coldhearted scientist وداد

People say that the penchant for “political correctness” is getting worse, but I have just discovered the most blatant case of heteronormativity I have seen in quite some time, and in a school textbook, no less. It is combined with poor pedagogy as well.

Normally I do not teach foreign language courses, but this semester I am teaching one. There is a common textbook, and all instructors have agreed to use tests from the textbook test bank, so that students in all sections are tested with exercises resembling those they do for homework, and so that they are all tested in the same way.

Now, however, I have actually experienced such a test. Two parts of it were particularly irritating. First, some exercises with matching and word association. I hate these anyway, but on this particular test they were especially vile because choices of answers were driven almost more by ideology than by knowledge of vocabulary. As in, if you did not associate “love” and “marriage” you were wrong, even if you knew both words (and the point was to know the words, not to make a “natural” connection between them in the way the test required).

Then there was an exercise in which you had to read a set of personal ads and then decide who to match with whom. Given the number of ads there were, and the number of pairings which could not be made due to incompatibilities which would be obvious by any standard, the only way to account for everyone was to pair people was in the very most conservative manner. Sorting took longer than reading, and you had to be ultra-traditional and heteronormative.

The students, all quite traditional people from what I have been able to gather so far, objected to the test on the grounds that it was biased, unscientific, and antipedagogical. They were right. I, too, object. I hereby repeat one of my principal slogans: down with textbooks and textbook companies! All power to independent presses, and to Project Gutenberg!

Axé.