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CLASSIC TEXTS AXED BY N.Y. EXAM CENSORS

NEW YORK – In his memoir “Barrio Boy”, author Ernesto Galarza wroye about “skinny Italian” and “fat Portuguese” boys, but in an examination given to a New York State high school students 30 years later, the Italian kid has become “thin” and the Portuguese boy is now “heavy”.

So what happened? An angry coalition of authors, academics and civil libertarians says the New York State Education Department has committed “intellectual cowardice” by bowing to political correctness and censoring literary works in its statewide examinations.

“This is political correctness run amok,” said Arthur Eisenberg, legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The NUCLU said at a press conference Monday that changing portions of literary works by authors ranging from Anton Chekhov to B.B. King because they may be potentially offensive stripped the works of their cultural, historical and social context and meaning.

NUCLU said 20 out of 26 pieces in the last three annual tests had passages adulterated or deleted.

References to the U.S. debt to the United Nations and to wine were cut from a speech by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Roseanne DeFabio, New York State alumni assistant commissioner for testing, stood by the changes. “We have to follow our own guidelines for fairness, to ensure that... a student isn’t put at a disadvantage because they’ve encountered material that could be offensive to their cultural or ethnic group,” she said.

THE MOSCOW TIMES, June 5, 2002