Michiko Kakutani writes Young Minds Force-Fed With Indigestible Texts, about THE LANGUAGE POLICE: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn By Diane Ravitch. What's excluded?

�Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little (because mice, along with rats, roaches, snakes and lice, are considered to be upsetting to children).


�Stories or pictures showing a mother cooking dinner for her children, or a black family living in a city neighborhood (because such images are thought to purvey gender or racial stereotypes).


�Dinosaurs (because they suggest the controversial subject of evolution).


�Tales set in jungles, forests, mountains or by the sea (because such settings are believed to display "a regional bias").


�Narratives involving angry, loud-mouthed characters, quarreling parents or disobedient children (because such emotions are not "uplifting").

Political correctness isn't just a foible of the left:

While censors on the right aim "to restore an idealized vision of the past, an Arcadia of happy family life" in which Father knows best, Mother takes care of the house and kids, and everyone goes to church on Sundays, censors on the left believe in "an idealized vision of the future, a utopia in which egalitarianism prevails in all social relations," a world in which "all nations and all cultures are of equal accomplishment and value."

Via Radley Balko, The Center For Consumer Freedom adds:

California's textbook review process routinely eliminates reference to foods considered unwholesome -- French fries, sodas, cakes, and even ketchup and butter. Some of the outrageous changes made to textbooks and tests include:

A piece on George Washington Carver, the inventor of peanut butter, was nixed because it might offend children who are allergic to peanuts.

A picture of a birthday party was purged because it included an "unhealthy" birthday cake.

The story "A Perfect Day for Ice Cream" was renamed "A Perfect Day." Also cleansed from the tale were the chili burgers and pizza.

Then there are the people that won't let us use "dirty" words.