness in America has reached dangerous lengths, and “Language Police” explores was Ravitch calls a vast conspiracy – the whitewashing of the public school education.

Text book companies and test publishers have for decades now been critically scanning the content they publish, banishing any material that may offend any student for any reason.

Students can’t read about growing peanuts, because they might be allergic to peanuts. They can’t read about a black family that lives in an urban area, because they might live in an urban area. Instead, any time a black family is mentioned, it must be portrayed as wealthy.

Ravitch calls it censorship. It started out nobly enough, with efforts in the 1960s and ’70s to rid text books of race and gender stereotypes. But the changes have grown to become ridiculous.

As she deftly points out, these drastic efforts to protect America’s youth are absurd. If students are taught in school that the world is a utopian place where people of all races, genders and classes are treated as equals, how can they reconcile that with what they see on television, or experience anywhere outside the classroom?

Sensitivity panels review all text books and standardized tests before they are published at all, and scrutinize the material for anything that may offend or alarm young minds. The panels have developed extensive guidelines for text book companies to follow, to stave off problems before the review stage.

Sensitivity guidelines explicitly state that women can never be shown as cooking dinner, cleaning or being a “mother” figure. Instead, men must always be shown in those “feminine” roles. Girls can’t be shown wearing dresses; instead they have to be pictured in jeans or shorts, “perhaps sporting dirt splotches.”

Also, each reading text books have to have an equal number of male and female characters, and minority characters in numbers proportional to minority populations in the country. There must be equal numbers of selections written by men, women, Caucasians, blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

It’s great that students are exposed to literature and viewpoints from minority viewpoints, but Ravitch thinks the practice keeps students from reading the “classics” – Shakespeare, Dickens, Steinbeck, Twain.

Students are forced to read banal, pointless drivel, so it’s no surprise this generations young adults are less likely to read for pleasure, Ravitch says.

The censorship epidemic has deep roots, and will be difficult to change. Textbook companies are pressured by interest groups on both the right, who want students to learn about religion and family values, and on the left, who want to make education as multicultural as possible.

These interest groups are the most outspoken and powerful in the key states of California and Texas. Those two states seek out contracts with textbook companies to provide books for all the school districts in their state.

The number of school districts in those two states is so large that the textbook companies write the books specifically to please the interest groups in those states. So students across the country are stuck reading material that is approved by both the ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal populations of California and Texas. To sum up – pure drivel.

The book is easy to read. It’s written in clear, concise language rather than the typically confusing language of academia.

It was expanded from an essay Ravitch wrote for a magazine, and it shows. The topic is fascinating and has never been explored before, but unfortunately, the author is a little patronizing in tone.

Ravitch only has enough to say to fill about 100 pages, and she managed to stretch the book out to 180 pages. So she explains her argument, then gives example after example to prove it, then reiterates the argument.

But that makes the book a quick read, so there’s no excuse for anyone to avoid learning about the shortcomings of their education. If enough people start talking about the censorship, maybe it will propel some real change in the system.

At the end of the book, Ravitch includes a list of what she thinks should be a required reading list for any American student. By the time readers reach the end of the book, if they aren’t inspired to go seek out some of the classics they missed along the way, they shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves educated.

This book was provided for review by Barnes & Noble Booksellers at the Lennox Town Center.