King’s College English professors respond to ‘New York City word ban’

I published an article for Examiner.com titled “King’s College English professors respond to ‘New York City word ban.'”

The New York City Department of Education had recently considered excluding a list of words — including ‘dinosaur’ and ‘evolution’ — from standardized tests. On April 2, though, the city’s chief academic officer announced that New York City schools would “eliminate the list of words to avoid on tests” and “will continue to advise companies to be sensitive to student backgrounds and unnecessary distractions that could invalidate test scores and give an inaccurate assessment of how students are doing.” Dr. Noreen O’Connor and Dr. McClinton-Temple — professors in the English Department at King’s College — comment for this article.

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McClinton-Temple likewise says she wouldn’t support an initiative to remove words from standardized tests. She elaborates,

Keeping people (even children) from being exposed to material that might upset or offend them is the opposite of teaching them how to defend their ideas in a diverse society. They need to see other viewpoints and be exposed to ideas with which they might disagree in order to truly understand the world in which they live.

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