School District Bans Webster's Dictionary For Containing Lewd Entries
For some crazy reason people love to ban books. A lot. Especially if the books are about sex. Rather than being excited that kids might actually want to read a book instead of playing violent video games or shooting heroin or whatever, parents regularly pester both public and school librarians, angrily demanding books be pulled from shelves, refusing to return books they find offensive, and suing towns for emotional damages after being exposed to the cover of a book with a gay character.
So.
Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that a mother in Menifee, California asked the school district to ban the 10th edition of Merriam Webster's Dictionary after seeing that the book--distributed district wide to fourth and fifth-graders--contains an entry on oral sex. But what is surprising, and terrible, is that the school district decided that removing the dictionary would be a good idea. The Press-Enterprise reports:
Randy Freeman, an elementary school teacher who lives in Menifee, says he supports the district's decision to ban the book. He notes that Webster's is "a prestigious dictionary that's used in the Riverside County spelling bee," but adds that "I also imagine there are words in there of concern.""
The lewd entry, incidentally, defines the phrase as "oral stimulation of the genitals," and refers readers to entries on cunnilingus and fellatio.
The district says it will review the dictionary before deciding how to proceed. “It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary," says Betti Cadmus, spokesperson for the district. "But we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature."
[via Jacket Copy]
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Comments
Can I ban these specific
Can I ban these specific people from living on this planet? They really make it a total bitch for the rest of us who are sane and not prone to hysteria.
How fear based is this
How fear based is this country going to get? We are afraid of terrorists, pesticides, sex offenders, hugging and touching, sexuality, diversity, and change.... seriously people, step back and look at the bigger picture and breathe. Now talk to yourself, your children and yourself honestly.
Or Smug little bastard like
Or Smug little bastard like you.
Or smug little bastards* like
Or smug little bastards* like you. Gosh, look at a dictionary once in a while.
and the name of the school teacher ......
A teacher named "Randy Freeman" is
a. allowed to teach in a school full of young impressionable children
b. expects to be taken seriously on issues of morality of words in a dictionary
Did anyone else read ABC's report on oral sex as the new goodnight kiss?
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/story?id=7693121&page=1
The school probably has bigger issues than the dictionary.
As usual, stupidity wins...
Wow, I am floored. I never thought I'd see this article in my life. I guess I had hoped that I wouldn't. It is fairly mindblowing, as the article said, that the school district would agree to such a moronic request as to ban the dictionary.
The definition given is way more boring than if I were to define my experience with them. More interesting though, is that these people are asking for trouble. If you take those words (say Oral Sex) out of the dictionary, then the kids will look them up when they hear them. They'll look them up online, and I can guarantee you that UrbanDictionary.com will have a much less kid-friendly version than Webster's did.
The annoying thing is that certain words are only offensive to some. But if you ban Oral Sex, then perhaps "bush" may be an offensive to others. How long before the dictionary becomes a tiny shadow of its former self.
Way to encourage people to read less, rather than more.
(more of my rants on http://CouchSurfingOri.com - though, I don't think I talk too much about Oral Sex on there)
It's official, we're with stupid.
First the Supreme Court rules us into corporate servitude and now we are banning the dictionary? Has the world gone mad? Nope. It's just the next and most obvious step towards the total retardification of the next generation. You know, the one that will suffer most at the hands of our newly crowned corporatocracy.
Banning the dictionary because it gives the definition of "oral sex" is like banning arithmetic because it contains the numbers '6' & '9' (which really help in defining oral sex).
The mother that requested the dictionary be banned should have her children removed from her home and, if she has them, her bibles burned (have you read the Old Testament?). I would also like to point out that if her parents understood the definition of oral sex, we might not be having this discussion.
The school district doesn't get a pass either. They have a responsibility to the students to protect them from fucky people like this. When this woman asked that the book be banned, they should have made her write 500 times on a chalk board "I will not ruin my child's education because I'm a fucking retard."
At least now she'll have a clear and concise answer as to why her 30 year old man-child is still sitting on her couch playing "Masturbation Hero". Yep, it's official, we're with stupid.