9486 in the collection
Dictionary back in school after ‘oral sex’ flap: Calif. district had pulled all copies after parent complained about entry
Ohanian Comment: Actually, this ends up as a good news item--the dictionary is back.
This brings back old memories: my first year teaching in a conservative upstate New York community. Here's the dictionary episode as recounted in Caught in the Middle: Nonstandard Kids and a Killing Curriculum.
One day I see Sylvia reading Ethel Waters' autobiographical retelling of her own tough beginnings, His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Sylvia is so taken with the book that I buy five more copies so she and her friends can sit around a table and read it aloud to each other.
One day the Sparrow readers are quietly arguing. "You ask her what it means." "No, you ask her."
Finally, I interrupt their dithering. "Go ahead. Somebody ask me. There isn't a word in that book that I'm afraid of and there isn't a word in there that you should be afraid to ask about." Sylvia then quietly asks the big question:; "What's a bastard? Ethel Waters says she's a bastard."
So off we go to the library to take a look in the American Heritage Dictionary. A few years before, several teachers were scandalized by the dictionary, protesting that such a book did not belong in a school library, giving students easy access to "those" words. As if our students aren't already surrounded by those words. None of the dictionary bowdlerizers seems to consider how young readers are supposed to have any respect for or interest in sanitized and circumscribed school dictionaries, the ones with all the interesting words removed. Like all book censors, those teachers are more interested in safety than in curiosity. Fortunate, our librarian is a wise and committed woman, one with boundless faith in children and in books. She keeps the dictionary on the shelf.
Sylvia and her friends find bastard and read the definition out loud. Sylvia is astounded. "Is that all?" She reads the definition again, this time very slowly--as though a careful rereading will reveal some hidden danger. It is a word she and her peers use freely for its connotative punch; she is surprised to find its actual meaning to be so clear-cut. And not nearly so terrifying or dangerous as she'd feared.
I want to know which adults have the time to sit around checking out dictionaries for words like "oral sex."
Associated Press
MENIFEE, Calif. - A California school district that pulled a dictionary from classrooms because it defined oral sex will allow it back on the shelves.
A committee of parents, teachers and administrators decided on Tuesday to permit fourth- and fifth-graders at Oak Meadows Elementary School in Menifee to use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
However, parents can opt to have their kids use an alternative dictionary.
The Riverside County district has 9,000 students and pulled the reference book last week after a parent complained about a child stumbling across the oral sex definition. That led to cries of censorship.
District policy called for setting up a committee to determine if the book was age-appropriate.
"The dictionary will go back to the classroom but the parents will be given the option to determine if they want their kids to have access to that dictionary," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the Los Angeles Times.
The Times reported that no one showed up to object at Tuesday's meeting.
Menifee is about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
— Associated Press
MSNBC.MSN.com
2010-01-27
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35100847/ns/us_news-education/
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
