[lg policy] Pens and pencils down: NYC schools ban dinosaurs, birthdays, and rock-n-roll

[Baron, Dennis E]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

Pens and pencils down: NYC schools ban dinosaurs, birthdays, and rock-n-roll

The New York City Department of Education has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) that lists fifty words banned from the standardized tests used by the city’s schools, not the dirty words that the U.S. Supreme Court<http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=438&invol=726> ruled that George Carlin could not say on the air, but much more innocuous ones like dinosaurs, birthdays, aliens from outer space, rap, and rock ’n’ roll. A school spokesman told the New York Post<http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/full_list_of_topics_banned_on_nyc_N1RVgNnrweXfNhynJUQNwM> that the words are banned because they could “evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.”

read more at  The Web of Language

http://bit.ly/H4QcPk


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-305-0067
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron<http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron>

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