Merriam-Webster = Too Risque For CA Schools?

I haven't been as on top of the book challenges lately because I just find them so... exhausting.  I just find myself saying the same things over and over again, and some people keep wanting to tell other peoples' kids what they can't read and WOW, I'm tired just thinking about it.

This one... sigh.

Someone has objected to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in fourth and fifth grade classrooms because a kid looked up the definition of 'oral sex'.

Yep. 

And there you have it. 

Comments

[Gregory K.]

Isn't that just a greaaaaat story? Well, it is from a comedy perspective anyway.

LA Times book blog coverage here, by the way:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/01/school-district-pulls-dictionaries-for-oral-sex-definition.html

[Cass]

Wow. Just wow.

[Meaghan]

Please shoot me now.

[Jessica]

This is the county where I grew up. Luckily my city/district/schools were all a little more realistic than this particular one.

UGH.

[Jessie]

That's painful.

[April Mitchell]

Wow! That's taking censorship a little TOO far.

[Beth]

Not just challenged -- they pulled it. Gosh. I think they should stop reading books that have children in them, because you know how babies are made -- filthy business.

[Melynda]

If I'm following the story correctly, the term "oral sex" turns out not to be in the dictionary after all--but parents started looking up other nasty words and found some, so THAT'S all right.

Ah, the humanity.

[tanita]

Wow. Good luck to those parents; if that was MY classroom, I'd be building up the barricades and preparing for war. YOU. WILL. NOT. REMOVE. A. REFERENCE. BOOK.

It'd be over my dead body.

[Bohemia]

WHAT.

[jim]

Peoples is crazy.

[Blaize]

You know, I had a 1968 Random House dictionary, since replaced with a 1966 Random House dictionary, and I really love it for various bits of its editorial slant.

The way I judge whether a dictionary is any good:
1. Does it have a definition of f***?
2. Does the definition of n****r start with the alert "offensive and disparaging"? (As opposed to the 1997 Merriam Webster Collegiate, which had as definition 1: "a black person--usually taken to be offensive." http://www.jstor.org/pss/2998744)
3. Are all the other "naughty words" both present and fully defined, with etymologies when available?

I just figure that the way a dictionary handles the "bad" words is an indication of its overall integrity. Is that weird?

[Callista]

Oh god. I looked up words like that in the dictionary as I'm sure many do. It's just a nudge that maybe that child needs to have the talk or an extended talk.

Why do people have to freak out over such things? If it had an illustration I could see being upset but not just a definition.

[Paige Y.]

My school's Merriam-Webster doesn't have the "offensive" words, but it's in the American Heritage high school dictionary so if my students need the definition, they can find it. Thank goodness -- therea re times that kids are genuinely curious and need to be able to find information out for themselves.

[Kristi]

Ha, I love the Onion. Wait - what do you mean, this isn't from the Onion?

[Elisabeth(YSPrincess)]

Pretty sad isn't it?