Commentary By Gloria Ladson-Billings
Many years ago when I was teaching middle grade students, I had a daily activity I called ‘banned word of the day.’ I used words such as “interesting,” “like,” “nice,” and, “cool.” I would write the word on the chalkboard, draw a circle around the word, and draw a line through it. Doing that signaled to my students that they could not use that word that day. I was tired of reading book reports that described each and every book as “interesting” and wanted to push my students to expand their vocabularies. The students made a game out of the activity and listened carefully to each other, waiting for someone to slip up. Several times a day I would hear someone shout out, “Oooh, Mrs. Billings, she said ‘interesting.'” The students and I had a great time with these banned words of the day.
However, one day one of my bright students in the urban school in which I taught said, “Mrs. Billings I don’t think ‘banned word of the day’ is right.” When I asked why, he replied, “You’re teaching us U.S. history and all about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and I think ‘banned word of the day’ is a violation of my right of free speech!” His statement produced a big smile on my face. Here was a student who was actually putting school knowledge to practical use. He was right. As much as I would like for students to use more expressive and expansive vocabularies, they had a right to use any words in school, as long as they were not obscene, racist, sexist, or homophobic.
Now, we learn that the Trump administration is considering banning certain words. According to The Washington Post, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been prohibited by the current administration from using a list of words in any of its official budgetary documents for the coming year. Those words are “diversity,” “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based,” and “entitlement.” This choice of banned words reflects, not an attempt to expand the officials’ vocabularies, but rather an attempt to choreograph the science and funding landscape to prohibit certain types of research. If you cannot say “diversity,” then how can you fund projects focused on diversity?
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