Southern CA school district bans Merriam Webster's dictionary

reply to post by memoir


Certainly agree with you, of course now that a big deal is being made of this it's a big flag for these children to find out what's up....they will be more curious then ever.

reply to post by fraterormus


Keep them dumb, keep the stupid and more easily malleable, free thinkers are a danger to the system.

Isn't California supposed to a be a liberal state?

Hmm, perhaps not.

This is ridiculous, I mean come on it's a dictionary. I would expect it to contain the definitions of words, mundane ones, offensive ones and all other manner of words.

To ban something like this sets a really bleak standard for the education of these kids. Censoring simple words which are meant to educate our children, is doing the opposite, non educating.

Sad..

~Keeper

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere

Originally posted by fraterormus
Sounds like School Administrators in SoCal need to learn to play a bit of hard-ball back.

Or just ignore them altogether. Let them take their kids out of the school if it bothers them so much.

Quite true. If they are so offended that there are dictionaries in the Classrooms, or in the School Libraries, then they always have the option of Home Schooling their children or sending them to a Private School that agrees with their sensibilities.

Instead, they'd rather force their own ignorance upon everyone else, and have schools enforce their own personal ideology universally. These people want their religion taught in Public Schools, rather than Science, and deny the same equality to other religious beliefs. These people want abstinence taught exclusively rather than provide children the education and tools they need for the real-world (come on, if children are more commonly getting pregnant at ages 8-11, then teaching them even Abstinence when they are age 17 is a little too late!). Since they don't want their children access to a Dictionary, they want to deny all children access to a Dictionary.

Perhaps these parents should grow up and actually learn to parent their children instead of trying to shelter them by demanding that all children be made ignorant in their own child's image! Rather than have an uncomfortable discussion with their child that looked up "Oral Sex" in the dictionary (because clearly their child heard it somewhere other than the dictionary before they looked it up!) they would rather shirk their parental responsibilities and go the route of total avoidance by projecting their faults as a parent upon this being the responsibility of the school district.

Oh, if Freud were still alive today I wonder what he would say about these people!

If people want their children to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, then they best be locking them in their cellars. They shouldn't blame the dictionary or the schools for trying to educate them by making common resources available to them!

reply to post by tothetenthpower

Isn't California supposed to a be a liberal state?

When I lived there I found it not so liberal but extreme, this is just one case in point.

reply to post by fraterormus


Deary,I learned to read during the Kennedy administation,when did
you learn to read? I read my BIBLE everyday,it helps me and it could
help you to.

I am not a believer of the end of the world 2012 stuff, but the utter backwards, retardations of today's parents are starting to make me hop more and more there is something to it.

The dictionary is going to give as "clean" a definition of "oral sex" as possible. As someone here pointed out -a quick search of the net would give them a much more graphic description I'm sure.

Originally posted by mamabeth
Deary,I learned to read during the Kennedy administation,when did
you learn to read? I read my BIBLE everyday,it helps me and it could
help you to.

May I begin by quoting a great American author of the 19th century:

"The only thing more dangerous than a well-read man is the man who has read only one book repeatedly."

"Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."

~ Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

I have read the Christian Bible, along with the Torah, Tanakh, Qu'ran, the Corpus Hermeticum, Sutras of Patanjali, the Zend Avestas, the Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, Nihongi, Shri Guru Granth Sahib, and every extant religious text of every religion both living and long since forgotten. The Bible was a good read, but frankly I got more out of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

I was encouraged to read Shakespeare at the Kindergarten level during the 70s. By the First Grade I had moved on to Dickens and Cooper. In the Second Grade I was given Poe and Hawthorn. By the Third Grade I had moved on to Transcendentalist Literature such as Emerson and Thoreau. When I enrolled for the 4th Grade, I had already read over 1000 pieces of Classical Literature, and by the end of that year, I had exhausted both our School Library and Public Library and learned the value of Inter-Library Loan. Today, I have a personal library of @ 45,000 books, all of which I have read at least once.

Literacy is important on so many levels, not just because it allows us to communicate with our fellow human beings, but because it allows us to speak across time to other generations, it allows us to explore other worlds, other times, other places. It liberates the soul and allows us to learn, not just from example and making mistakes first-hand, but from the mistakes and examples of others safely from our arm-chair. Most of all, it teaches us what truly defines the human spirit, and allows that spirit to become something truly greater than the sum of it's own experiences.

A well-read human is not bound to one trade. The well-read are not bound to the circumstances of their time and place. One who is well-read can don the clothing of anyone, do anything. I may not be a doctor, and I may not even play one on t.v., but if ever I needed to know anything about Brain Surgery, give me 48 hours in a library, and I can know everything there is to know on the subject that has been committed to books!

