by JUAN RODRIGUEZ

While the U.S. hypes its military missions as saving the planet for freedom and democracy, it educates its young with a censorious, Taliban-like contempt for the unfettered search for truth. Censors from the right believe in an idealized vision of the past, censors from the left push an idealized vision of the future, and for both, "reading is a means of role modeling and behavior modification," concludes Diane Ravitch - a feisty independent voice in the education departments of the first George Bush and Bill Clinton - in The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. "If children read and hear only language that has been cleansed of any mean or hurtful words, they will never have a mean or hurtful thought. With enough censorship, the language police might create a perfect world."

What began with "admirable intentions" - reinterpreting history for greater inclusion of women, minorities and multiculturalism - "has evolved into a surprisingly broad and increasingly bizarre policy" based on taboos (or "sensitivities") unearthed by vocal zealots on the right and left. In Ravitch's chilling enunciation, political, religious and cultural correctness has cowed textbook publishers into oozing a touchy-feely approach to the hard lessons of history and, indeed, life itself.

A story about a young blind man who hiked to the top of Mount McKinley was excised because of "regional bias" (favouring people who live near mountains) and the suggestion that people who are blind are at a disadvantage or "worse off" than the sighted. Verboten are mentions of Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little (because mice, rats, roaches, snakes etc. supposedly upset kiddies), or dinosaurs (because of the subject of evolution, still a lightning rod in the one nation under God), and depictions of mom cooking for the family (gender stereotype).

Ravitch documents language deemed offensive by pressure groups in a Glossary of Banned Words, Usages, Stereotypes and Topics that, taking up 30 small-print pages, is an Orwellian nightmare out of his classic 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" (a must-read on the Web): "Only a George Orwell could fully appreciate how honorable words like fairness and diversity have been deployed to impose censorship and uniformity on everyday language."

What's left after the language police have done their work? "Stories that have no regional distinctiveness. Stories in which all conflicts are insignificant. Stories in which men are fearful, and women are brave. Stories in which older people are never ill. Stories in which children are obedient, never disrespectful, never get into dangerous situations, never confront problems that cannot be easily solved… The result of all this relentless purging is dishonesty, a purposeful shielding of children from anything challenging, controversial, or just plain interesting." No other subject do high school seniors fare so poorly in, she reports, than U.S. history. This is the country that runs the world.

A headline in a Grade 12 history text on AIDS, "Death Stalks A Continent," was axed: "Too full in inappropriate issues; too negative, we don't want to portray Africa as AIDS-ridden." So we rely on 50-cent euphemisms, like "inappropriate," to camouflage fear of debate, discovery, truth. Sanitizing history is an act of social hygiene, as if you can wave away unpleasantness (conflict, for starters) with a magic wand. Rewriting history is good for your self-esteem (in the wake of 9/11, patriotic bunk devoured by media and public alike). Self-censorship is rampant. "No one speaks of ‘censoring' or ‘banning' words or topics; they ‘avoid' them. The effect is the same."

The flip-side of this sanitized world is over-the-top, largely adolescent pop culture - say, rap's dumb braggadocio, the self-humiliation of "reality TV" or fantastical digital effects and games being far more "real" in comparison - which the U.S. exports as, of course, freedom.

The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch, Knopf, hc, 255pp, $36