This is a weird example of censorship. The Graduate School of Social work at Smith College will no longer permit the use of the word “field” to describe an area of study. As you may know (or not), I wrote a book about censorship of language and images called The Language Police. If I have a chance to update it, this one goes in.
What, you may wonder, is objectionable about “field?” Reader, I don’t know. Does it suggest someone who works in a field? Why would that be objectionable? Again, I don’t know.
Masslive reports:
The Smith College graduate School for Social Work announced last week it will no longer use the word “field” due to “negative associations.”
“We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may hold negative associations,” administrators said in a message to the school community last week….
Author Tracy Kidder, who recently spoke to MassLive about his new book “Rough Sleepers,”also commented on the use of words, particularly on the controversy over the word “field.”
“I have a young friend who is brilliant from Burundi, who grew up in a civil war. And so when I told him this, I said, ‘What do you make of this?’ He said, ‘Anyone who was troubled by a word like field must live in paradise….’”
In a Facebook comment, Robert Cunningham implied that the changing of the word field would be a problem for many Massachusetts communities.
“Let’s see…. Ashfield, Brimfield, Chesterfield, East Brookfield, Greenfield, Hatfield, Lynnfield, Mansfield, Marshfield, Medfield, Middlefield, North Brookfield, Northfield, Pittsfield, Plainfield, Sheffield, Springfield, Topsfield, Wakefield, West Brookfield, West Springfield, Westfield.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Neurologists, opthamologists, etc. can no longer talk about the left or right visual field. Engineers can’t talk about electromatic fields. And I guess no one will be seeing “Field of Dreams”. I hope they don’t have any sports fields or a field house.
I won’t be fielding any questions.
lol
Aw c’mon, can not cows still be out standing in their fields? Can shortstops no longer field their positions? Are we going to have to do without electric motors because electric fields no longer are allowed?
This is ridiculous. We have so many problems in this world, but the use of “field” isn’t one of them. I guess this discussion serves as a distraction from mass shootings.
Neither is drag queens!
https://www.etymonline.com/word/field
Being from northern Montana, when I hear “field,” I take a deep breath and visualize the amber waves of grain beneath the purple mountains majesty.
Good memories.
I think of left field, center field, and right field.
Perhaps it’s because fields have been known to kill as in “killing fields.”
What’ll happen to those fields of golden barley?
Although I prefer Eva Cassidy’s version:
Field Biology?
Tennyson. Anyone?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z77PR0JA0gU
That Tennyson poem must be fixed! “Woods”?
No Tennyson at all. Know about Arthur Hallam?
These constant changes in acceptable language are used to signal who is a member of an elite in-group since only those members will know the coded language. The result is the opposite of what the language police say they want, which is more inclusive language. Every time I hear the flight attendants on the plane remind ladies and gentlemen to put their smaller bags under the seat, I’m reminded of the man who had his job offer as a school superintendent rescinded because he thanked the ladies who interviewed him. They deemed it a micro aggression. The man from Burundi is right.
Wow, I read comments just like yours in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Those fem Nazis are so troublesome. Why did they have to go and “force” good gentlemen and ladies to change from using the very acceptable and proper terms “Miss” and “Mrs.”? It’s good for me, so therefore it is good for everyone and anyone who says it is NOT good has no business being heard as long as we in power are good with Mrs. and Miss. And I’m not biased at all against women, but my wife says she is fine with Mrs. so those feminist troublemakers should shut up.
Yep, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I believe it was “feminazi,” not “fem Nazi” (which suggests an effeminate Nazi).
Rush Limbaugh used the term feminazi.
I confess I didn’t bother to look up the term to double check, so I defer to you that it was “feminazi”. Thank you for the correction.
Feminazis were so troublesome, clearly brainwashed by Gloria Steinem the way today’s troublemakers are brainwashed by Kendi.
(Thanks for reading my comment, FLERP! No sarcasm intended.)
I had a delivery job in the mid-late 80s and I didn’t have a tape deck so I often listened to AM talk radio. So I’m fairly familiar with Rush-isms from that era.
Sorry for the tone in my other comments on this page. I wish we could all be friends!
FLERP!,
Who knows, maybe we are friends (or friendly acquaintances) IRL!
Please clarify that it is not Smith college as a whole, but only the graduate school of social work where this diction change is happening. Nor is the word being “banned,” but replaced, for reasons that some, according to the link you provide, find questionable. Full disclosure: I’m a Smith alumna, and during my time there was not even aware that there was a graduate school of social work.
Thank you. Changing a word isn’t “banning” it.
When Smith College stopped referring to its students as “girls” or “ladies” or Miss/Mrs. Jones, they didn’t “ban” those words. They just changed to using words that were not as loaded to ones that showed more respect.
I am positive that some alums and their husbands, and lots of conservative men professed to be outraged.
Manufactured outrage about the kind of things that have always happened but have been used by the far right to propagandized the rest of us and distract us from the bigger issue.
And who gets blamed? Not the far right but the people who have done NOTHING that justifies such outrage. Look how even here so many people quick to SCAPEGOAT those who want change for “causing” a manufactured scandal.
It keeps anyone who wants change cowering in the corner afraid of offending the far right because their manufactured outrage machine is so good.
I was old enough to be aware of what was happening when the use of the term Ms. started and I recall how often the media and self-described progressives (called “liberals” back then) cowered under the attacks by Rush Limbaugh and company (“fem Nazis”) and how it was the “fem Nazis” who were blamed instead of the right wing.
Too many people just wanted those “ladies” to SHUT UP so that the right wing would stop using them to appeal to their base. When they should have been DEFENDING them.
It happened again with “card carrying liberal”. I heard those on the left joining in the criticism instead of DEFENDING it and turning those attacks right back on the right wing.
FYI, if it wasn’t Smith College doing this, it would be something else. Something that the teachers’ union does that is demonized. The problem with our side is we far too often believe that the people who are demonized brought this on themselves with an unforced error, instead of recognizing that it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to be immune, and we need to shout it down whenever it happens instead of validating it as an unforced error.
During the Virginia Governors’ race, I even saw people here who were fooled by the propaganda and BLAMED the Democratic candidate for a phrase taken out of context (in a sentence that got HUGE CHEERS when it was spoken). They kept validating the right wing attacks on the Dem by saying “he should have known better” as if the far right could not always find a phrase anyone says and use their vast propaganda arm to turn something that isn’t a scandal into one. Which can only happen when those on the left help them instead of discrediting the criticism.
Words are powerful. I don’t like people telling me which words I should use and which words are no longer okay. I make those decisions for myself.
Isn’t that exactly the argument that conservatives made about using the word “Ms” and “women” instead of “Miss” and “girls”?
Colleges changed to using “women” and “Ms” to refer to their female students — what was so wrong about that? Over the last many decades I have changed some of the words I used because people told me that another phrase was offensive.
In the case of Smith College, no one “told” the students what they had to use. They told the students that they were changing how they referred to the department and various other terms that really were not a big deal at all – I read the letter. There may have been societal pressure to use the new terms, just like I recall feeling pressured not to keep referring to middle aged women as “girls”.
I guess I could have kept calling grown women “girls” and made it clear that I was offended by anyone expecting me to use any other phrase. But why? It was common courtesy for me to change, not “censorship”.
I see college classmates about four times a year for lunch. We refer to each other as “girls.” If anyone else did it, we would be offended.
I refer to the largest bedroom in my apartment as the master bedroom. No problem.
Diane,
But maybe in a couple decades, people will consider the term “master bedroom” a problem. Just like so many terms that were acceptable to use in the past are not.
I never had a problem with lots of words but I dropped them from my vocabulary anyway years ago. And now when I look back I think “yeah, that was a problem.”
Here is a huge change I noticed recently: people stopped using “actress” and just use “actor” for all performances regardless of gender. Not everyone – because I am certain that many people still think it is silly.
But I suspect in a decade or two, using the word “actress” will seem like “policewoman”. They are generally all called police officers now. And I am positive that there are some female police officers who liked being called “police women” or even “lady cops” and others who are glad of the change.
What’s the difference between “banning” a word and “replacing” a word?
To be clear, my question is addressed to Lulu Cafe.
Before I answer, what does each mean to you?
In this context, I don’t see a real difference. Hence my question.
Actually I think I see your point.
Thanks, Lulu. Anyone who opens the link will see it’s the school of social work. There’s not a lot of difference between banning a word and replacing it. I’ll see if I can clarify your point in the text.
Ouch…
How can there be salvation if
the made up rules, handed down,
by the made up rulers, in the
field of made up words, changes?
Are the sacred cows no longer
in the field?
This is dead-on: “Anyone who was troubled by a word like field must live in paradise.”
“Anyone who was troubled by a word like Miss must live in paradise”
“I am an idiot.”
My suspision is that it could relate to images related to slavery (having someone work in the fields…) that could be negative connotations. That said, this is where I would agree with the comment that “Anyone who was troubled by a word like field must live in paradise”….sometimes there is too much focus on these small things that distract from larger issues
I am not defending them changing the expression of “FIELD work”, it seems odd that there isn’t some understanding here of where that came from.
Anthropologists going in the “FIELD” meant going into remote areas where non-white, non-European people lived (and worked in the “fields”) to closely examine those people in a way that they did not do with white European cultures. I assumed that was where the expression started.
The study of white European cultures was called “history”. The study of people living in remote parts of the globe who weren’t white was called “field work”. Going out in the “field” didn’t mean going to some neighborhood of Paris or even somewhere in rural Germany to study the culture of the so-called “natives”.
I understand that the origin of those words are forgotten, just like people say “let’s go dutch” or “dutch treat” and (when I was child) use expressions like “Indian giver” or “jew him down”.
I assume “field” work comes from the same assumptions, and the origin is that it referred to doing research in certain areas and not others. I understand that has changed.
Of course you’re defending it. You’re saying that people who think that objecting to the word “field” is silly are the same as people in the 70s who thought the term “Ms.” was silly.
If I’m wrong and you aren’t defending it, then why aren’t you defending it?
I am waiting for someone to explain to me the great harm that will be caused if the Smith College Social Work program uses a word other than field.
You seem to feel it would be very wrong. Why? Slippery slope? What happened when the college stopped using “Miss”?
“Ms.” has been standard for my entire life, as far as I’m aware. You may be a bit older than I am.
I think the thing where colleges come up with lists of “bad” everyday words that must be replaced those everyday words may be causing micro-trauma is silly, and I don’t like word games. So I mock silly projects like this, and I think that’s what they deserve. They’re still free to go forward with their silly projects, though.
Colleges change the name of their programs and departments all the time. Do they even call it “Poly Sci” anymore? (I just checked and it seems like Harvard calls it “Government” or “political studies”)
No one cares until Rush Limbaugh types try to manufacture outrage.
Smith could have changed it without giving a reason, as I am sure happens all the time. But if you read the letter, the people who should be ridiculed are the ones who are so upset about this.
I suppose that people who were genuinely “outraged” or “upset” about this would be amusing and worthy of mockery. But I maintain that getting rid of the term “field” because it has distant associations with slavery is ridiculous and should be mocked. I’m with the guy from Burundi.
For the record, I am not outraged by the decision to drop the word “field” as racist. I find it very funny.
My reaction as well.
Imagine a world where people thought what was funny was the right wingers who cared whether Smith College used the word “field” or “clinical”.
Imagine if the folks being derided as “silly” were the right wingers who criticized a university that did what institutions have done for decades, changed terminology.
Our country would be better off if they were the folks marginalized as the “silly” ones.
“Field work” means away from the office or lab at the place where the topic being analyzed is located– where you go for IRL observation, or to get more samples for lab examination, etc. Not necessarily people, depends on the discipline. Could be a construction site, a dig, a rain forest, a cave, a clinical setting, etc.
