Sensitivity censorship is big in America and is sweeping tests and textbooks clean of words that are deemed offensive to particular groups of people. Federal legislation dictates that no child be left behind in government-supported schools, which has been interpreted to mean that instructional content be kept secular, neutral, and non-ideological. This sounds fair and reasonable, but efforts to ensure fairness to all students throughout the nation's education system have produced some quirky results.   Educational publishers hire specialists who devise sensitivity guidelines and then enforce them. Textbooks and tests are combed for bias and offending passages arc erased or softened. Almost all references to race, religion, gender, nudity, alcohol, and age are removed. Eyen the mildest profanity is expunged. In tests, regional references and even geographical words are often deleted―passage　about mountains, for example, would be biased in favor of those who　lived in mountains. Even the popular slogan  “Adopt a highway”―which encourages individuals or groups to take responsibility for keeping a certain stretch of roadway litter-free―was considered inappropriate because of the word “adopt,” which may be offensive to adopted children.   Ironically, the sensitivity industry tends to reverse stereotypes rather than eliminate them. Thus, women are climbing under their cars to make repairs or are driving taxis, while men are staying home to take care of the baby or are going off to the office to carry out their duties as secretaries. Stereotype reversal makes it difficult to include elderly people at all. Since depicting the elderly as frail or limited is taboo, they are often portrayed as being equally as active and energetic as their grandchildren.   The result of all this nonsense is that much forceful writing and much of the real world is deleted from texts, and the pap that is left has no power. If sensitivity guidelines result in the creation of a benign but twisted fantasy world that smothers our educational materials, then we need to take a harder look at those guidelines.