That is the power of reading more than one book...and the ability to unlock that power lies in gaining an intimate grasp of language. That is where the importance of dictionaries come into all of this. That is precisely why neither books nor dictionaries should ever be banned, especially in education. To do such is to bind the hands of our educators and to deny our children the ability to become something more than the sum of their experiences, to learn that they can become anything, do anything, and achieve anything.

I have no qualms with the Bible. However, I do have qualms with those that would forsake all other forms of literature and education for the Bible alone.

[edit on 26-1-2010 by fraterormus]

Originally posted by djvexd
I am not a believer of the end of the world 2012 stuff, but the utter backwards, retardations of today's parents are starting to make me hop more and more there is something to it.

Some people don't want their, elementary aged children,knowing about
oral sex.Any dictionary for schools,should be age appropriate.
The way some of you people post,it makes me wonder how you sleep
at night!
Calling others,retards,backwards,nut cases,nutjobs...next time you say
these words,try looking at yourself in a mirror first and see if you like
what you see.

reply to post by fraterormus


When did I ever say that I forsake all forms of literature,except the Bible?
You are making an assumption, that people who read the Bible,aren't
reading anything else.

The definition listed has been in that dictionary since 1973. I see no reason for the puritans/pharisees to get their panties in a wad after it has been in the same dictionary for 36-37 years.

I would be more fearful of my niece and nephew learning from the bible which includes genocide, sex, murder, slavery, torture, betrayal, concubines etc.
I'm guessing momma puritans were looking for something to complain about instead of looking up Jesus whom is in the same dictionary.

oral sex
Function: noun
Date: 1973

: oral stimulation of the genitals

That's it?


I would like to know from readers on here supporting such things which dictionary they recommend that does not include sexual terms. I want to know the dictionary company recommended by the moral orals? I used the same dictionary in elementary school although I wasn't looking up oral sex.









[edit on 26/1/10 by toochaos4u]

reply to post by mamabeth


To be honest I sleep quite well thank you. However I don't see how a small group of people raising a stink over 1 definition in a 1000 page book, and getting it completely removed as a resource is anything but backward and retarded. If they don't like the fact this 1 definition is in the dictionary forbid your kids from using it and giving them your approved dictionary is a better option than receeding to the dark ages and declaring a book with a heretical word, the DEMON'S CALIGRAPHY! You nor these people have the right to deny my children or anyone elses's for that matter the use of a resource at school because it offends some sort of sensisiblity you may harbor becuase that person is uncomfortable broaching the subject with a child if they find this 1 defintion in all of 1 thousnd pages. It is not the job of the school system to police information you don't want them to learn. It is the job of the parent to engage and teach the child when they come across the word. Neither you, nor any person has a right to deny information based on your percieved ethics to other people's kids. No offense but that to me is lazy parenting.

[edit on 26-1-2010 by djvexd]

[edit on 26-1-2010 by djvexd]

reply to post by djvexd


For your information,my "child" is 35 years old! I don't have any say
in how my grandchildren are educated.My job is to bake them cookies
and send them money on their birthdays!

I still think the dictionaries should be age appropriate.What's next,
anatomically correct Barbie and Ken dolls?

I am certainly divided on this one.

On one hand, I am not for censoring books, but I do beleive in controlling the "knowledge" imparted to our young.

By this I mean that what is common sense to teach a high school student may not make much sense to teach a first grader.

But is the answer to require Merriam Webster, or whoever, to produce several versions of a dictionary.
Can you imagine what that would result in?

I do, however, wonder what the response from these same school administrators would be if a sixth grader showed up wearing a t-shirt with the words "oral sex" and then it's definition, word for word, from the dictionary.

Originally posted by Oaktree

On one hand, I am not for censoring books, but I do beleive in controlling the "knowledge" imparted to our young.

I just finished this book, Peeking Through the Keyhole, about the evolution of homes through time. The meat of the book is filled with some pretty interesting insights.

One chapter was focused primarily on changing technology and its influence on room use and human behavior regarding congregation and ritual.

In this chapter the authors refer to to some other work, cant think of the author or title now, in which the conclusion was made that television effectively removed childhood as an experience. I thought that was a load of bull. After all, who doesnt love cartoons? The further it went on the more merit I thought the argument had.

To read something you have to understand the language. Some kid can't just pick up some text written for professionals or college students and understand it. It wont make any sense to the kid. Likely the kid will just put it down and move on to one of those golden bound childrens books. Reading takes a certain amount of effort to understand and move through.

TV on the other hand takes no effort at all. All it asks is that you stare at a screen. It doesnt matter if you understand the program or not because it has your attention with visuals and noise.

Makes sense to me. Of course quality parenting would have some influence on the use of television in the home but the parent cant be there all the time. Especially when most homes have multiple TV sets.

Anyway, I'm not taking this as gospel of any sort and neither should you. I just thought it was interesting.

Duplicate thread. Please continue in earlier thread.

Closed.