I found an ecology blog where contributors were trying to figure out when the expression started being used. The earliest application they could find was in cartography (very early 1800’s); that blogger hypothesized it simply meant the “outdoor” work required to develop maps. Within a couple of decades it had spread to geologists, then to naturalists.
Therefore the reference to anthropology/ Margret Mead etc is too specific, it’s an earlier and broader term. However, in the academic context, it absolutely does mean studying “specimens”– so it makes some sense to me that a sociology dept might want to find words that don’t suggest the objects of their study [and future MSW clients] are leaves or cells or insects or lab rats.
And of course “field work” as in tilling/ planting/ harvesting a field is a literal description, not an expression. So I doubt anyone was stretching to a connotation with slavery.
Since the letter specifically said it had racist connotations, the connection to slavery seems obvious. Sociologist study all sorts of populations, not just marginalized groups. Margaret Mead “studied” the community in which I spent half of my childhood. Nothing marginal about it. I remember examining a sociological study of Levittown when I was in college.
Online Webster’s definition:
1
a temporary fortification thrown up by an army in the field
2
work done in the field (as by students) to gain practical experience and knowledge through firsthand observation
3
the gathering of anthropological or sociological data through the interviewing and observation of subjects in the field
Notice anything missing?
Oops— nycpsp, finally scrolled down far enough to read the letter you posted– it seems Smith did indeed mean connotations of slave work (and maybe migrant labor)! I like my explanation better. Theirs makes me snicker.
Oy vey! This kind of thing bothers me because it becomes ammunition for the right to say, “See, the left does it, too!” To me, the difference is that the left’s ban is often silly or stupid, while the right’s is malicious.
“‘We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may hold negative associations,’ administrators said ….’”
See it for what it is… “equity and social justice” corrupted and made a competitive ideology, in the style of Ibram X. Kendi’s folly, in particular. Now, it is running wild, finding anything and everything to use to whack and castigate those found not conforming to the ideology. That this would happen should not be a surprise. Neither should push back from those who refuse to be made losers for not confirming to the ideology. Just some basic “understanding of the psychology of people” (Deming’s SoPK).
Very astute comment. I remember hearing similar criticism about “fem Nazis’ folly” when the first use of the word “Ms.” was happening and the attacks against the first “radical leftist” universities daring to stop referring to their lady students as girls and “Misses”. How dare those colleges force their students to “conform to the fem Nazi ideology.”
How’d that work out again, when those ladies brainwashed by the Ms. Magazine ideology spoke out and there was a lot of push back?
LOL that your invoking Ibram X. Kendi sounds EXACTLY like Rush Limbaugh invoking Gloria Steinem!
I went to college at UMass Amherst, part of the five-college system of which Smith is also a member. My last two years I lived within a couple of blocks of Smith and dated Smith women. (This was not by accident.) And this is quintessentially Smith.
lol
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/01/08/stanford-university-backs-away-from-its-harmful-language-list/?sh=68b0a12362df
Count me as someone who thinks the term “master bedroom” should have been eliminated long ago and is glad some places stopped referring to it.
But the use of the term didn’t bother me until I started to read about places that were changing that term. I THANK them instead of make fun of them for being snowflakes.
But I do understand that those who are fighting the extreme dangers of “wokeness” are working to replace the boards and administration of universities by much smarter people who recognize and will weed out the wokeness that has been so harmful to universities. Then the ladies will properly be referred to as the “Misses” that they are, unless they are married, in which case they will correctly be referred to as Mrs. Husband’s last name.
We live in such very dangerous times,and only when wokeness is destroyed and ladies and non-whites are in their place, can our country be great again.
I find this entire discussion so revealing.
It must have been 10 years ago when I recall a conversation with someone whose life was spent working for gay and lesbian equality. There was a lot of disparagement of having to use the term “they” to refer to an individual person who identified as non-binary.
We were older folks reacting to having to change. It’s normal. But that’s tough. We DO have to change.
I truly do not understand why anyone CARES whether Smith College wants to stop using the term “field”. LET THEM! Explore the reason instead of having the same knee-jerk reactionary belief that always occurs with change. Ms. is common now. Less common is identifying your pronoun, but it is certainly acceptable, even if there are folks who are extremely angry about it and demand it stop.
Go to most high schools today and you will see a sea change in how kids see the world and if we listen instead of react, it is possible to understand that what they are suggesting is not worthy of this manufactured outrage.
You don’t have to agree with every change to RESPECT it. Lots of people didn’t agree with the use of Ms. or the use of “they” but the decent ones respected it instead of trying to manufacture outrage about it.
No outrage, just amusement. We need a good laugh once in awhile.
same here
So I guess I cannot describe my grandson’s high school position as left-fielder and my granddaughter cannot play soccer in the soccer field? This is complete LUNACY!! In my opinion, anyone who subscribes to this lunacy is in need of a psychiatrist!
This might be of interest to you. As a former teacher, I had to be very careful so I just referred to my students as “students and learners.” My lessons would say, “The Learner will…” When the American Dialect Society deemed “they” as singular it made writing so much easier. https://americandialect.org/2019-word-of-the-year-is-my-pronouns-word-of-the-decade-is-singular-they
NYCPSP,
You seem to be exercised that I posted about the decision by the Smith College Graduate School of Social Work to stop using (banning) the word “field.” As I said in the post, I wrote a book about word-banning, image-banning, phrase-banning. Most such bans are ridiculous. Language evolves. But there are also organizations and pressure groups that try to impose bans. Why don’t you read my book? Not all bans are defensible.
Same with censorship.
Are you saying some bans are defensible and some censorship is defensible?
Smith College Graduate School of Social Work did not ban or censor the word “field”. They simply stopped using it in a specific context and I assume you read their letter that explained their thinking, which in no way banned any student from using the word “field” in their own speech.
That’s what mystifies me. If someone choose to use Ms to describe themselves, they didn’t ban all the people who want to use Mrs. from describing themselves from doing so. But it would be pretty discourteous and disrespectful if you asked them to call you Ms. Ravitch and they insisted on calling you “Miss Ravitch” and then demonized you for “trying to censor” their words.
(PS – I know you are Dr. Ravitch, but just using that as an example).
I took a look at an excerpt in The Atlantic from 2003. Do people still say tomboy and heiress?
I wish someone had written the “stereotyped images to avoid” when I was a kid, since those describe most of the images of men and women in the textbooks I used in school.
There is nothing like reading a favorite children’s book from your own childhood to a child or grandchild and realizing just how pervasive those stereotypes were. I found those kinds of stereotypes pervasive even in the 1990s. Even watching movies from 2000 with my kid can be shocking to see the implicit bias and stereotypes that I never noticed.
Maybe the fact the schools tried to do better 20 years ago is why the current generation of young people are so woke. (Many would say that’s a bad thing, but not me).
Yes, some bans are defensible, such as racial and religious slurs. I think the N word was rightly banned. No, I would not want to be called “Miss,” but when it happens in foreign countries, I am not offended. In my view, based on the letter, you posted, the Smith College Graduate School banned the use of “field,” as in fieldwork, or in reference to their “field” of study. I don’t find it outraged. It doesn’t make me angry. I think it’s silly. As I said earlier, DeSantis is trying to impose thought control by banning textbooks that suffers systemic racism, that mention the George Floyd protests or Black Lives Matter. Textbook publishers are deleting these topics at his insistence.
I conclude that everything must be viewed in context. There is censorship from the left and from the right.
Some people still say heiress, tomboy, actress, senior citizen. I don’t care.
But why do you care if someone decides to STOP using the term heiress and use heir instead? Are they censoring the word “heiress”? Are they “banning” it?
Why does anyone care that Smith College Social Work decided to change and use the word clinical instead of field? I don’t find that any sillier than if the theater department said that they would be referring to people of all genders as “actors”. The article is manufactured outrage, IMO.
No one is outraged but you. Other writers think it’s funny., an excess of political correctness, more fuel for MAGA fire.
Isn’t the social work program talking about banning the word “field” in association with “field of study.” I see no indication of banning the word altogether. In any case, I am surprised these arbiters of language are not being laughed off campus. Somehow, I don’t think this particular act is going to lead to a surge in students looking for a graduate degree in sociology at Smith, or even an undergraduate degree since those professors undoubtedly teach both levels. So, they start using “area of concentration” or some such iteration. Anyone want to identify a potential problem with this term? I need a good belly laugh.
I posted a comment here where I copied and pasted the letter, which was totally unremarkable and didn’t bother me at all. It isn’t posting so maybe the actual text of the letter has been banned!
I hope that the actual letter will eventually post here so people can explain what all the fuss is.
The letter posted. I still find the whole thing amusing. My uncles worked “in the field.” They owned a dairy farm. We used to ride the hay wagon during harvest. Tough days of work tossing bales of hay. It’s slavery that was distasteful, not the labor in the fields.
Your uncles worked in the “field”, but did he or anyone else refer to himself as a “fieldworker”?
If you read the letter, you could see that “field” referred SPECIFICALLY to field work, and no one was banning the use of the word “field” in other contexts.
Don’t think I have ever heard of someone who works on a farm being called a field worker. A field hand, yes. My uncles also milked cows but they never called themselves cow milkers, just dairy farmers. Every Christmas when I leave a card and check for the “garbage men,” I struggle to come up with a politically correct term. Sanitary engineers sounds silly and the term I end up using has slipped my mind again. It will come to me next Christmas…
“Isn’t the social work program talking about banning the word “field” in association with “field of study.”
NOPE
Many people here seem to believe it does.
Which is exactly how the far right gets us to amplify and legitimize their false right wing propaganda and attack the people the right wing wants us to attack instead of calling out their lies.
Well, actually yes they are choosing to replace the word field as in field of study. The “field ” study is not random. It pertains to your concentration, i.e. your field of study.
It took me going to a lot of links to actually find what Smith College DID instead of what the right wing outrage machine said that they did.
I challenge people here to explain why I am supposed to be MORE outraged about this letter than I am about the use of the word “Ms”:
“Dear Smith SSW Community,
We are writing to let you know that, going forward, the Office of Field Education will be renamed the Office of Practicum Learning, in keeping with our values and our commitment to anti-racist work.
The college’s Toward Racial Justice Plan asks us to consider that Smith was not originally designed for the diverse students, staff and faculty that we have now, and calls us to reflect on our past and present to build a more just and inclusive future. SSW’s Core Principles encourage us to center the lived and historical experiences of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as “going into the field” or “field work” may hold negative associations.
While this change may seem small, it is an action among many others, to keep us accountable to our values, to our students and to our Smith SSW community.
The SSW Practicum Learning team remains committed to developing practicum experiences that embody anti-racist practices. We hope this change will communicate our continued commitment to engage in critical reflection and repair.
We recognize that adopting a new name for our office can be challenging, and we expect this will take some time, but we hope that you’ll join us in this effort to be intentional and inclusive and to stay open and actively engage with change. To assist in the transition, we’ve created a language key you can reference for information.
If there are questions or comments, please contact us at SSW Office of Practicum Learning.
Your Smith SSW Practicum Learning team,”
I know I am supposed to believe this letter is an outrageous form of censorship.
Looking forward to hearing why.
If this is simply about changing the name of the school—as it appears to be—then I agree this is overblown and mis-framed. I still think it’s silly, but it doesn’t appear to be akin to the publication of a list of verboten terms with approved replacements. Good work pulling the original letter.
Thank you and thank you for taking the time to read the actual letter and not just the media mischaracterization of the letter.
That media mischaracterization didn’t come out of nowhere. There wasn’t some newsworthy story that came from Smith College Social Work students very upset that they were now forced to do “Practicum Learning” instead of field work.
