PC madness: 11 subjects ridiculously banned from school testing in NYC

Any mention of birthdays, dinosaurs, and dancing is discouraged on standardized tests in New York City schools, as district officials strive to avoid offending anyone.

last updated 8 January 2015

It is apparently quite common for school districts to request that standardized tests not include certain words that students might find offensive. But New York City's list of some 50 banned test topics is twice as long as national sensitivity lists, and stands out as "a bizarre case of political correctness run wild," says Yoav Gonen in the New York Post. NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott disagrees, telling CBS that the city Department of Education is "not an outlier in being politically correct" — it's just dealing with a more diverse student body. But most experts — not to mention students, educators, and parents — seem to be on the PC-run-amok side. Here, a look at 11 of the blacklisted topics, and why they might have been deemed problematic:

1. Birthdays