TheAgitator.com
Southern California School District May Ban the Dictionary
Monday, January 25th, 2010Given the headline, you’d be forgiven for thinking the offending entries were an affront to political correctness. Nope. Just good old-fashioned prudery.
After a parent complained about an elementary school student stumbling across “oral sex” in a classroom dictionary, Menifee Union School District officials decided to pull Merriam Webster’s 10th edition from all school shelves earlier this week.
School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the “sexually graphic” entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. The dictionaries were initially purchased a few years ago for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms districtwide, according to a memo to the superintendent.
“It’s just not age appropriate,” said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district.
“It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” Cadmus said.
Better that kids learn these things on the playground, I guess.
(Thanks to Chris Berez for the link.)
oral sex: oral stimulation of the genitals : cunnilingus, fellatio.
Oh no, little Johnny will now have pluck his eyes out!
How many types of stupid are those administrators?
“It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” Cadmus said.”
Which, interestingly, is precisely what they’re afraid their students will do.
#2
I don’t know; they took away the thesaurus too.
About once a week, I’ll be reading this blog and think “Dear God, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Does this feeling ever go away?
Better that kids learn these things on the playground, I guess.
Hell, by the time they’re in 4th grade, most kids probably could have written the entry themselves.
In any case, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to deny kids access to an up-to-date dictionary in order to protect them from a single entry. Everyone knows that kids don’t become sex-aware until their 18th birthday.
#4, I don’t know; they took away the thesaurus too.
Excellent.
Unless a child is placed in an hermetically sealed bubble, there is no way he / she can be “protected” from the “seedier” side of life…
It never ceases to amaze me, how many adults forget their own childhood, i.e. the things they did, saw, heard and discussed with other children; things that their parents never knew about…
No. In fact it get’s progressively worse. Thankfully, as you become increasingly more cynical about the prospects for the human race, you eventually lose all hope, thereby diminishing your expectations to the point where it’s impossible to be disappointed.
Cheers.
When I was a kid, I lived for the seedier side of life.
Kids are bastards. I was a little bastard, all my friends were little bastards. So was Radley, definitely Dave, I have a feeling Cynical was every teachers worst nightmare, and every other other child that ever existed. Kids are immature, selfish, and completely aware of sex, drugs, and every other taboo subject they aren’t supposed to know about. It has nothing to do with the Dictionary, MTV, or video games. Kids are just bastards with or without stimuli because that is the natural state of children. Which is why I don’t have any.
Of course, because without a definition the kids wouldnt be doing any of this. Lets follow the great success of the “just say no” and “abstinence” education in the South, which does little to stop teenage sexual activity.
When I was a kid I read the Bible for all the salacious parts.
People who are frightened by words are frightening people.
Matt’s got me dead to rights — I was a pro-level bastard. If I wasn’t sitting in the back row, I was miserable.
“Lets follow the great success of the “just say no” and “abstinence” education in the South, which does little to stop teenage sexual activity.” — SJE
Q: Why is Halloween the favorite holiday in the South?.
A: ‘Cause they like to pump kin!
Menifee is in Riverside County, which us civilized folk lovingly refer to as “The 909.”
See above.
The only reason to dust off the dictionary was for those kinds of words. I hope kids accidentally stumble upon other words while in there…
When I was in school, the dictionary naturally fell open to the entry between Fuchsia and Fudge.
I was one of those obnoxiously angelic children, and I searched dictionaries for all the grown-up words. Hell, I distinctly remember searching for these same words in both my Merriam-Webster and My First Dictionary. My First Dictionary was a sore disappointment.
They’re taking all the fun out of childhood.
Good old fashioned prudery. Political correctness only applies when the issue could be used to bludgeon liberals.
It’s funny, but grew up in what was then (and kinda still is) a seedy little corner of the San Fernando Valley, called Pacoima, back in the 70s. As a second grader, one of my neighbor buddies found a box of magazines in his mom’s garage that were unlike the Playboys at the liquor store. We were exposed to hardcore sex, full penetration, oral, anal, homosexual, SM, and scat play. 2girls1cup had nothing on the people in these mags. And aside from the laughs, curiosity, and howls of disbelief trying to make sense of all that stuff, none of us were any worse for the wear.
Yeah, in retrospect, my buddy’s mom did seem a little unusual for a mom, even to a second grader.
Next thing you know, there’ll be thespians in drama classes, and many of the students will end up matriculating by the time they graduate! And did you know that every student who buys a meal in the school cafeteria masticates before he leaves the dining area?!?!?
It’s shameful I tell you!
When I was at that young curious age, I discovered that my dad had a bunch of medical books with pictures in them. Then I found the National Geographic magazines.
I knew WAY more than any dictionary would provide by the time I was 8. Hell, by the time I was 10, I had witnessed a couple having sex in the woods. (I was pretty good at sneaking around without being noticed. Not that they would have as they were pretty busy.)