It clearly came from some right wing propaganda arm’s press release. Why does it matter what author Tracy Kidder’s “young friend who is brilliant from Burundi” who knew only what Kidder told him thinks about this? Kidder’s young friend who is brilliant from Burundi would probably give the same answer about parents who want to ban high school seniors from reading Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”.
More terrifying is how easy it is for all of us to be infected by right wing propaganda. It’s so insidious. Even Diane Ravitch thought this story was something other than what it was.
NYCPSP,
The implication of this letter is that referring to “going into the field” or “fieldwork” is racist. That’s hilarious.
“We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as “going into the field” or “field work” may hold negative associations.”
I clearly am missing the hilarity here.
But I can’t help wondering why white farmers don’t refer to themselves as “field workers” since that has no negative associations to them, and the phrase “farmer” is just silly. I’m not an “officer” because I work in an office. Someone is not a “houser” because they own a house.
Even the phrase “farm hand” feels different than “field worker”. Field worker is the bottom rung. And it would not surprise me if historically, a “farm hand” is more likely to be a white person and a “field worker” someone considered “other”. But I didn’t see anything wrong with the letter and you did, so I guess we have different perspectives.
I see no negative association with fieldwork or going into the field. My field is history of education.
Sally who??
“I never really saw it that way before,” Aina Endo, a member of Smith College’s class of 2025, said when informed of the new language policy on Tuesday. “Hearing about it now, I think the word has many different contexts and it’s the way that you use it that matters.” –quote from one of Diane’s highlights in her original post above.
These controversies and criticisms are often based on varying assumptions and are not necessarily simple and binary. This appears to be a choice by one organization to relabel what they do and clarify their core beliefs.
Over the last 50 years we have had such conflicts over “Black, Colored, People of Color, African-American, Afro-American, Afram, Negro,” and other terms used by people of various races and groups simply trying to be respectful.
Then there are the proposals by supporters to rename Edmund Pettus Bridge and the NAACP….the use of “Indian, Native, Native American, Native People, Nation, Rez,” etc…..and the Dine (Navajo) school that calls themselves the “Redskins” and has it painted in large letters on it’s athletic teams’ bus.
What no more Mrs. Field’s Cookies?
Oh well, just make them yourself:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/10029/mrs-fields-cookie-recipe-ii/
Diane, your headline “Smith College Bans Use of Word Field” is not true.
If you read the actual letter – and not the media’s mischaracterization of the letter – it is not true that Smith College banned the use of the word “field”.
Actually, hold on a second. The letter noted that “language is powerful and that phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may hold negative associations,” and says that “to assist in the transition, we’ve created a language key you can reference for information.”
Here’s the link to the “language key,” which is a list of titles, terms, and phrases that include the word “field,” alongside the new preferred “alternative language.”
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14K_rfap7-Ycn4c1fbZhUM3VzcvH6diRnwXrciJXOtWM/edit
For example, “Field team” will now be “Practicum Learning team.” “Field affiliates” will now be “clinical partners.” Etc.
Whether this is “banning” the term, I’m not sure. But it definitely seems to be about more than just changing the name of the school.
I saw that already and thought of posting a link but it was so ridiculous to even care.
But clearly I am too dense to understand.
Tell me again why I should be outraged that the Smith Social Work Department is going to start using the term “Clinical internship” instead of “Field Internship”?
Who are the real “language police” here? The ones who are are outraged because Smith Social Work CHOSE to use different terms that seems to bother only some random people who aren’t studying Social Work at Smith College?
Should I be outraged that spedukr didn’t refer to her uncle by his proper term “field worker”? Can you believe the chutzpah of those woke field workers like her uncle referring to themselves as farmers and expecting any of the rest of us to not refer to them by their proper term “field worker”?
Language changes ALL THE TIME. I am looking forward to you explaining to a dense, too woke person like myself why this change by a college engenders such outrage by outsiders. And is it as bad as when colleges decided to change to Ms, or is it not quite as awful and terrible as the change to Ms?
I clearly am missing how dangerous and awful this is and how no one at Smith College may never utter the word “field” again. It’s “banned!” Censorship!!! Colleges are FORBIDDEN from using any terms but those terms that the language police have decided are allowed. Who are the real language police here anyway? I think some of the people commenting should look in the mirror.
The ONLY “banning” going on was by the people who were angry that Smith College was using a different term.
Censorship is evident, but it’s coming from the right.
I realize a lot of people on here are still very outraged by the colleges using the term “they” as a pronoun referring to an individual who is non-binary. They want to BAN it. nAs my kid, and many others who are under 21 would say: Get woke.
Nobody is saying you need to be outraged. You can react however you want.
Selective outrage is phony outrage.
You didn’t even bother to take up my challenge to explain why you feel this change is a problem. But I did appreciate your being truthful and recognizing that no one is being “banned” from saying “field” in any context, or frankly, even in this context, despite the School of Social Work believing a change in terminology is a positive thing.
Why is it worse than the change to Ms, or was that also a problem simply because someone thought it was a problem. I mean, the bar is so low for right wing outrage and set so high for outrage about some of the terrible things the right wing is doing.
I don’t necessarily think it’s a “problem.” I think it’s silly and stupid and pointless. I guess to the extent the constant accretion of silliness and stupidity and pointlessness is bad, then it’s bad. Sorry, this is the way I feel.
I don’t think it’s an “outrage.” Frankly the only person on this entire thread who seems outraged is you — you seem to be outraged that people think this is silly.
I just find your condescension remarkable. You sound a lot like Rush (maybe listening to him affected you more than you know):
“I think it’s silly and stupid and pointless to call young ladies in college Ms when they have always been referred to as Miss. I guess to the extent the constant accretion of silliness and stupidity and pointlessness is bad, then it’s bad. Sorry, this is the way I feel. I don’t think it’s an “outrage” that I choose to express how silly and stupid and pointless you feminazis are. Frankly the only person here who seems outraged are the young ladies. They seem to be outraged that people think referring to them as Ms is silly.”
I love the privilege of those who believe that they should be able to express how silly and stupid and pointless other people are without getting any push back.
I notice how upset you get when someone else on here calls you silly, stupid and pointless, and yet you never hesitate to deem other people that way without even feeling it necessary to explain why. Think about it.
NYCPSP, I don’t understand what’s going on here. I didn’t call you “silly, stupid and pointless.” I said that changing well-established, widely accepted, facially neutral terms like “field” because those terms have some association with terms that were used in completely different contexts was silly, stupid, and pointless. I don’t see how you could be confused about that.
As for my views, again, I find stuff like this silly, stupid, and pointless. That’s how I feel. I don’t feel angry or outraged about it. It seems to me that you’re taking your own evident anger over how I feel and projecting it onto me.
If this sounds condescending, I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to react to what you’re saying.
And to think we were getting along so well just a couple hours ago!
It isn’t a “different context”.
Where do you think “going out in the field” and “field work” comes from? Who do you think was being “studied” when those terms were coined?
How come farmers don’t call themselves “field workers”?
Most of all, why do you care if no one at the college does? Standing on an explained “principle”?
FLERP!,
We were getting along when you acknowledged nothing was being “banned”.
You seem to think there are no parallels with the derision that was used to refer to the first use of “Ms”.
Instead of live and let live, there was unexplained derision, at ladies who didn’t know their place.
Why your derision?
Sorry, I’m done, this has gotten a bit wild.
Too right.
In this case, changing the use of the word “field” because of alleged racist connotations is banning the word. It’s a distinction without a difference.
My alma mater changed the name of the College of Home Economics to the College of Human Ecology in 1970. We all thought it funny, yet a smart move. Just as easy to say “Hume Ec” as “Home Ec.” And a no-brainer in terms of what was offered there, which needed to be called something not off-putting to the many men that would be attracted by its majors [and the fact it was one of the state-tuitioned colleges].
My mother was a “Home Eccie” there in the late 1940’s: she double-majored in nutrition and textiles/ design [whole lotta serious science courses reqd]. And it was the college where you matriculated for studies in Early Childhood ed/ psych/ soc, featuring prominent scholars in the “field.”
bethree5,
When your college changed its name, was there as much derision about your college banning the words “Home” and “Economics” as there is here about Smith banning the word “field” from being used?
How did you feel about the words home and economics being censored at your college? Was there news coverage, with random famous authors weighing in about how ridiculous your college was being, and suggesting that your college’s banning of the words “home” and “economics” was one of the reasons that people hated overly sensitive home economics administrators? Did folks tell home economics program administrators that they should start worrying about real issues, instead of making a huge enormous fuss and getting everyone so riled up about two perfectly acceptable words like home and economics?
Was everyone deriding the college for being such snowflakes when there is absolutely nothing offensive in the word home or the word economics? (I’d be happy to post etymologies of those words to demonstrate the ridiculousness of your college banning them from use.)
When everyone piled on your college for practicing censorship and banning perfectly acceptable words like home and economics, were there folks like me wondering what the big deal was, who found it extremely troubling that a simple change in terminology would be mischaracterized as censorship, bans, and language policing?
Or was there no right wing propaganda machine manufacturing controversy back then, and so people noted the change in name without directing derisive, insulting comments toward those who simply believed -for whatever reason – that a different name was better and never expected some outsiders to mischaracterize their decision to change the name of the program as a “ban” of the words Home and economics?
Maybe those were the good old days.
Here is another thing for you to be outraged about – from Sept. 2022:
“Oxford University’s Faculty of Oriental Studies, which was founded in the 19th century, has undergone a name change due to worries that it might be derogatory to racial or ethnic minorities. Its new name will now be the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.”
Terrible example. The old department name must be over a hundred years old and hardly describes what the department is and does now. Nothing to feel outraged about or even mildly amused.
This is all such manufactured outrage, but it is depressing to me that smart people here are buying into it.
Harvard Crimson, January 6, 1960:
“The Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted yesterday to change the title “Department of Semitic Languages and History” to “Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures,” effective Feb. 1.”
Where were those right wing language police sowing outrage by telling folks that Harvard had banned the use of the word “Semitic”??
2021 Cornell
“In a meeting last month, the Cornell Board of Trustees approved changing the name of the Department of English to the Department of Literatures in English, a change that faculty members say better reflects the world and the department’s diverse fields of study.
“We seek to make it clear to students and the broad public that we study writers from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the U.S., and that we value these as central to any canon of great literary works in English,” wrote Caroline Levine, the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities and the Picket Family Chair of the department, in a recent department newsletter about the need for the name change.”
How DARE Cornell do that!
Here is an even more outrageous one from October 2022, and in Louisiana of all places! The wokeness has infected the south!
“The University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s College of Education is now the College of Education & Human Development.
The college’s Department of Counselor Education also has a new name – the Department of Counseling. The college’s other departments are the Department of Educational Curriculum & Instruction and the Department of Educational Foundations & Leadership. The School of Kinesiology is also housed in the College of Education & Human Development.
“The new names affirm the college’s commitment to continual growth; they are also more inclusive of what the college does, better reflecting the breadth of our comprehensive programs and offerings – and the range of students we serve,” explained Dr. Paula Montgomery, interim dean of the College of Education & Human Development.”
Is the term Human good or bad? I need to consult with the language police – white conservative men – to find out if this is a good change, or one that they claim will endanger all of society.
People thought the sky would fall if Washington football team or the Cleveland baseball team changed their names.
They did it. They sky didn’t fall.
In a decade or two, kids are going to hear that a professional football team was named the “R word” and be shocked. Not at the so-called “language police” who were the object of ridicule and hate for years because they found the name offensive. But at their grandparents who were so outraged that anyone would find the name offensive and were angry that those voices were not censored and silenced, so the team could continue to be called the “R word” name they loved so much.
