Riverside School District Pulls Dictionaries

Parent complaint source of removal.

Quote :

Officials with the Menifee Union School District say the growing controversy over the removal of a dictionary from the classroom has led to the misconception that all dictionaries have been pulled.

Gee, why would anyone have a misconception like that?

Quote :

The district is responding to the controversy that is attracting national and international media coverage after officials temporarily removed copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition for containing graphic terms like “oral sex.”

A parent volunteer working in her son’s classroom came across the term, according to Betti Cadmus, and submitted a written complaint to the school’s principal, who contacted the assistant superintendent of curriculum.

The complaint resulted in the district removing the dictionaries from the fourth- and fifth-grade reference section at Oak Meadows Elementary School, which Cadmus said Monday was the only district school to be using that dictionary.

Of course you're going to find words like that! It's a frickin' dictionary!

Quote :

A committee to review the dictionary and decide if it should be permanently removed is expected to begin meeting within the week, Cadmus said. According to board policy, the committee may take up to 30 days to review the complaint and decide on its educational appropriateness and its suitably for fourth and fifth grade readers.

In other words the local censorship brigade will kick a fuss and the committee members, who will be looking out for their jobs, are likely gonna roll over and play dead. Lovely.

I always thought it was a tradition for kids of that age to look up all the dirty words in the dictionary. Hell, I did that. Though I do also remember an incident where the teachers had to disable the reproductive organ section of Bodyscope on the school computers. Kids (again, I was among them) were looking that up for laughs, and it was disrupting the computer lab classes.

Though in this case, it doesn't seem like classtime disruption was the cause of the removal.

This reminds me of the controversy surrounding some math books that the local department of education pulled because sine in Spanish is seno which also means breasts.

Here's my reaction, in the immortal words of that great existentialist philosopher John Mitchell: "Jeeee-SUS!"

The Riverside School District is clearly run by and for airheads.

PFFFFFFFFFFFF, my friends and I used to look up dirty words and giggle constantly. I like to think we came out alright in the end.

BUT KITBUG

THINK OF THE CHILLENS

Quote :

Cadmus said it was not just one parent that complained, but that there was a growing parent concern at Oak Meadows Elementary over the explicit term, which it turns out was not contained in the dictionary; though other words that might be considered age-inappropriate were found.

Bolding mine. Am I the only one who thinks these parents are idiots?

Actually, this does not surprise me one bit. I have to deal with the graduates of the Menifee school district (who wind up in my district). The town is known for its snobbery, racism, and ZOMG! Think Of The Children bullshit. No telling what exactly the school board will do (they're elected officials, and thus can't simply be hired and fired at will).

A few years ago, a teacher at the high school in Menifee, Paloma Valley High School (which belongs to my district) tried to get I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings banned because it mentioned things like child rape (which was the experience of the author, Maya Angelou). The attempt turned into a farce when one of the school board members looked at the material and declared that Maya Angelou would never read that book, at which point another board member pointed out that she wrote it. The whole thing ended up with the librarians laughing at the idiot teacher and school board member--and then returning the books to the shelves, basically giving a big fuck you to the censors. (Can you tell I don't like Menifee very much?)

Yep, Menifee loves its censorship.

Hm. I remember getting a dictionary when I graduated in '91. Webster's, and it has the word 'fuck' in it.

They should probably get rid of the Bibles, too, then. That was always what we'd do after looking up rude words in the dictionary. The rude bits in the Bible were great.

ZoZo wrote:

They should probably get rid of the Bibles, too, then. That was always what we'd do after looking up rude words in the dictionary. The rude bits in the Bible were great.

I went to Catholic school for elementary school. Getting hold of a Bible and reading the naughty bits was fun. There was also a prayer that started 'Oh, my God...' We loved that, too, because we weren't allowed to say OMG.

Edit: The dictionary is being returned to the shelves. The individual parents are going to be allowed to decide whether they want their children to have access to this dictionary.

Lady Anne wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

They should probably get rid of the Bibles, too, then. That was always what we'd do after looking up rude words in the dictionary. The rude bits in the Bible were great.

I went to Catholic school for elementary school. Getting hold of a Bible and reading the naughty bits was fun. There was also a prayer that started 'Oh, my God...' We loved that, too, because we weren't allowed to say OMG.

Ah, yes. The Act of Contrition.

You know, I'm glad that however conservative and silly my school was, it wasn't outright batshit.

Penguin wrote:

You know, I'm glad that however conservative and silly my school was, it wasn't outright batshit.

Speaking of conservative, silly, and outright batshit schools, and also on-topic, certain bits were blacked out of the dictionary in my crazy fundie school because the students thought they were inappropriate. Worrisome, isn't it?

I actually find that less worrying than if the faculty did it. Students I can understand; when you're young and desperately afraid of mortal sins jumping out of the bushes and having their way with you, blacking out "intercourse" or whatever is probably just a paranoid way of making sure God's not that mad at you for waking up with morning wood. Most adults that hang on to the faith at least mellow out by the time they can become teachers.

Fourth and fifth graders in my country are busy acquiring all sorts of new and exciting STD's and pregnancy while doing drugs. Is it just my country, or is that sort of behaviour endemic?

InkWeaver wrote:

BUT KITBUG

THINK OF THE CHILLENS

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I guess you could say... these parents took a page out of Helen Lovejoy's book. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]