So It's Come To This
Check this out.
Do you remember being a kid in the library and looking up dirty words in the big dictionary? I remember doing it, and I remember my kids and their friends doing it.
The dictionary contains, let's say, every word in the English language. Some of the words are not very nice. Therefore dictionaries must be banned. What do you say to people who think like that?
A Southern California school district has pulled dictionaries from classrooms because a parent complained when a child came across the term "oral sex."
District officials said Friday that the Menifee Union School District — which serves 9,000 kindergartners through eight graders in Riverside County — is forming a committee to consider a permanent classroom ban of the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
A memo from Assistant Superintendent Karen Valdes acknowledged it is a respected resource but district officials found that "a number of referenced words are age-inappropriate."
Some parents and free-speech advocates said the district is overreacting.
Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition says "common sense seems to be lacking in this school."
Menifee is a city of about 67,000 people 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles. SoCal district pulls dictionaries over sex term
Do you remember being a kid in the library and looking up dirty words in the big dictionary? I remember doing it, and I remember my kids and their friends doing it.
The dictionary contains, let's say, every word in the English language. Some of the words are not very nice. Therefore dictionaries must be banned. What do you say to people who think like that?
posted by JimK at 9:18 PM
9 Comments:
remember how Barry was going to unify the country?
"The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats' (88%) and Republicans' (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office"
He has the country the greatest polarization it has ever had.
"Anonymous"
Once again...your posting is completely irrelevant to the topic of the blog entry. Is there something wrong with your mind that you cannot seem to be able to make a connection between the topic of discussion and whatever it is that you choose to stroke your ego with by writing about?
Citizen
you need to expand your horizons, Citizen
the point is, Obama sucks
My horizons, "Anonymous", are doing quite well, thank you. I don't need supercilious people like you to tell me how to expand them.
The point, "Anonymous", is that you, and anything you say here, are irrelevant.
Your inability to stick to the moderator's topics of discussion displays an ego beyond belief.
Your attempts to hijack this blog site are nefarious, unethical, and just plain obnoxious. But then, truth be told, you are such a prime example of the rudeness, lack of respect, and "I'm soooo important; screw you" attitude so endemic in society these days.
That's what SUCKS.
Citizen
well, half the comments on this post so far are by you and off-topic
do you feel like a hypocrite?
or do you simply enjoy the feeling of righteous indignation so much that you want to extend it?
I think this wingnut push to ban books, dictionaries even, shows how pro-ignorance and anti-science they are. If some of these folks had their way, there'd only be one book available in school.
RETURNING to the topic of the thread...i'd taken a hiatus from this blog (but not from my esteem for its author) and was stunned to hear of this boneheaded move by the folks in Menefee, CA. I was sitting next to my daughter, and the two of us just about fell out of our chairs. You'd never know it, but there actually are intelligent conservatives in the world, and many of them actually have moral and intellectual integrity. It takes craptons of cognitive bankruptcy to advocate banning of dictionaries in school libraries in the USA. It's as if these people aspire to be Taliban lite, and it is absolutely revolting. Cowards.
"Do you remember being a kid in the library and looking up dirty words in the big dictionary?"
yes, I do remember it
back in my day, and maybe I'm really old, I looked and they weren't there
you could see naked natives in Nat'l Geo but couldn't find "shit" in Webster's
of course, our crassest President, Bill Clinton, made it impossible to avoid the term "oral sex" when teaching history
thanks, Bill
you're a class act!
If you're that old, then you know there weren't any Ken Starr's only too eager to publish every salacious detail of Presidential passions. Such things were considered private personal business.
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