I know that young people today have no idea the ridicule and hate that the “feminazis” experienced when the very first institutions started replacing Miss with Ms. Apparently some middle aged folks have forgotten as well.
But I am clearly among a small group of people who isn’t bothered at all that a social work department changes how they refer to something. I didn’t see any “censorship” or “bans” but apparently other people on here did. Perhaps they need glasses.
No, it is massively stupid.
That’s what they said about “Ms”.
I’m guessing you are too young to remember.
Really? “Too young to remember”?
I remember when the magazine was started, being in college at the time, and I certainly was familiar with Gloria Steinem.
But do go on, old-timer.
I do love the privilege of those on here who feel that they can say “it’s massively stupid” without having to explain why.
“Because I said so” seems to be their answer, and then they say they are too tired to keep arguing.
Anyone who is unaware of how many people said that it was “massively stupid” to use the term “Ms” is ignorant of history.
Why is it “massively stupid”? Because you don’t like Ms.? Because you were happy calling ladies “Miss” and “Mrs”? Because you say so? Because a department can’t change its name?
If you need to censor speech without understanding, then you have a problem.
“Field” has ancient roots unrelated to slavery or race. Ditto with “work”.
these terms did not evolve through slavery or whatever insulting usage you imagine. My Webster’s defines “fieldwork” as work done in the field “as by students” and work gathering date by anthropologists or sociologists. This usage traces back to 1819.
English farmers have worked their fields for centuries. Go call one of them a racist for that and you’ll likely get tossed through a window. Deservedly, I might add.
This idiocy started at USC, and received the ridicule there it was due. The current brouhaha was apparently started by white people, whence much nonsense comes these days.
I remember being called a racist by a public defender when I accused her of having a “niggardly” approach to the Fourth Amendment. The judge looked at her with amazement, as it was clear she had never heard the word before.
As for “Ms.”, abbreviations are meant to derive from actual words.
And as an Irishman, I don’t get all het up when someone says “paddy wagon”.
Quite a stretch to compare the development of the term “Ms.” to changing “field study” to “clinical study” in the Smith sociology department. You might want to look up the word “field.” Not a lot there to get in a tizzy over and the origins of the term field of study have nothing to do with slavery. Every discipline has a “field of study” and many do field work, but the list of ways the term is used is extensive.
Give it a rest.
“English farmers have worked their fields for centuries.”
Don’t you mean that English field workers have worked their fields for centuries?
Think about why you referred to them as English farmers instead of English field workers. Why use the term “farmer” instead of field worker?
How many farmers in America call themselves field workers?
How many “field workers” did English farmers employ? My understanding (which is not encyclopedic, to be sure) is damned few, when it was any at all.
speduktr says “Not a lot there to get in a tizzy over…”
If you believe that people were “in a tizzy” about the word “Miss” when women begin to try to change that, you are a lot younger than I am. There was no “tizzy” about using “Miss” and yet a very few women still tried to change it, and were constantly referred to as being “silly”.
NYCPSP,
You seem to think changing or deleting words is simply changing with the times. How do you feel about the deletion of the word “evolution” from textbooks? Are you offended by the word “cowboy” or “landlady”? Should rainbows be removed from schoolbooks? Or to bring it up to this moment, how do you feel about Florida insisting that publishers remove any reference to George Floyd protests or Black Lives Matter or “social justice”? Banning words (or changing them) is not always a forward movement. One must be discerning.
Diane,
There is a difference between using language that is more inclusive and “banning” a word.
“how do you feel about Florida insisting that publishers remove any reference to George Floyd protests or Black Lives Matter or “social justice”?”
It totally defies my own intellectual capacities to see any connection between censoring history from a textbook and changing a word to be more inclusive. Maybe a wiser person could understand your point, but I can’t.
Maybe I will poll some young people to see if the letter reads as hilarious to them and if they see it as the same as removing references to BLM, and if they agree with you, they can explain how dangerous/offensive/silly the letter is.
To me, it’s like an announcement that a college was going to be referring to female students as Ms in the future instead of Miss. I guess the “censorship” is beyond my vision.
Where we part company is that I see nothing offensive in the term field.
Most people – including the majority of women – saw nothing offensive in the terms Miss and Mrs. when the first feminazis started asking to be called Ms. I saw nothing offensive in those terms, either.
I don’t understand why that is the guiding principle.
You don’t understand why what is the guiding principle?
I don’t know why the “guiding principle” is whether I personally am offended by a term.
I wasn’t personally offended by the terms Mrs. or Miss, but I could see that (at the beginning) a few women were and I never called them “silly” nor made fun of them. And when they started to win their first battles and my college started calling female students “Ms.”, I didn’t think it was a big deal at all even though I wasn’t bothered by Miss or Mrs. at the time. Now I am bothered by them. And I continue to believe that the people who were bothered by these terms when I was not were right to be bothered, even if the majority of people (including me) were not.
So I don’t understand why anyone justifies using language that offends other people by citing that they themselves aren’t bothered by it. What happened to courtesy where you try to understand why someone else is bothered and if it is no big deal for you to change it, you do.
I never cared if someone asked me to call them Ms, even back when there were all kinds of public figures deriding that as “silly”. I thought deriding someone’s decision to use Ms. instead of Miss was just as nasty as the derision I see on this comment threat because Smith College Social Work refers to Clinical work instead of Field work. Why is that “silly”? Because it doesn’t bother you? Yeah, BTDT.
As far as I can tell, the number of people offended by “field” can be counted on one hand, if even that.
And it’s a prime example of destroying the English language in the service of nothing.
Talk about an invented “problem”…
Not familiar with MassiveLive. Read a few comments. They didn’t seem particularly right wing and I didn’t feel that people were outraged.
It’s ridiculous that it’s even a news story that presents the change as if it is newsworthy, interviewing random people who have nothing to do with the department. The framing itself is the problem. NYT pitchbot is good satire that is also very educational on how the media legitimizes this kind of false framing all the time — always amplifying the right wing narrative.
“Field” is NOT “banned”, and a college is making the kinds of changes they have always made without some right wing propaganda arm turning it into an “issue”.
I know I posted too much, but it’s depressing to see how easily the right wing gets even good people to “blame” people who did nothing wrong! I repeat, there is nothing wrong with the Smith College Social Work department doing this and no one at Smith College objected. NO ONE IS POLICING, CENSORING. OR BANNING LANGUAGE!!
When this kind of manufactured controversy is directed at teachers, this blog gets how insidious this kind of “blame the teachers for a manufactured controversy” reporting is.
Like when they used brief clips of videos of some hapless teacher talking about teaching students about implicit bias and diversity, and they are made to look like fools, and symbolic of how the “woke ideology” has infected public schools. To manufacture outrage about a problem that does not exist. This is not a “problem” that exists at Smith College. But the concern trolls are out.
Just like the concern trolls were out expressing that teachers unions protecting sexual predators and demanding they be allowed to continue to teach for as long as they want is a problem. Was it true? It was as true as Smith College banning the word “field”.
“…the concern trolls are out.”
The only concern troll I have seen here is you. Saying something is silly is hardly expressing concern.
Um, you obviously missed the word “censorship” and “banned use of the word field”.
And think about why you didn’t refer to your uncle as a field worker and whether he would like it if you made fun of his desire to be called a “farmer” instead of a field worker and called it “silly”? Why not respect it?
I didn’t completely understand the use of the word “they” when it started to be used as a pronoun for a non-binary person. But what kind of person would I be to tell them it was “silly” instead of respecting something that DIDN’T HURT ME AT ALL?
Maybe you think using “they” is silly, too? Would you post that here?
Even having a discussion of whether use of the pronoun “they” is silly or acceptable frames the argument the way the right wing wants it to be framed.
Masslive is Massachusetts Live.
I will wager persons okay with banning the word “field,” in any context, are very much the same persons who’d praise the word “bar,” as in “Raise the Bar: Lead the World”…
https://www.ed.gov/news/media-advisories/us-deputy-secretary-education-visit-georgia-raise-bar-lead-world-tour
It’s the hypocrisy that can’t be defended.
Nobody “banned” anything. But your comment that they did demonstrates how insidious this manufactured outrage over common courtesy is.
What happened to our country that people bash others for being respectful.
FYI, the letter was extremely respectful, did not “BAN” anything, and if people don’t like using the word “they” or “Ms” or “clinical”, tough cookies. The people who can’t deal with the word “clinical” or “practicum” are the real snowflakes.
What a ridiculous campaign. “Raise the Bar: Lead the World.” Cindy Marten was a terrific superintendent in San Diego. This is beneath her.
Don’t have time to read all the comments yet, so I hope I’m not repeating. This is nothing new. There was a push in the ’90s and beyond in California to entirely stop using the words ‘dark’ and ‘black’. It’s counterproductive to the civil rights movement to do so. Focusing on word use out of context detracts from efforts to end practices that actually cause hardship, such as segregation, redlining, and wage and banking discrimination. Banning ‘field’ or ‘house’ is inane and harmful.
If it weren’t for the oceans reflecting the color blue, the sky would appear black. That’s not racist.
I’d be interested in reading about this movement in the ’90s of people who banned the use of the word “black” to describe a shirt or dress which was the color black. I am surprised that teachers were banned from saying that a crayon was black, but I defer to you that this was going on.
I can see an argument for not using the word “black” or “dark” to describe entirely negative things, like “black magic” or “dark magic” (versus “white magic”) where the white is entirely good and the black is entirely bad.
If some college decided to stop always using “black” to refer to the worst (or most evil) things and “white” to refer to the best things, I wouldn’t be upset, but I guess if the right wing propaganda machine said the college had “banned” using the word black, lots of people on here would be outraged even if not one student, professor, or staff person at the college was.
In this case, there is absolutely no evidence that anyone at Smith – even conservative students – cared whether the college referred to their summer work as “clinical work” or “field work”. It is wrong to mischaracterize that as “controversial” at all. Some people with no connection to Smith thought it meant Smith College had banned students from even saying the word “field” for any reason and were upset and blamed the Social Work School instead of blaming the people manufacturing a “controversy” that didn’t exist until they got people riled up about something that wasn’t true!
I try to fight against the “blame the victim of right wing propaganda” so that people can instead see that their criticism should be directed at the right wing propagandists for manufacturing outrage.
It always bothered me when even people who supported teachers unions were blaming union teachers for focusing so much on protecting sexual predators. This is what they’d say: Was it really so important for the union to spend so much effort and focus to protect sexual predators when there were so many other issues in the school that were more important? If the union hadn’t focused so much on protecting sexual predators, the right wing would not be able to criticize them and get people to be so mad at them for protecting sexual predators. It’s all the union’s fault for focusing on protecting sexual predators instead of focusing on the important issues. No wonder people don’t like teachers’ unions anymore. They don’t care about the important things and get all hung up on protecting sexual predators instead. Maybe it’s not wrong for the union to do that, but it’s definitely silly for them to do so. Don’t they know they are hurting themselves by doing so?
And that’s how easy it is to help the right wing manufacture a scandal that hurts teachers’ unions.
Nobody “banned” anything.
But a lot of people here are positive that it happened, even though it didn’t.
This is why they hate us. This is fodder for their finger pointing. This is why they stammer about shouting “Woke this” and “Woke that.”
If the commenters here are taking it to task, imagine what the boys on right will do. The rally goers will salivate.
1s 115 comments a record?
Not even close.
Oh, that is more than close.
I doubt this particular bit of idiocy will move many needles. But it’s another brick in the wall.
I think it’s gotten to 300 before.
They HATE us because the far right manufactures outrage against us and instead of laughing the critics down, we take them seriously. We blame the teachers for focusing too much on sexual predators and making people hate them. We blame Smith College Social Work for making people hate them for “censorship”.
