Check Your Language! Political Correctness, Censorship, and Performativity in Education

摘要: RESEARCH AND PHILOSOPHY During the 2003 Annual Meeting of Philosophy Education Society, role and position philosophical inquiry in field education were much discussed. In many North American faculties or schools education, philosophy departments are shrinking disappearing, philosophers asked to justify conceptual work a time when “data-driven policy” requires applicable empirical research. Yet it is precisely because enormous trust placed “scientific” research that inquiry, for instance into bases ethical implications research, important today. The view serves function analysis clarification concepts underpinning not new, course, past decades has been defended especially by analytic philosophers. this essay, I take an but poststructuralist perspective argue valuable critical reading response educational theorists’ researchers’ claims said be supported particular, examine Canadian Society Academic Freedom Scholarship (SAFS) historian Diane Ravitch, restricting language can used educators materials constitutes unacceptable censorship. 1 Both SAFS Ravitch freedom use neither grounds central concept: language. A closer look reveals both SAFS’s Ravitch’s based on representational conception This as neutral mirror messenger does do justice complex effects restrictions thereof. propose discursive offers stronger framework analyzing problems censorship speech writing education. particular concept performativity, elaborated J.L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, nuanced way understanding force linguistic acts, surrounding If speaking considered is, if acknowledged words just mean something, also evidence solicited presented unequivocally support their conclusions attempts prohibit change certain misplaced.