Sensitivities are sensitive things, especially if you take them into account: they can just explode in your face.
Educational publishers can now have a say in this, since NRC revealed that makers and illustrators of teaching materials for primary schools are being given “guidelines” for religious sensitivities, under pressure from a Reformation lobby. Includes: God, parental authority, dragons, makeup, curses, Harry Potter.
Huge commotion, even in the House of Representatives. Motto: scandal and censorship. Unsurprisingly, everything that touches Article 23 is a social explosive, from Islamic education to reformed homophobia.
But critics and christian media were also quick to point out a double standard. Why is this an abomination, while sensitivity readers that scan for racist sensitivities are actually being promoted? NRCcolumnist Karel Smouter wondered whether some sensitivities are more sensitive than others.
Is the fuss justified? Yes, this was a revealing and interesting story (Dinos and short skirts are banned from school books), but with a hole in the middle. The article unequivocally establishes two things: educational publishers use guidelines not to offend religious buyers, and a number of makers feel limited in their freedom as a result and object. Educationalists advocate that you “show the world as it is.”
But the seriousness and extent of the substantive and didactic damage remained unclear. The article refers to ‘information’ that school children ‘systematically’ are ‘withheld’. Evolution, too, is said to be “often” a “forbidden subject.”
Do school children learn nothing about that? The concrete examples of ‘surgeries’ were mainly cosmetic: an illustrator had to hang a sock on the clothesline instead of a bikini top, turn a witch into a scary woman and turn a piggy bank into an elephant. Reprehensible perhaps, but ‘Taliban’ (as it immediately sounded on Twitter) it is far from being. Publishers that want to keep their customers happy (70 percent of the students go to a special school) are also something else than government censorship such as in China or Hungary.
Withholding or ignoring science would also be difficult, because schools – including Reformed ones – are bound by attainment targets. Publishers therefore promptly sent the author (the article mentions the) teaching material about Darwin and the theory of evolution – with a portrait of the bearded scientist and a picture of, yes, two cozy dinosaurs.
Of course damage is difficult to estimate, the article rightly notes that nowhere does it say ‘what did not make the books’. On request, the author sent me two more interventions: a text that was not allowed to say that “people are animals too” and one in which a “church tower” was killed – at least the church, not the tower.
Only: both examples are from textbooks from more than ten years ago. Reason why they weren’t included in the play either. Incidentally, that text still read: “And people? Do they belong to the animals? You can think differently about that.” Because “people live very differently from cows or monkeys”. Well, also a truth like a cow.
This is not to dismiss the article as uninteresting. On the contrary, I now know more than I knew before I read it, always a good criterion. But I do think that the paper pushed the ‘censorship’ way too much, giving the impression that schoolchildren are being kept ignorant. Why not a less accusatory focus, like Textbook makers angry over ‘censorship’.
Meanwhile, the story also says something about modern sensibilities – those of a majority secular society. The guidelines also instruct makers and illustrators, for example, to be ‘culturally diverse’ and not to show men and women in fixed, stereotypical role patterns – and that, of course, did not cause any excitement.
Another study that provided striking facts, but could have provided more overview: the digging of Joep Dohmen and Paul van der Steen in the Limburg labyrinth of politics and business. This has already resulted in a series of firsts. But this week, they tumbled over each other confusingly, after the publication of a report (which found no conflict of interest but did speak of an administrative culture of “looking away”).
That report appeared too late for the newspaper on Friday evening – but the online report that Dohmen and Van der Steen made about it did not appear on paper on Monday either. The authors were already working on a report on attempts to water down the report (Tuesday), and a critical analysis of the conclusions (Wednesday).
It makes sense that the reporters who are best versed in the subject will view and analyze the report. Moreover, this remains a moving target: first a draft of the report surfaced (criticizing NRC), after which the final report appeared (without that criticism), immediately followed a controversy about internal pressure to smooth out the signaled ‘looking away’.
But for the reader who does not have all the previous pieces ready, it is then difficult to untangle the tangle. That online post would have helped, or an actual overview of the report’s key players and content.
Not to take Limburg sensitivities into account, but those of readers who want a clear picture of damage to the eyes and other damage. Whether it concerns dinosaurs, Darwin or Limburg deputies.
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A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 16 October 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of October 16, 2021