Neither of those things are true. People trying to make language more inclusive are not “censoring” and the teachers union doesn’t “focus” on protecting sexual predators instead of focusing on more important issues.
It’s possible for a union to have due process AND be concerned with other issues as well. It’s also possible for parents like me to amplify the criticism of teachers because I haven been propagandized to believe that there is a grave danger of sexual predators in our schools. As dangerous as those who want to call it clinical work instead of field work.
In my district, we have to stop saying ESOL to refer to students learning English — because that is suddenly “deficit language.” We’ve been directed to use the cumbersome “Emergent Multilingual Learners,” as if students are all caterpillars.
lol
“ELL” “ESL” “LEP” “NNES” “MLL” “emerging bilingual” “dual language learner” “EML”
EdWeek did a long article about how the terminology has changed and changed and changed over 3 decades – and I left out a bunch of options.
It’s like reading and math programs. I remember teachers complaining about “new math” and “new reading” in the 1970s. And 1980s. And 1990s. and so on.
Teachers were understandably annoyed then and annoyed now. But the huge difference is that the annoyance has been politicized.
Nowadays, there always seems to be a “woke scapegoat” for the same annoyances that have always happened before anyone was woke.
We’ve all been infected by right wing propaganda.
Who were the scapegoats for “new math” in the 1970s? The Dems or the Republicans? What group got demonized for changing the curriculum or changing the terminology used for students learning English in 1990? The Dems or Republicans?
There were no scapegoats because the right wing hadn’t figured out how to successfully create democrat/progressive scapegoats to demonize for “politicizing” the issue. So ironic, since the real politicizing is being done by the right.
All aboard the Euphemism Treadmill.
That train left the station 30 years ago.
I’m shocked, shocked, that a change of terminology is going on around here! (“here are the 20, 15, 10, and 5 year old documents ordering terminology changes you asked for, sir”)
“Round up the usual suspects! (The usual suspects, of course, being the woke police.)
Eva,
That’s the Language Police at work!
It’s truly a shame that most people are so separated from the origins of their food, now, that the first thing that comes to mind when they hear a phrase like field of study is not the sowing, tending, and harvesting of crops, which has no necessary connection to slavery. Slaves were forced to do lots of work that wasn’t in fields. Are we to ban all references to those as well? to childcare? to mining? to housework? to carpentry? to blacksmithing? to tending animals? to sailing?
This is just silly. Much ado about nothing.
No “banning” is going on.
It’s a shame that people hear the phrase “field work” and believe that is the same use of “field” as when people say “field of study”. Two distinct things. Field work definition is “practical work conducted by a researcher in the natural environment, rather than in a laboratory or office.”
“Field work” means something completely different than “doing work in your field of study”. The first time I even heard the term “field work”, it was referring to anthropologists who studied indigenous people, a la Margaret Mead. If I had a conversation with a college professor and told them I was doing “field work”, they would certainly not think I meant “work in my field of study”. They would assume I was referring SPECIFICALLY to practical work in a different environment.
To me – and I suspect most people – writing a master’s thesis on literature in a university library isn’t “field work” even though someone could argue it is “field work” because it is “work in the field of study” that person is doing. But I believe there are two distinct uses of the word “field” and it is obvious to me, if not other people, that reading a book and writing a paper about a subject in the field you are studying is NOT doing “field work”. I don’t get why people are making arguments as if they are the same thing.
So why can’t the term “field work” be called “clinical work”?
Why is this even worth 130+ comments? Because of manufactured outrage.
If I read the same manufactured outrage because a university decided to start using the term Ms. instead of Miss, or started to use the pronoun “they” for non-binary students, and 100 people posted here to deride and laugh at the college, and call them silly, AND CLAIM THE COLLEGE WAS PRACTICING CENSORSHIP, I would feel strongly that I wanted to defend the university from that derision. EVEN IF USING THE TERM MS. OR PRONOUN THEY WASN’T SOMETHING I THOUGHT WAS IMPORTANT.
I DON’T think it is vital that Social Work use the term “field work” instead of “social work”. But I DO think it is vital to defend their right to do so and address those who would deride and belittle them because the right wing wanted to a manufacture a controversy that didn’t exist.
To me, the real problem isn’t using the term “clinical work” instead of “field work”. The problem is so many people here getting propagandized to believe a college deciding to use “clinical work” instead of “field work” should be derided and laughed at because the right wing manufactured a controversy.
I did not say that “banning” was “going on.” LOL
I did say “banning” was going on.
Field work occurs whenever you take your study outside your office, RT. So, if a highway department official goes out and does a study of whether people obey No Left Turn on Red signs, she is doing field work. And this has always been the case. When Darwin climbed around the mountains surrounding Lima, Peru, and studied the lichen there, he was doing field work. This has no racial connotations except in fevered imaginations. I say fevered because this is simply a metaphor for working outside, based on the universal need to grow food.
And so, this is just ridiculous, and it’s the kind of thing that ENABLES right wingers to think that folks on the left are a bunch of fringe-y kooks.
Please insert here a four-hundred-paragraph diatribe reiterating, again and again, points you have already made.
Sorry. That last comment was more than a little bit snarky. My apologies.
And I see that I did say, “are we to BAN these as well,” so you are right.
At any rate, the critique of the metaphor is an example of the fallacy of anachronism, for the use of field to refer to an area of human endeavor, a sphere or range of concern, dates all the way back to the 14th century and had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with the place where people carry out their work.
The idea of doing mental work being like working in fields, sowing, tending, reaping/harvesting, gleaning, is really ancient and has no necessary connection to slavery, just as the word “cup” has no necessary connection to bra size. (Those who teach seventh graders will know how they find any lame excuse for tittering about imagined references to the body or to bodily functions.) This business about the use of “field” is childish in precisely the same way.
Good points, Bob, but that’s exactly what they said about “Ms.”
No, “they” said a lot more about “Ms.” The idea was that we distinguished women, when referring to them, by their marital status (Miss versus Mrs.), but did not do so with regard to Men, whose marital status would unremarked (Mr.).
Just as there is no male equivalent for the term mistress used in the sense of extra-marital female lover of a married man.
So, there was a good argument that the Miss/Mrs designations were sexist, just as “mistress” (in that sense) is.
At least, I hope, we have finally gotten past defining women by their marital status, but try as I might I cannot see any legitimate parallel with the present situation.
Same here, Speduktr!
And thus good reason for adopting an alternative. Such a good reason does not exist for “field.” The supposed reasons given are just silly,
Bob,
First of all, thank you for your honesty in acknowledging your use of the word “ban”. The HEADLINE of this entire blog post uses the word “ban”.
You can’t brush that off. People here are reacting with over the top outrage because of the word “ban”.
Maybe you are not. Maybe there are folks who regularly police all the changes in how departments in universities decide to refer to their various pursuits and peruse each memo to make sure that the reason that the college gives for daring to change any word that they had previously used is accompanied by a rational for that change that meets some specific undefined standard.
To me, the silly ones are all of you! You’ve gotten upset over NOTHING! You should have been laughing at the totally crazy right wingers who believe that saying “clinical work” instead of “field work” signals the dangerous woke takeover of academia, but instead you are helping legitimize the false right wing narrative and laughing at (or in the case of some people here, criticizing) the people those right wingers are belittling.
There are SO MANY terrible things going on this country, so many terrible laws being passed. And the right wing gets us to believe that THIS is a problem! No one at Smith College thinks it is a problem, but “author Tracy Kidder” does.
Why can’t people here start focusing on REAL problems? Why so obsessed with the language that a university uses to describe an academic pursuit? This is NOT IMPORTANT. People here got fooled into thinking it was as soon as they saw the word “ban”. Gotta fight “woke censorship” at Smith College! When we SHOULD be focusing on the real censorship that right wing Republican legislators are enacting in states all over America.
But whatever. I give up. Smith College using the term “clinical word” instead of “field work” is a sign of the acopolypse. Censorship by the woke left! Banning words! So worthy of derision.
What is worthy of derision should be the real language and FACT bans that Republicans are enacting.
Manufactured outrage apparently works. And I see little comfort when people deny they are outraged, but just are deriding good people because they care so much about censorship or bans. Why deride them at all?
Why not focus on the people who are really doing harmful things, because a social work office that oversees field work announcing it would now call the work it oversees “clinical work” is not harmful. But legitimizing false right wing propaganda to engender outrage about “bans” and “censorship” against an educational institution is.
NYC. It’s just hilarious. Stupid.
NYCPSP — For the nth time, the only person in this entire thread who is “upset” or “outraged” about this is you. Every single other person seems mildly amused. You are losing your mind. And the reason there are 150 comments is because you keep rage-posting diatribes.
That is pretty much how I see it too.
Bob,
When we talk about implicit bias, here is an example:
I did not see the word “slavery” mentioned in the Smith College memo – not even once. But you kept citing “slavery” in your arguments, which made no sense to me.
“SSW’s Core Principles encourage us to center the lived and historical experiences of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as “going into the field” or “field work” may hold negative associations.
While this change may seem small, it is an action among many others, to keep us accountable to our values, to our students and to our Smith SSW community.”
Nothing about “slavery”. A lot that resonated with me about COMMON COURTESY.
The parallels to Ms are exactly the same. I could make a convoluted argument about how the term “Miss” doesn’t have to mean what you say it means. Why does it matter what offends you or me if someone else wants to say “clinical work” instead of “field work”?
I’m would not be offended even if Smith College told their students that all of them were required to only use the term “clinical work”. But Smith College didn’t even do that!
So why do people care? Aren’t there far more important and REAL bans on language we should care about?
FYI, do you know how often the first women who wanted to use “Ms” were told that people would laugh at them and they would become objects of ridicule and if they really wanted to achieve their goals, they should focus on “important” things instead of policing language? (As if they weren’t doing both).
Those women WERE ridiculed. By Rush Limbaugh. feminazis. And there were lots of cowardly, scared liberals who chided them to stop asking for “silly” things like Ms and focus on what was “important”. They BLAMED the women asking to be called “Ms’ for Rush Limbaugh making fun of them! They blamed the victim! Even though the women asking to be called Ms were not the ones creating a “huge controversy that was dividing our country”. Rush Limbaugh and company were creating that controversy
And just how is the term field work perceived as racist if it has nothing to do with slavery?
I think you just made the point that the letter ties “field” to racism, not slavery. That’s not outrageous but it is silly.
FLERP!,
For the nth time, why are you here?
The “silliness” and “much ado about nothing” more accurately describes anyone who cares so much about the words Smith College Social Work uses that keep arguing with my very mild assertion that there is no controversy here! There is no bruhaha at Smith College. There is only a manufactured controversy of which Smith College is the victim.
Why are the words “ban” and “censorship” even part of this discussion? It is disingenuous for you to present this as innocuous. There was no controversy whatsoever at Smith College. Some random outsiders got folks to invoke censorship and bans to engender outrage. I tried to get folks on here to stop blaming the victim. I tried to get folks on here to stop helping the right wing manufacture yet another controversy to attack “woke educators”.
I failed. To me, the right wing propaganda machine is the problem. To everyone else, Smith College is the problem. Maybe when that outrage machine is turned on teachers, folks will wish they had discredited the machine instead of made fun of its’ victims, or accusing the victims of “bans” or “censorship” to demonize them.
Smith College is not the problem. Hyper political correctness is. It can be found on the right and the left.
Yes, there are many more important problems. I don’t overlook them.
I think that the effort to ban “field” because of racist overtones is silly.
I can’t change it, but I can laugh at it, as I did in “The Language Police.”
“For the nth time, why are you here?”
