The Story: When the dictionary gets banned, it’s only a matter of time until other inanimate classroom objects get the ol’ heave-ho.

The Search: Dictionary Ban

Reading comprehension is one of the most vital elements in a child’s educational development.  Without understanding of the meaning of the combination of words that make it up, a sentence is just a mish-mash of indeterminate sounds devoid of any sense.  Luckily, when children and even adults find a word that stumps them there is always a place of reference they can turn to to enlighten their curious minds. This place is known as “the dictionary.” For some time now, inquiring minds have been harvesting new knowledge derived from the simple act of “looking it up.”  That is all about to change for the 4th and 5th grade students of Southern California’s Menifee Union school district.  It seems district officials have taken offense to Merriam Webster’s graphic definition of “Oral Sex” as “oral stimulation of the genitals” and banned the reference book outright from their classrooms. To leave such a gaping a hole in the reference section seems a tad bit ridiculous  when considering that the dictionary definition is in fact an awful lot tamer than the other avenues available to children to check such terms.  Would the school board rather the children typed “oral sex” into a search engine or learn about it from the dirty kid down the street who charges $5 a head to look at his dad’s collection of porno? If anything, keeping the dictionary around, will allow those kids to learn two new words in “oral” and “stimulation” that can be used in non-sexual sentences, whilst removing the volume of vocab might prevent them from picking up on valuable concepts like “censorship.”  If the school district finds the dictionary too racy, we wonder what other valuable school tools might this district take offense to:

Red Crayons and Markers- By denying children the color red we’re nearly assured their potentially Communist leanings will be nipped in the bud.

Rulers- Children might feel compelled to use these measuring sticks to compare the size of each other’s genitalia during recess. (more…)