I can see the lawsuit now: My child was just innocently looking up the word “fellow” in the dictionary and then later that day I caught him sucking off the mailman. I want $100 million from Merriam, and another $100 million from Webster, and I also want $100 million from Google, just in case it’s possible to look up some kind of sexual imagery using that evil tool, somehow.
Like I said, I don’t really agree with them, but it sounds like the words they were talking about were a lot more graphic than penis and vagina. It was tough to tell since the article was so slanted in the other direction with the 1st Amendment outcry, which I think is completely ridiculous considering it’s an elementary school.
Sure, the whole thing could be another attempt by religious right fundies to co-opt schools, or it could actually just be concerned parents who, possibly naively, don’t want their kids exposed to specific sexual words in elementary school.
Also, it’s not banning, which is a totally loaded word, it’s switching to a dictionary more appropriate to the age level of the kids, as naive and pointless as that may be. It’s not like they are trying to switch out Horton Hears a Who for the Bible, although that is clearly the next logical step.
I can understand swapping out for children’s dictionaries for elementary school. A Merriam-Webster is a huge book with tiny print, and tons of words that are out of the scope of that level of learning.
When I was a kid, I randomly came across the definition for the disorder of having two penises. Wish I could remember the word for it…
Apparently Horton Hears a Who has been co-opted by the Pro-Life movement, so the updated example will be swapping The Lorax for The Truax.
I remember a similar experience from a Trivial Pursuit question.
It’s diphallia.
Yeah, that would be it.
“Knowledge is power, hide it well.”
“A small mind is a tidy mind.”
“Be strong in your ignorance.”
“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.”
“A small mind is easily filled with faith.”
W40K Dawn of War.
Clearly, this school district does the Emperor’s work!
I’ll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and all your demons
I’ll be the one to protect you from
A will to survive and a voice of reason
I’ll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and your choices son
They’re one in the same
I must isolate you
Isolate and save you from yourself
I was gonna go with bidickitude.
“Teacher, guess what I caught Merriam Webster talking about!”
There’s always a tattletale.
Of course, when I was a kid, we went looking for such words as “fart” (“a small explosion between the legs”) just to giggle at it. None of us ever ratted out little Miss Webster - it just goes to show you how kids today have gone downhill!
;-)
We’re not talking about Urban Dictionary here. Heh.
And this is considered a disorder?
It’s not ridiculous to apply the First Amendment to a government institution. It’s ridiculous to not. These people don’t have a problem with dictionaries, they have a problem with life. These people don’t want anybody eating pussy or sucking dick or having any other remote semblance of a good time. They are upset that blowjobs happen every day and they can’t do anything to stop it. Thank God men and women put their lips on people’s downstairs often enough that we have more different words for the act than Eskimos have for snow, because if the mouth parade ever ceases marching, I am going up on a water tower and revenging the crap out of myself on those responsible.
Those people don’t want innocent children, because children are already innocent. What those people want are innocent, which is a fancy way of saying uninformed… adults. Dictionaries contain the defininitions of words people use every day, and if they don’t like it, it’s Minnesota throat milking time.
“There is more than one way to burn a book.” - Ray Bradbury