Lol, ok, I’ll shut up if you want. Just remember that you can keep typing that people are outraged and upset, but that only describes you.
Thank you, flerp!
^^sorry that accidentally posted under the name “M”. I claim this post as my own.
Bingo!
Language and this “ado” is about everything in Missouri.
“(Attorney General) Bailey called gender transition “mutilating children for the sake of a woke, leftist agenda” and “inhumane science experiments” in his announcement and on his official Twitter account.” KSDK
This was his first announcement of an emergency order to immediately stop gender affirming care for transgender your AND adults It was not some comment to bolster donations at a fund raiser; his first public comment.
Backstory:
When the Missouri legislature dragged their Texas/Florida wannabe feet passing anti-transgender affirming care and sports participation, the Attorney General Bailey pulled an “Emergency Order” out of his hat declaring it illegal asap.
A judge blocked it.
The Governor threatened an emergency session (regular session ends Friday) if they didn’t get pass something.
Yesterday the Missouri legislature with some sick rhetoric and 15 minutes of “debate” voted both bills and then went right back to stick its head deeper in the sand an voted both bills in. (Until today when they take on “parents rights” and fears teachers will teach “collective guilt” to white kids about slavery.
Transgender issues. Science? Medicine? (Definitely not about “parents rights). We don’t do science or medicine in Missouri: The Show Me Hate State
Diane Ravitch, I appreciate you allowing this discussion because I think it is important for folks to be able to debate and discuss issues when we don’t agree.
Here is what Smith College actually did:
The academic office that oversees work outside of the classroom for those studying Social Work changed a couple terms they used to refer to the work that they oversaw. It would be called “Clinical Work” instead of “Field Work”. Their Office would be called the Office of Practicum Learning instead of the Office of Field Education. And a few other changes that didn’t cause even a minute of controversy at the university.
Yawn, the Office of Field Work changed their name to Office of Practicum Learning.
That’s an example of a “problem of hyper political correctness”? And people are supposed to object to it because it’s silly?
I see this as a problem of manufactured outrage by the far right.
Diane, you wrote: “I think that the effort to ban “field” because of racist overtones is silly.”
I am not going to on repeating that the letter did not “ban” the use of the word “field.” It’s disappointing to me that you keep using that loaded expression to describe what happened.
I lack the superior reading comprehension abilities of all the people commenting here. This is the memo I read:
“SSW’s Core Principles encourage us to center the lived and historical experiences of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as “going into the field” or “field work” MAY HOLD NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS.
While this change may seem small, it is an action among many others, to keep us accountable to our values, to our students and to our Smith SSW community.
The SSW Practicum Learning team remains committed to developing practicum experiences that embody anti-racist practices. We hope this change will communicate our continued commitment to engage in critical reflection and repair.
We recognize that adopting a new name for our office can be challenging, and we expect this will take some time, but we hope that you’ll join us in this effort to be intentional and inclusive and to stay open and actively engage with change. To assist in the transition, we’ve created a language key you can reference for information.”
I completely missed the part where Smith College said the word “field” was “racist” or “had racist undertones”.
I completely missed the part where the word FIELD was “banned”.
I completely missed the part where Smith College invoked “slavery”.
What I read was a memo that explained why some uncontroversial terminology changes were being made: because “phrases such as “going into the field” or “field work” MAY HOLD NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS” in the lived and historical experiences of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.
That’s it. No “bans”. No mention of “slavery” at all.
Smith College Social Work tried to consider the feeling of the folks for whom phrases like “field work” or “going into the field” MAY hold negative associations. It doesn’t say why those words hold negative associations, but as someone whose first introduction to the term “field work” was hearing about white anthropologists studying the habits of indigenous peoples in rural areas as if they were specimens, I don’t have the same urge as people here to belittle others who might notice the negative undertones of phrases such as “going into the field” and “field work”.
My position is that if there are even a few people who are Black, Indigenous or from other communities of color who notice negative undertones that I don’t, I salute Smith College Social Work for considering their feelings. And I don’t understand why people would belittle and make fun of them for it.
You see “hyper political correctness” and I see basic kindness.
The parallel to the first use of terminology “Ms” is that the objection to “miss” it was considered just as silly as the objection to “field.” The folks now writing long rationales here explaining why “Miss” was objectionable seem to forget that those were exactly the kind of rationales that were marginalized back then and even most women denied their validity.
The rationales were dismissed with the same condescension that folks here dismiss that there are any negative connotations to the term “field work” and “going out in the field”.
I am not going to on repeating that the letter did not “ban” the use of the word “field.”
Except to say that it did not ban the use of the word, which I am not even going to mention even though it (Smith) did not in the slightest bit ban the use of the word, which I will pass over in my comments here though I continue to be provoked by people saying that they banned the use of the word even though I have had to point out that they didn’t, or would have if it were necessary, which I definitely did not do simply because I happened to mention that they did not ban the word for the 5,676th time on this thread, which is REALLY IMPORTANT in order not to play into the right-wing conspiracy that will accuse people of objecting to claiming that they banned the word which they definitely did not do, which I could have pointed out if I had wanted to, but I didn’t.
At any rate, I could point out that they did not “ban” the word, but I won’t.
Except that they didn’t. As I explain in the paragraphs below.
LOL
Bob,
I noticed after I posted that I used that rhetorical phrase and then did what I said I wouldn’t do. I guess I should say thank you that you even bothered to read my post! Good on you, I wrote something silly. Definitely guilty as charged!
Did Smith College Social Work school “ban” the use of the word “field” or not?
If they didn’t, then I don’t understand why they are being treated as if they did.
I consulted with my resident “woke” advisor (my own kid).
The youth vote says: what Smith College did to substitute a different word for “field” is inane, but the fact that anyone cares is even more inane.
I guess I have changed my position to that one!
Again, this idiocy started at USC. No one seems to even know this.
Don’t even try to say that this won’t have effects. One effect, at least here chez jsrtheta, is to give me a very good and hearty laugh. Another will be the derision of the sane portion of the adult populace.
The negative effect of the word “fieldwork” is of course a new discovery by white people that another good cudgel has been added to the arsenal of the insufferable. Good times, no doubt. And, of course, we must await the reaction of all the people who are not in academia and, therefore are all redneck rubes in need of guidance. The Academy once again goes where only fools fear to tread, assuming one defines “fools” as hopeless bigots. Whatever would we do without them?
Trivia fans also now have an answer to the question “What idiotic policy did USC and Smith College try to implement in 2023?”
Thanks for the lead. Smith’s social work program was following the lead of USC. This appeared on the NPR website in January 2023:
An office within the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work says it is removing the term “field” from its curriculum because it may have racist connotations related to slavery.
The newly renamed Office of Practicum Education, formerly known as the Office of Field Education, within the university’s Suzanne-Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, is making the change in order to be more inclusive, according to a memo sent out to faculty and students this week and obtained by NPR.
“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the memo reads. “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”
Perhaps they could find a single black or immigrant person who agrees with them.
I know this is a long thread – I posted this above but might be lost. I have revised my view to a far more succinct:
Smith College Social Work renaming some terms is inane. But it’s even more inane that anyone cares that Smith College Social Work renamed some terms.
This “inane” topic generated a surprising amount of interest. I have posted on topics of national and international that we barely noticed. I wish everything I posted got such an animated response.
I don’t because a lot of it was inane!
The problem is that these seemingly trivial, even risible, actions soon turn into doctrine.
Take “Ms.”. I agreed from the start that it was unfair that women were forced into titles that differed based on marital status, while men weren’t. But the solution was inept. (No offense to Gloria Steinem, someone I respect and admire, and someone with a good sense of humor.)
It was fitting to the times, though, that we invent a title that essentially said, “It’s none of your damn business what my marital status is!” I still address my elementary age granddaughters as “Miss.” When do they become “Mses”?
I don’t know. I lost my He-Man decoder ring, and now no one will answer my calls.
🙂 I think I finally got rid of all the he man figures stored in the attic. I’ll have to look…
Sounds like you care enough it say that it’s inane.
he he he. (Just laughing at the inanity in your post.)
Thank you for your many posts that gave me a good and hearty laugh, flerp! Much appreciated!
I did not realize that “Ms” becoming “doctrine” was a bad thing.
Maybe there should be 100 posts deriding Gloria Steinem about that.
Now I understand whose really to blame for the attacks on feminazis. Gloria.
You know, the Goo Goo Dolls are a pretty good band.
But even they know their name is ridiculous.
Who said it was a bad thing? Do have to hyperventilate over everyone’s innocuous opinion post? Enough!
“Risible” is in the eye of the beholder.
Beatles? Pink Floyd? ZZ Top? Foo Fighters? U2? Grateful Dead? Mötley Crüe?
I must have missed all the news coverage of random people discussing how risible those band’s names were. Whether or not some random people considered those names of bands to be risible didn’t seem be newsworthy. And once a name is used for a while, it doesn’t feel “risible”.
Although I could imagine that if the right wing found it useful to make people feel derision toward any of those bands, the right wing propaganda machine could have gotten into full gear and decided that the risible nature of their name was worth amplifying and turning into something worth discussing. Turning those bands into objects of derision because of their name creates a more negative perception. They don’t just have a funny name. They are ridiculous.
I do have many memories of random people like Rush Limbaugh discussing how risible the term Ms was, back when women – and some institutions that had the audacity to consider women’s feelings – first started using the term “Ms”. Creating a negative perception of women who wanted to use Ms was definitely the intent. The intent was to mischaracterize those women to make people consider them ridiculous instead of respecting them.
Ridicule is very powerful. Jon Stewart stepping down from the Daily Show was a huge loss to those who believe in truth and honesty. He wasn’t ridiculing politicians, he was ridiculing the self-important news reporters who fawned over the right wing politicians and didn’t do their jobs. Because a lot of people in those reporters’ worlds watched the show and Stewart was influential enough that those clips got amplified, those reporters started to avoid doing the fawning reporting that could show up and make them look ridiculous.
I’m sure you had a point, but I’m damned if I can tell what it was.
My point is there is a lot of implicit bias in how we decide who does something that is characterized as “risible”, worthy of derision, and used to discredit them or make people think less of them, and who does something that you respectfully disagree with.
Nikole Hannah-Jones got a similar treatment. She was publicly derided and discredited for supposed “transgressions”, while other historians who made those same so-called “transgressions” were treated with respect, and the self-appointed arbiters who claim to be absolutely unbiased react by “politely disagreeing” with their choices.
I don’t think these are comparable. Nikole Hannah-Jones was derided by some historians because she stepped into their space without the appropriate credentials. No one laughed at her. Nothing she wrote invited ridicule. The fact is that she threatened many people, not least because she argued that the true beginning of America was 1619, not 1776. Several states have banned The 1619 Project. I have never heard of a legislature singling out a book and saying you may not read or assign this book.
There is no way that the terror evoked by The 1619 Project is comparable to the decision by Smith’s graduate school of social work to eschew the word “field.” One is an elephant of censorship, the other is a silly effort to police language that will affect few people.
The
working in field = intellectual activity (such as scholarship)
metaphorical trope is ancient. It did not originate with the transatlantic slave trade. It did not originate with European colonialism. And that this is the case is abundantly attested by its use by ancient writers. And at any rate, that it would have such an origin (with slavery or colonialism) is nonsensical because the one doing the working in the field or intellectual activity is the same person.
This is obvious enough to most folks, which might explain why almost everyone, above, has reacted to this name change and the reason for it with derision or amusement.
cx
cx:
It did not originate with the work in cotton fields and sugar cane fields done by enslaved persons and their descendants brought to the New World by the transatlantic slave trade. It did not originate with European colonialism or with anthropological and/or sociological study of colonized peoples by white European scholars.
cx:
It did not originate as a reference to the work in cotton fields and sugar cane fields done by enslaved persons brought to the New World by the transatlantic slave trade or with references to the descendants of such persons who did such unpaid labor. And it did not originate with European colonialism or with anthropological and/or sociological study of colonized peoples by white European scholars.
