Posted on: Thursday, July 8, 2004

Many topics taboo on school exams

By Fredereka Schouten
Gannett News Service

In the world of standardized tests, Christmas never comes. No one celebrates Halloween or birthdays. Kids rarely encounter a french fry. And no one dies. Ever.

The tests taken by millions of schoolchildren are scrubbed clean of topics that might reflect ethnic, cultural or regional biases. Florida 10-year-olds shouldn't be expected to compose essays about blizzards, the thinking goes, just as eighth-graders in Manhattan might know little about corn production.

In Hawai'i, test screeners sift out cultural references from the Mainland that might be unfamiliar to students.

"That type of stuff tends to be thrown out," said Selvin Chin-Chance, who oversees testing for the state Department of Education.

Subjects viewed as inappropriate or potentially upsetting to children like death, violence, sex or drugs are out of the question.

"I would never have a story about kids who thought they were ugly or being bullied at school," said Kathleen Oberley, who has been writing questions for the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills for about 30 years.

Other test taboos might surprise you: When pets appear on exams, they can't bear names like Madison, Cheyenne or Pete. That's to make sure a fourth-grader doesn't confront a pet gerbil with his name on an exam.

There are other reasons to avoid pets. Mentions of dogs, for example, might trouble Muslim students because the animals are considered unclean in Islamic culture.

Birthdays are forbidden because they are not observed by some religions. Also forbidden: Halloween costumes, pumpkins, Harry Potter, anything that smacks of the occult.

State education officials and testing companies say these policies are sound.

"Testing is a stressful enough experience for kids. We want to make sure there is nothing that would cause the child to stumble,'" said John Tanner, vice president of testing services for Harcourt and Delaware's former testing director.

But education historian Diane Ravitch argues that what anti-bias policies have done is make the tests boring.

"The United States is obviously a country of many, many cultures," said Ravitch, a New York University professor and author of "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn."

"If we accommodate everyone's taboos, then we don't have the kind of zone where we can say, 'This is reality, and it's OK to learn about it."

Advertiser staff writer Derrick DePledge contributed to this report.