Moral: Kids grow up faster than you think. What seems a blink on an eye to a grownup is forever to an 10 yr old.
Please tell me this is from a satirical newspaper. This can’t be real, can it?
What Cynical in CA says about Riverside seems to be pretty dead on. I sent this story to a friend of mine in California and he told me that Riverside might as well be Kansas.
I always knew that California was bad when it came to fiscal policy, but something like this? I never would have guessed that anything like this could happen in California in a million years.
At some point it becomes painfully obvious that many parents and administrators are suffering under the delusion that children never grow up. They fear that even the blandest of facts about adult life might somehow scar the child, as if complete ignorance will serve as a shield. It is very hard for an infantile parent to raise a functioning adult.
It should be pointed out to them, when their precious little snowflake fails high school english and gets a 350 on the language section of their SAT, that they themselves campaigned to have the fucking dictionary removed from the classroom. And as always the children suffer for the sins of the parent.
Long ago, my father tried – in jest – to get the local school board to ban the dictionary. It was an attempt to show the absurdity of banning books. It probably never occurred to him that any school would actually do such a thing.
That’s not the worst. Virtually the whole time that they are in class, the teachers are engaging in pedagogical activities!
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
- Mark Twain
…and as Richard Armour wrote, conjugating right in class!
Kids are stupid nowadays. During the Clinton Administration, everyone knew the definition of oral sex
John Gatto loves this stuff- he keeps saying kids will learn on their own, but schools impede the learning. school staff search our kids without just cause, search their lockers and their cars… they force them to give urine to find out what’s in their bodies… they expell them for carrying items the school feels ‘might’ be a weapon… they restrict any writing that can be construed as controversial… and they remove one of the greatest tools ever made to self-teach.
“(Thanks to Chris Berez for the link.)”
Though I’m sure it’s not the actual first time, congrats to Radley for giving a HT to another. It’s not critical, but appreciated.
So they’re going to be logically consistent and ban the DARE program too, right? After all, context is meaningless to people that think like this. It’s the knowledge itself that they consider evil. If knowing about oral sex leads to oral sex, then knowing about drugs is certain to make your kid a smack addict before the week is out.
I know that we have this rep. for being progressive out here in California, but there is a huge difference between the southern parts and the northern parts of the state.
Up here in the north, we’re a bunch of liberal hippies. The kind the rest of the States has been warned about.
The south are … well, very much most of the other southern states with the exception of the LA area.
Perhaps just tear out the offensive pages and burn them. Just a thought.
Kids are stupid nowadays. During the Clinton Administration, everyone knew the definition of oral sex
Yeah. It was the word “is” that caused all of the problems.
When I was a kid, I became an avid fan of photography. Not because I actually cared about photography, mind you, or that I ever learned how to properly frame and take a photo — but because I learned that every photography book in the library had a section on photographing nudes. Mom would have caught on to a Playboy, but she never bothered to even thumb through my photography books.
I also found that in a pinch, medical books were very illustrative of the female body. We also went looking for naked tribeswomen in National Geographic, thumbed through the dictionary looking for “naughty” words, and snuck into the living room late at night so we could watch “Skinemax” without mom and dad’s supervision. We didn’t do this when we were 16, we did it as early as I can remember, around 7 or 8 years old. I remember seeing my first Playboy in first grade.
What I’m trying to get at is, children aren’t “stumbling upon” this stuff. They’re deliberately seeking it out. They’re trying to find it.
Takes me back. In the 1950s, all dictionary entries for ‘naughty’ words were so elliptical that you had to keep looking up the ellipses to find out what the original entry meant. And the ellipses led to more ellipses, so that you never did find out. But I think I got most of my vocabulary by being bounced around the dictionary that way.
Trust me, this isn’t the end of the World.
Because it’s not like there’s this thing called the internet with search engines which would lead kids to far more graphic descriptions and depictions of oral sex than a clinical and sanitized definition found in a dictionary.
Cripes, some days the stupid hurts worse than others…
#24 | Chris Berez — “What Cynical in CA says about Riverside seems to be pretty dead on.”
I gotta tell you Chris, I steadfastly refuse to bullshit.
I call it like I see it, and I tend to see it pretty clearly.
Obviously some Inland Empire cretin who negkarmed me ….
Can’t handle the truth.
“…and as Richard Armour wrote, conjugating right in class!”
And with a substitute teacher teaching conjugation, would that constitute a (horrors!) conjugal visit?
Hello Southern California School District & The Parent that started this bullshit.
What about….Nigger, Bastard, Whore, Ass, Cunt, Pussy, Dick, Slut, Shit, Fuck, Motherfucker, Boy. To mention a few.
Are these “WORDS” not offensive?
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