Geez, if USC and Smith knew this, Bob, they could go back to calling Social Work a field.
Bizarrely, Diane, it is enough that someone, somewhere thinks of something negative when the term is used.
I have negative thoughts when I hear names Trump, DeSantis, DeVos, Koch.
Totally understandable! Therefore, these people should never be mentioned in the public sphere again!!!!
According to this thread, though, we should just give them names more to our liking.
DeSimperatis, Jabba the Trump, Cruella DeVoid, Big Koch
You’re on a roll.
If, like jsrtheta, you have (by your own admission) lost your he-man decoder ring, you can always pick up a copy of Josh Hawley’s book and Tucker Carlson’s video, which will enable you to claw your way back to Manlitudenousness! These will have you belting out sea chanties and shooting at cases of Budweiser in no time!
A Tribute to Josh Hawley
O! He is the doughtiest, manliest man.
He shoots the Bud, then eats the can!
None can outdo him in kissing Trump’s can,
That derring-do, doughtiest, manliest man!
Flor-uh-duh Man (to the tune of “A Do Run Run,’ by The Crystals
Saw a drag queen, and my heart stood still.
Uh do run, Ron Ron. Uh doo run, Ron.
Thought I’d better write another hate bill.
Uh do run, Ron Ron. Uh doo run, Ron.
Yes, his voice was shrill.
Yes, he wrote that bill.
To think he started out as just Trump’s shill!
Uh do run, Rhonda Santis. Doo run, Ron.
Nicely done.
That’s a wonderful sea chantie!!
We had quite a field day here! Who would have imagined that we would see such depth of field? The topic was a mine field, but it enabled me to come up with my unified “field” theory, posted above, which posits those who would field “field” haven’t gone far enough afield to grok its actual origins as metaphor.
Bob,
Your comment reminded me that when I attended public schools in Houston, we had a “field day” every year, when it was sports all day and outdoor fun.
YES! I remember those!
The local schools around here still do and nobody does any “fieldwork” of any kind.
Bob, setting aside the specifics of the word “field”.
I don’t understand why closely examining a word’s origins or how it was originally used is relevant to whether a word could possibly have any negative associations NOW. From an NPR article about the word “ghetto”. “Is it from the Hebrew get, or bill of divorce? From the Venetian ghèto, or foundry? From the Yiddish gehektes, “enclosed”? From Latin Giudaicetum, for “Jewish”? From the Italian borghetto, “little town”? From the Old French guect, “guard”? ”
The definition was: “the quarter in a city, chiefly in Italy, to which the Jews were restricted,”
I don’t think it is “ridiculous” to believe it would be a good idea to stop using the word “ghetto” in a certain way in consideration of the negative associations. And I do believe it would be dishonest and unacceptable for someone to accuse that person of “banning” the word ghetto. Especially when it was abundantly clear to anyone who wasn’t motivated to ridicule the person that the person had NEVER objected to using the word ghetto in other circumstances, like when discussing the Holocaust, and yet people kept accusing them of “banning” the word, because they stopped using it in a certain context IN CONSIDERATION OF OTHERS.
What exactly is ridiculous or silly about someone having a negative association with how the word ghetto is used NOW? And what relevance does the original use of the word ghetto have to whether they are allowed to hold negative associations of the word? And how in the world does not using ghetto in certain circumstances justify people claiming it is “banning” or “censoring” the word when they have no objections to using it in other ways?
The reason that it’s ridiculous to banish (or ban) the word “field” is that it has no negative connotations.
I don’t understand why closely examining a word’s origins or how it was originally used is relevant to whether a word could possibly have any negative associations NOW
NYC, you are the one who made the argument against the word based on its supposed origins in describing field work by anthropologists. So, I was pointing out that that was spurious. It’s a long, long, long established metaphor for intellectual activity. Please insert 400-paragraph rebuttal here.
NYC, language is a matter of shared conventions. People do not have a right to expect that if they suddenly decide that a term has negative associations THAT IT DOES NOT HAVE, others should accommodate them. One cannot decide, arbitrarily, that henceforth, the word glory is going to mean “a nice, knockdown argument” and expect this to be so, for everyone, going forward> That’s just ridiculous, as everyone else on this thread has pointed out to you, many more than once. [Please insert multi-volume rebuttal here.]
Diane,
I guess I assume that the term “field work” and “going out in the field” used in certain contexts had negative connotation for someone.
But my point was that a word can have negative connotations now, regardless of the origins of the word and the meaning of the word when people first used it. And my other point was that a person who believes that some uses of the word have negative connotations to some people now, and therefore chooses to respect that and stop using the word in that context, is not saying that all uses of the word has negative connotations.
Bob,
You misunderstood me. (not blaming you, as I know my posts are long).
The only consistent point I was making was that there can be numerous reasons why a word could have a negative connotation when used specifically in a certain way.
If someone thinks using “ghetto” in a certain way has negative connotations, I don’t need to pinpoint the exact moment in time that word was used in a certain way that validates anyone having negative associations with it.
I don’t understand how you can say with any certainty that USC and Smith College decided “arbitrarily” to change the terminology. Colleges always change terminology.
I thought we had all moved beyond “it doesn’t bother me” rationale. That used to be my response, too, whenever my kid tried to explain why something we always found perfectly fine might bother someone else. It took a long time, and then suddenly I got it.
That’s why I posted here. My knee jerk response is no longer to say “it doesn’t bother me” and belittle the people who find something objectionable. I don’t call their beliefs “arbitrary” as a way to invalidate them.
Since I got “woke” (feel free to deride me), my knee jerk response is to think “I really want to understand why something that didn’t bother me might bother someone else.”
The other time I did this was during the “To Kill A Mockingbird” discussion. I didn’t think the book was racist. But I wanted to understand why other people did, even if everyone else was ridiculing them or accusing them of banning a book. I didn’t read other people mischaracterizing their views — I looked for sources that explained their views with reason and logic and argument.
And I changed my mind. I understood that their beliefs were valid, not ridiculous. I understood why a book that has historically been held up as the gold standard in teaching about racism, is implicitly racist. (Please don’t accuse me of banning the book.) I now understand why parents would be upset that it is so pervasive as required reading over other books and don’t characterize it as “arbitrary”. (Feel free to attack me). I was required to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin (as great literature) in the 1970s. I’d be shocked if back then there weren’t at least a few people objecting to that book as racist but their voices weren’t heard since they were “ridiculous.”
My knee jerk reaction when someone says something might have negative connotations is not to comsider whether I think it has negative connotations because I almost never do. My knee jerk reaction is to be open minded and learn why other people might.
I don’t think the decision to change the terms in two university Social Work programs was “arbitrary” and I think characterizing it as such is part of the problem. Even if you think it is UNNECESSARY, that doesn’t mean it was arbitrary or silly. Words matter.
Waiting for you all to ridicule me. I can take it.
It WAS silly and inane.
As they say, keeping an open mind is fine as long as you don’t let foolish ideas in. And this is quite foolish.
Yet AGAIN, these colleges cannot decide on their own that words mean things that they do not mean. That’s not how language works. Doing this was ignorant because it was based on a false notion of what the word field, used metaphorically, in this way, means.
Just to be clear, as Saussure pointed out long ago in the lectures collected as the Course in General Linguistics, language signs ARE arbitrary, usually. So, there is no particular reason what the fruit that is used to make the quintessential American pie is called in English an apple instead of a manzana or a jabłko. When I used the term “arbitrary,” I was not referring to that. I was referring to the notion that these colleges can decide ON THEIR OWN, and in THAT SENSE ARBITRARILY, that the world “field” has restricted meaning that it hasn’t, traditionally, had. If I tell you that the word glory means “a nice, knockdown argument,” however strongly I might feel about that, I am simply wrong, and my claim is silly because it is ignorant.
Bob,
I recall that you also argued with me a lot when I was objecting to how people here seemed to be belittling a few parents who objected to To Kill a Mockingbird and saw it as a racist book. So we’ll have to agree to disagree that people who aren’t bothered by any negative connotations of an expression should feel empowered to belittle the people who are trying to be considerate of people who might be bothered. Even if those people are few in number.
I doubt this change was made out of thin air. Just because it wasn’t necessary doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with making the change.
It was made for bogus, bs reasons, as I and others have explained here in what is now far too much detail. And the millions of teachers who have taught Mockingbird have done far, far, far more to combat racism than have a couple faculty sitting on a committee somewhere, having appointed themselves The Language Police.
OK, maybe hundreds of thousands instead of millions. But what this means is that there were hundreds of thousands of classrooms in America where teachers and kids had REAL discussions about racism occasioned by teaching this book, which is probably one of the reasons why, if you poll young people in America today, they are fervently anti-racist. The morons on the right who want to shut down discussion of and teaching about race in America in our K-12 schools are angry about precisely that kind of thing–about stuff like the widespread teaching of Mockingbird, which helped to bring about this generational cultural shift. And spare me the 10,000-paragraph argument. It’s bs, and I am in no mood. Those teachers, ones who taught this book, like me, did this nation and the cause of anti-racism an enormous service, and if you don’t know that, I’m sorry. But tell it to your teacup. I’m not in the mood.
I taught it, too, in my special ed 8th grade class. I cannot understand why someone who wants others to understand the ugliness of racism condemns a book for portraying what racism looked like.
Exactly. Kids see this, and they are rightly horrified. End of story until they get to grad school (if they do).
“I cannot understand why someone who wants others to understand the ugliness of racism condemns a book for portraying what racism looked like.”
Why use the word “condemn”? People criticize the book for various reasons, and that characterization seems to be setting up a straw man. They don’t criticize TKAM for “portraying what racism looked like”.
It seems to me that TKAM also teaches kids what it means NOT to be a racist. It means to be like Atticus.
I didn’t know much, but I already knew what racism looked like when I was a kid. There was no need for me to have a “Eureka” moment that white people in the south hated Blacks and would not be fair in a jury trial or would lynch them.
Maybe you both taught teenaged Black students who had no idea racism looked like that, or white students who had no idea that racism looked like that.
Maybe Scout and others learned to have empathy for the “other” and understood how hard it was in a society that was racist.
Even in the late 1970s, I wasn’t surprised at all that racism looked like that when I read the book. But I did get a finely drawn portrait of life in the family of an upright and honorable man teaching his children what it meant to not be racist. I learned that not being a racist meant to be like Atticus. There was a time when that was a very good message.
But most of us now – including every Republican – believes they are like Atticus. I can’t imagine a single Republican criticizing that character. If Republicans have criticized Atticus and don’t want the book read because Atticus is “too woke”, I must have missed that. Republicans – as far as I can tell – believe Atticus is just as wonderful as Democrats do.
And yet….
I find your understanding of Atticus and his actions simplistic. I’m sure Bob could do a better job of explaining why, but I have a suspicion that Bob is tired of debating you. If success for you is to wear people down to the point that they just refuse to engage with you, then I think you may have achieved your goal.
You keep trying to convince me of things that I already know are true. I am not arguing with Bob that TKAM has many merits.
I keep trying to convince you that there are some valid criticisms about the implicit racism in the way the characters are written and the way the book and characters are presented in teaching.
But if you don’t believe there is any implicit racism in the way the characters are written and the author’s attitude toward them, and you can’t imagine that there is anything to criticize in the book that relates to implicit racism (even if you disagree with my specific examples), then that is exactly what is wrong. Bob says it’s okay to acknowledge implicit racism, but I don’t know how he would do so because I only know what he doesn’t believe is implicitly racist.
