Gun control word cloud (courtesy shutterstock.com)

New York City’s decision to remove some 50 potentially offensive words from their standardized tests won’t come as much of a shock to anyone who works in the public education system, or anyone who somehow made it through the system. The Standard Aptitude Test (SAT) embraced political correctness back in the early 70’s, substituting ethnic names for Scotch-Irish monikers in their word problems. The desire not to offend anyone, ever has been evolving ever since. Oops! Did I say “evolve”? “The word ‘dinosaur’ made the hit list because dinosaurs suggest evolution which creationists might not like,” newyork.cbslocal.com reports. “’Halloween’ is targeted because it suggests paganism; a ‘birthday’ might not be happy to all because it isn’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses.” And that’s just the fun stuff. Also banned: any mention of death, disease, violence, war and bloodshed. And that means . . . wait for it . . . no weapons. Including knives and guns. I’m not quite sure how you’d take a history test without all those words, but what really bothers me is that there’s yet another arena where all mention of Israeli supermodels is unwelcome.

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51 COMMENTS

  1. Will they ban the word, “government”? Because that’s the one that’s really been offending me of late…

  3. The nanny-statism of NY knows no bounds.

    I wonder if they’ve also blacklisted the word, “blacklist?” 😀

    • Why yes, as a matter of fact the man behind the curtain has decreed that RBLs (Real Time Blacklists) should henceforth be known as Real Time Blocklists, even though they don’t block anything. Go figure!

  4. “but what really bothers me is that there’s yet another arena where all mention of Israeli supermodels is unwelcome.”

    We get that you miss posting them everywhere but it will help get a wider audience in the long run. If it bothers you that much just create another new website called “The Truth About Israeli Supermodels” and you can post them to your heart’s content.

  5. Responding to complaints is one thing, but making wild assumptions about what might offend people is just plain stupid. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not offended by the term “birthday” and creationists aren’t offended by the term “dinosaur”.

    It is nice that for once they included Christians among those they don’t want to offend though, usually it’s just atheists and Muslims.

    • I am only offeded by the term dinosaur when my smart ass students use it as an adjective. Whipper snappers!

    • Beat me to the punch. I am a Jehovah’s Witness gun-owner and I’m in no way offended by birthdays, Christmas, dinosaurs, or anything else that people say/do/think/feel/eat. If I choose not to participate in those events, that’s on me. Yet again, we have a case of someone finding offense on behalf of other people to show how progressive and evolved they are. If I was going to be offended by anything, it would be that attitude.

      • That is political correctness in a nutshell. “Look at us being superior because we are offended FOR you.” They don’t even realize how insulting they are being to the people they are trying to “protect.”

    • Come to think of it, the only term I can think of that offends me is “Alahu Akbar”.

  6. Simple answer to taking the history test, rewrite history. After all we have always been at peace with East-Asia.

  9. Seattle just got an edict from their PC police. Can’t use the words, Brown Bag Lunch, and Citizen.
    Have to substitute Sack lunch and Resident instead.

    RF, baby steps…baby steps. We’ll get through this as a group.

    • In what possible way are either of those terms offensive?!
      I’m not even mad just horribly confused.

      • Brown-bag = non-whites might find offensive. How? No idea.
        Citizen = since not all people are citizens, and some are here illegally, it would be just so mean to make them feel left out by calling them citizens.

      • According to the post, brown bag used to refer to the color of ones skin. If it was lighter than a brown bag, you could get in, eat, drink, whatever…Darker than a brown bag, sorry, back of the bus, different restaurant, etc…
        Since not all residents are citizens, they didn’t want to offend resident aliens who are residents.
        I know. It’s about as stupid as it gets.

      • Actually, it’s because those words offend liberals. Everyone else is just fine with them.

      • If anything is demeaning, it would seem to me to be the term “sack lunch”. Trade your brown bag lunch for my sack lunch? DEAL! A “sack lunch” sounds like it would only contain a couple unpeeled, raw potatoes and a doll’s head. Yuck, DOLL’S HEAD, AGAIN?

        So will the standardized tests now refer to “you-know-what control”?

    • Because ‘citizen’ is insensitive to non-citizen residents of the city, of course.

      I’m not real sure about brown-bag lunch, though.

  10. I guess this makes sense. Then they cant teach anything about the Revolutionary War or anything pertaining to how this country was founded. Then they could say Thanksgiving was when England gave us their blessing as a country. Oh wait, blessing is a bad choice of words, God might offend someone.

  11. “Killing people is easy, being politically correct is a pain in the ass!”

    Achmed the Dead Terrorist!

    • Actually it would be carbonated beverage and fossil fuel powered vehicle.

      I learned how to do this in the Army. You just add as many syllables as possible without getting writers cramp and viola, or bob’s your uncle, or whatever.

      For instance, the chow hall became the dining facility (see two to six syllables, much more pc). A sink became a hand washing station (1 to 5 some 2LT probably got an award). Shell shock became post traumatic stress disorder (2 to 8 and GC beat me here). Tents (transient living quarters), but my all time favorite is the fact that the headquarters has become the COMMAND OPERATIONS CENTER… if you would like to make the acronym, you’ll figure out what it’s full of!

    • Oh, Robert. Robert, Robert, Robert. You snookered us again. You think we’d learn.

      Thanks for the update, Jacob.

      • I was actively involved in that campaign of public ridicule last year, and the story seemed all too familiar… Then I checked the date on the report linked above and saw it was from last year.
        Even NYC DOE isn’t dumb enough to try the same stupid stunt twice in a row.

        • Even NYC DOE isn’t dumb enough to try the same stupid stunt twice in a row.

          NYC elected Bloomberg three times in a row, so I disagree with your premise.

        • I have a good friend who’s a retired NYC teacher who’d disagree with you on that. He endured MUCH serial stupid in his career.

        • I should know better, I lived in NYC for five long and stupid-filled years. I still live in stupid filled NY state, it rubs off onto you and leaves stains.

  15. FWIW, I don’t know if it’s too late to bring up, but I didn’t mind the supermodels (of any nationality); I just wonder why they all look angry…

    • I think it has something to do with the photographer, but I don’t know what it could be!

  16. A couple of years ago I was invited to participate in a Reading Appreciation Day at an elementary school in Chula Vista, CA, at which I was supposed to read aloud to children at several different grade levels. After I finished my reading selection in one fourth grade class, a boy stuck up his hand, and when I asked him what he wanted to say, he replied, “You said a bad word.” My mind immediately began racing. Had I inadvertently let slip any one of several words that would be likely to be considered “bad”? I didn’t think I had, so I asked the boy what word I had used. He said, “You said ‘stupid.'” My response was that “stupid” was a perfectly good word, one with appropriate applications, such as to whatever person had told him it was a bad word. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that I haven’t been invited back to read to the kids again.

    • I’ve heard stupid, retarded, no, can’t and several other perfectly innocuous words described as “bad words” by parents of my generation.

  18. Political Correctness is de-facto thought control. If you can’t express a concept, it cannot be communicated.

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