Censorship From the Right...Censorship From the Left Author: Diane Ravitch

Historian of education Diane Ravitch offers a historical and political analysis of textbook censorship and self-censorship as initiated from both right- and left-wing groups. In an excerpt from her book, The Language Police, Ravitch maintains that “censors on the right aim to restore an idealized vision of the past, an Arcadia of happy family life.” Censors on the left, according to Ravitch, believe in an idealized vision of the future, in which there is no dominant group, father, race, or gender. In this issue of Policy Perspectives, Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991–93, documents numerous examples of textbook censorship and analyzes the effect on publishers and the books that survive in American public schools.