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

Abstract

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