Everyone – including Republicans – loves Atticus. Students read the book and think that’s what it means not to be racist. They come to see how Atticus has influenced his own children to not be racist anymore. It’s nice to have a book that Republicans and Democrats agree is perfect.
There is nothing in it to make anyone uncomfortable, because the kind of racism in the book is the kind of racism that most high school students today knew existed in the south long ago, and even Republicans acknowledge.
These posts are good examples of why one cannot turn over curriculum decisions to random parents.
There will always be people with views that are somewhere over the rainbow.
And for some bizarre reason, you are now saying that “Everyone loves Atticus” when, the last time around, when we debated the merits of TKAM here, your main problem with the book was that it was built around a supposed “white savior,” and that would be, ahem, Atticus. So, I guess that is no longer your contention, but what is your contention, I don’t grok. It’s no longer relevant because it is about a kind of racism that no longer exists? That’s a strange argument indeed because it is a book about distrust of, fear of, prejudice toward, the Other generally and about the structural forms that such fear and loathing of the Other takes.
The book is ABOUT racism, so there is racism in it. That doesn’t make it “a racist book.” I am waiting for you to point out what about this book is racist. That would be impossible to do because it is not a racist book. It is a POWERFUL tool in the arsenal AGAINST RACISM and has proved itself to be such in the crucible of actual classroom experience literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times.
Inquiry Driven Systems • Inquiry Fields
Was it silly and foolish when a small group of parents (and some scholars) thought that the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” was implicitly racist?
Just wondering.
No. It was FAR WORSE THAN SILLY.
Over many, many decades, there were, in classrooms all across America, many hundreds of thousands of examples of teachers and kids having REAL, extended, and sometimes complex and difficult discussions about racism occasioned by study of this book, which is probably one of the reasons why, if you poll young people in America today, they are fervently anti-racist. The morons on the right who want to shut down discussion of and teaching about race in America in our K-12 schools are angry about precisely that kind of thing–about stuff like the widespread teaching of Mockingbird, which HELPED TO BRING ABOUT THIS WIDESPREAD CULTURAL SHIFT. And spare me the 10,000-paragraph argument about how someone somewhere is bothered by the book. Boo hoo. It’s bs, and I am in no mood. Compared to the good done by all those discussions–hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them, someone’s being bothered means nothing. Those teachers, ones who taught this book, like me, did this nation and the cause of anti-racism AN ENORMOUS SERVICE, and if you don’t know that, I’m sorry, but I can’t do more than simply tell you WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, again and again and again and again. The teaching of this book occasioned hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hours of anti-racist discussion in America’s classrooms. If people have problems with the book, that’s not in the least bit surprising. Duh. But that doesn’t take anything away from the far more significant positive results of all that anti-racist teaching. If people don’t understand this, well, too bad, so sad. They need to get a clue.
It is NOT amusing to hear this bs from armchair antiracists who have not walked the walk and fought the fight for decades.
Wow, you project a lot just because people notice the implicit racism in To Kill A Mockingbird.
I don’t really get your anger. I also believe that everything you say can be true — and I don’t doubt any of it — and that does NOT mean that anyone who criticizes To Kill A Mockingbird because of the implicit racism or says there might even be BETTER books available now to teach students about racism needs to be dismissed just because all of that is true.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin did a lot of good when it came out. Is anyone arguing that fact? But it doesn’t mean that decades later, one cannot ever look back at that novel and see problems. Certainly when people first started criticizing that book, there was a lot of knee jerk defense.
I respect all the good you did teaching with TKAM. I don’t accept that it means the book cannot be criticized NOW from a 2023 perspective on race. Sorry that makes you mad, truly. And honestly, I am surprised it does.
Ah, so you have revised your position. It’s OK to teach it, now, and you are only taking a stand on its having racist elements. Glad to hear that you have evolved on this issue.
Stick to what you know about. There was nothing implicit about the racism in TKAM. It was in your face, front and center. It’s been awhile since I have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but I do remember that it is an anti-slavery novel. I suspect I would have the same trouble with finding its portrayal of racism as racist.
I suspect, speduktr, that NYC is referring to the supposed “white savior” aspect of TKAM–that that’s what NYC means by the book’s “implicit racism”–though Tom is NOT saved by Atticus or anyone else, and there weren’t a lot of saviors for black people of any kind with the power to go up against the authorities in rural Alabama in the 1930s. This lack of power to change things, especially for black people themselves, is one of the brutal facts of the culture so vividly, so devastatingly portrayed in the novel. THAT’S THE POINT, or one of them. I’ve seen how this moves kids, again and again. Imagine being rendered so powerless!!!! Nonetheless, Tom does try to save himself, by escaping, only to be killed, though this is a desperate act and utterly unlikely to succeed. So, he is not portrayed as entirely passive, but part of the message of the book is that agency is STOLEN from people like Tom by the racist culture around him. This message is pointedly driven home by the jury’s being disgusted that Tom felt sorry for Ewell’ daughter, the white girl Mayella. So the “white savior” critique falls flat. People who make this criticism of the book haven’t read it carefully.
I never thought of Atticus in those terms. He certainly didn’t, but I do have a vague memory, now that you mention it, of the white savior criticism. I don’t remember being at all impressed by the argument.
It’s an absurd argument. Tom is not saved.
The power of this novel, what makes it such a great teaching tool, is that it uses parallel stories–those of Tom and of Boo–to teach that racism has its roots in fear of the unfamiliar, the unknown. That Tom is mostly an Invisible Man in this tale is part of THAT. It’s a tale From a Perspective–the perspective of someone with a fear of the unknown and unfamiliar, and THAT’S THE POINT. Racism simultaneously creates the Invisible Man and makes people fear him because he is unknown. The novel demonstrates this beautifully, clearly, masterfully. So, folks who make that white savior criticism simply haven’t understood the book. They really need to read it more carefully. I give them a D-.
In other words, the great theme of the novel is that racism results from childish fear of the dangers of that which is unknown, and this fear is magnified by a culture that walls people off from one another, that disempowers and shuts some out–makes them invisible EXCEPT as the SCARY OTHER.
No white savior anywhere to be seen in that.
You know I started working with special Ed students as a volunteer. I knew little about LD at that point, but I did know I was extremely uncomfortable around kids who were mentally challenged. I don’t even know what the proper terminology is anymore. Anyway, I volunteered to “teach “ an autistic boy how to swim. I was embarrassed by my own discomfort. Imagine! They have wants and needs, strengths and weaknesses, just like everyone else.! Even the kids with severe disabilities. I loved how Scout came to know and care for Boo.
YES!!!!!
I had similar experiences with autistic students, speduktr–first with an autistic guitar student when I was a guitar teacher, then with mainstreamed autistic kids in my English classes. They taught me a lot.
The reason why this novel is so uniquely appropriate for teaching kids about racism is that it has them identify with a character who makes this journey OUT OF a childish fear of the unknown other–the very thing that is the root cause of racism. Powerful stuff. As good as it gets. Especially given how CLEARLY and CONVINCINGLY all this is demonstrated by the novel. It’s a tour de force.
Maybe students in 2023 don’t need the same lessons in racism that students in 1970 or 1980 or 1990 or 2000 did.
Maybe there are other, more recent novels that would address the issues of racism that are happening TODAY better. And foment better discussions about racism today. Is that really a controversial thing for me to say?
How does that statement take away from the good that happened when you taught the book? You did wonderful things when teaching the book and so did many other teachers.
I have no idea why that means that the implicit racism in TKAM cannot be mentioned. Or worse, is rejected as simply not true.
No one suggested that implicit racism in TKAM cannot be mentioned. I did at some length, above, explain why one claim regarding supposed implicit racism in TKAM is LUDICROUS because it is not supported by the text but in, in fact, unrelated to the actual text, which does the precise opposite of what the text is claimed, by that critique, to do. THERE IS NO WHITE SAVIOR OF A BLACK PERSON IN TKAM. There is no black savior of a white person either. Racism in this book, in this time and place, is portrayed as an inexorable machine. BUT, its cause is identified. That’s a start. More than identified–its source and its cure are presented as the lived experience of the main character and, vicariously, ofc, of the student reader. So important and valuable, that.
Bob,
You said “No one suggested that implicit racism in TKAM cannot be mentioned”. And then you offered your take on what you thought the critics believed was implicitly racist in order to debunk the idea that it was explicitly racist!
So what implicit racism in TKAM do you think is worth mentioning? I am confused as to whether you acknowledge any implicit racism in the book at all.
“No one suggested that implicit racism in TKAM cannot be mentioned.”
If a teacher doesn’t see any implicit racism in TKAM, it definitely won’t be mentioned. And even some wonderful, excellent teachers don’t always see implicit bias.
Many years ago, now, Gates’s dog David Coleman decided that substantive works of literature (including, especially, nonfiction) were not being read in the nation’s schools. This he decided DESPITE THE FACT that almost every public school in the United States was using in its classes a hardbound literature textbook anthology filled with almost nothing but tried and true substantive literary works–ones that had stood the test of time and that people expected to see in their textbooks. If Coleman had known ANYTHING about what was ACTUALLY HAPPENING in the nation’s classrooms–about, for example, WHAT STUDENTS WERE ACTUALLY READING, he would not have made such an utterly preposterous claim. That preposterous claim, btw, was not challenged by our nation’s journalists, who just took his bs at face value.
There’s this thing that happens when you leave large numbers of people to sort things out–it’s what happens with crowd sourcing and why studies consistently show that Wikipedia is no more prone to error than are major encyclopedias, with their scholarly authors of entries and their professional editors. Large numbers of people trying these things out and debating their value, over time, yields high-quality results. (The same happens with common as opposed to stautory law, btw.) The lit texts end up representing the canon.
Well, there are REASONS who To Kill a Mockingbird has long been a standard part of the high-school English curriculum. It provides an opportunity for teaching anti-racism, for having those essential discussions. And because it is considered “a classic” (sic) in the vulgar sense of canonical, people haven’t, until recently, thought that they should play curriculum police and censor it.
So, why has it survived crowd-sourcing to become canonical? Well, there are a number of reasons. First, it is easily accessible to average readers. Second, it is a gripping story. Third, the characters, and especially the main character, are to use kid vernacular, “relatable.” Kids identify with Scout, and so, as happens with Satan in Paradise Lost, the kids FALL WITH HER. The difference is that like her, they are redeemed. So, the book takes kids on an essential emotional anti-racist journey. IT WORKS TO MAKE ANTI-RACIST KIDS, and that’s why generations of English teachers have relied on it. It’s important. It’s powerful. It changes people, as art is supposed to do.
If you like the fact that our kids today are anti-racist, thank those teachers for teaching that book.
The Governor Abutts of the world would love to see a few self-appointed left-wing censors remove this book from the standard curriculum, because they hate the results that flow from its being taught.
Here’s another reason why it is really important to teach kids this book NOW: It is now historical. It helps to explain HOW WE GOT HERE. It illustrates CLEARLY the HISTORICAL systemic racism (and its causes) that created today’s economic disparities.
“It illustrates CLEARLY the HISTORICAL systemic racism…”
Isn’t there something in there about heeding the lessons of the past? Should we not teach Of Mice and Men? Clearly we don’t want to highlight the racism that Crooks faced, not to mention Lenny’s struggles and inevitable demise. Heaven forbid we discuss the Great Depression! I’m sure we could find someone to offend.
I so agree with you about this!!! Really important point you are making here.
I object to bawdlerizing books and plays written 50, 100, or 500 years ago. Some are blatantly sexist, some are racist. They reflect their times.