Dictionary Banned in some Southern California Schools.

[TheGameXXVII]

so Oral Sex is enough to get the dictionary banned in California, yet i was easily able to look up "Shit" and other swears in my old Spanish dictionaries back in years 10/11 in school?

ok, what a pile of mierda. (Spanish for "Shit", btw. i have it drilled into my brain from all my Spanish classes)

 

[Wayward Man]

I'm a pretty intelligent American but I don't know if I fully count since everyone else in my family is British and I'm the 1st American born.

Whatever you do, do not at any point return to the motherland, things have pretty much gone downhill.

 

[Mechsoap]

Its oral sex, what is wrong with that, its fun, and doesn't make people pregnant.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

So let me get this right in my head, correct me if i am wrong here. Some parent goes to the school and says that her kid looked up the meaning of oral sex in the dictionary, she got offended by it, and now she wants the dictionary banned because she believes it's obscene?

Ok now this brings questions to mind:

- How did She (or he i dunno if it was a fella or a woman) find out about Oral Sex?
- How are the kids meant to learn how to spell without a dictonary
- Do they realize that the kid is going to find out about this kind of thing anyway just by being in school

Also if the kid, curious about the meaning of something, actually took the time to go get a dictionary and looked up the meaning on his own initiative. Is that not behavior that should be applauded?

 

[yami0333]

"You have to draw the line somewhere. What are they going to do next, pull encyclopedias because they list parts of the human anatomy like the penis and vagina?"

This guy knows whats up, censorship and the idea to protect the children never works, things like Prohibition, banning violent video games, t.v. shows, and music are bad ideas, not only does it mess with our free market, but shows ignorance. Above all and sorry I have to get a tad religious it is not the road to heaven paved with good intentions.

 

[Smooth Operator]

This is just beyond sad :S

 

[TheMann]

Okay I think a lot of statements on this thread are just a tad bit reactionary and blanket statements made on very little information. So without trying to be too much of an asshole I'm going to analyze this a little more fairly. Well here goes:

1: This says nothing about the legal system of United States, or the legal system of California, Southern California or even the legal system of Riverside County. These sorts of matters are decided by teachers, school administrators and the school board. There is no involvement of the courts or any formal legal procedure whatsoever. There was also no legislature proposed on any level of government. In short, the actions of the school in no way involved any aspect of the local, state or federal government. I saw someone write about "stupid American legislation" so let me say again There was no legislation! This DID NOT involve the government.

2.

1. Why is a UK news site reporting on this? Are there any US news outlets reporting this?

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about this myself. In fact whenever some smug Brit wants to point out how screwed up they think America is, they almost always refer to a Guardian article. That makes me a wee suspicious of that publication. I mean, this isn't even major news in the US. The Los Angeles Times wrote about it because Riverside is right by LA, But I'd bet that the New York Times didn't cover it. It's a minor issue, hardly the concern of 99.99% of the American population. So once again, why does a publication 5400 miles away in another friggin' country care? Is there no real news in the UK worth reporting or do they just sit around and Google this sort of thing for shits and giggles?

3. This is an 9 month old article. I could've sired a child of my own between then and now. But if you look carefully at the dates between the date of the the original article [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/25/oral-sex-dictionary-ban-us-schools] and the later Los Angeles Times article [http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/27/local/la-me-dictionary27-2010jan27], you'll notice they were two days apart. Yep, those dictionaries were off the shelves for a whopping two days. Also the ban wasn't against all dictionaries, just that particular edition. They weren't trying to pull all dictionaries themselves out of the classroom. Not to say it wasn't still ridiculously stupid though.

4.

Hurray, more stuff to tease the US members of The Escapist about.

Oh man, I really hope you're not from the UK, because I have so much ammo against the UK legal system that if every piece of bad policy and every crappy thing that's happened because of them was a bomb, I could single-handedly win World War III and IV. If I listed them all alphabetically the resulting document would be the size of a, well... dictionary. I'm not going to list them right now unless you really ask for it, then I'll be happy to give you 7-8 of my all time favorites from this year. These, incidentally, are from the UK government instead of just a school board. I've looked this stuff up so I could rebut the aforementioned smug Brits. (This is not on the Escapist. These people are extra smug with a side of fries.)

5.

Goddammit stupid Californian majority, stop making the rest of us look bad.

Majority?! Are you serious? Read the above linked LA Times article carefully. Almost everybody in the school was against it. From the article: "the move immediately set off cries of censorship among many, including the president of the local school board, who warned that banning one book would inevitably lead to the banning of more and more." The president of the damn school board didn't like it because he was afraid it would lead to further censorship in his school district. Smart guy. If the majority of those involved only with the school thought the dictionary ban it was a bad idea, how can you make the jump to think that the ban reflects the views of the majority of Californians, let alone the rest of the country.

Basically this is such a small isolated incident involving relatively few people, and is hardly news-worthy on even the national level. Hell, I live in Northern California (way north), and I didn't even hear about it on the state level. Nobody here cares, it's over. Nobody here thinks something this minute and trivial reflects the state of the nation. Seriously. Here's how the whole thing probably went down:

Little Timmy and Johnny look up "oral sex" (I'm assuming it's listed as one term.) in the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary. *On a side note I used to look up 'fuck' in the dictionary all the time because in was funny when you were 10 giggle giggle.*
They get in trouble or go home and tell mommy and daddy.
Angry parent(s) call and tell the teacher that the dictionary shouldn't be in the classroom.
Teacher groans and call the principal.
The principal picks up his phone. "What? The dictionary? What's wrong with the dictionary? Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me." *facepalm followed by head-to-desk*. "Okay uh, just pull the dictionaries out out the classrooms for now and I'll call the school board." Principal calls the school board director.
"Hello. What? The fucking dictionaries?! Please say you're just shitting me on this one and it's just an April Fool's joke." *glances at calender* "Dammit it's January!" *massive wallbanging* Okay I'll gather the school board."
After a day a bickering and bullshitting the principal calls in the teachers.
"Okay guys, this is going to sound really fucking stupid, but here's a bunch of permission slips to *winces* use the dictionary. Pass them out and when the students come back with them signed, they're free to look up words again, we won't have to order PG-13 dictionaries, and I can get back to doing my damn job."

The permission slip was the best course of action. It's really, really idiotic, but it's a win scenario for almost everybody. The school district has all it's bases covered, no one can complain now. The teachers win because they don't have to worry about as many spelling errors. Most of the students win because they can now look up the words. The rest of the parents and every other sane person there also wins do to the fact that morons aren't running the school. The only people who lose, sadly, are the few students that have whiny overprotective dumbass parents and will now have more trouble getting their work done. And you just know they're sitting in class, waiting to go home so they can just Google "oral sex".

So, this is my wall 'o text. I've restated a lot of things that other posters have already said but people still don't seem to get the unimportance of this whole thing. This "America sucks." or "California should be nuked.", or "US culture is falling apart because this." is just dumb. Laying so many implications on such a minuscule event is ridiculous. When this bullshit starts cropping up everywhere then I'll be concerned. And ironically I just wrote a whole lot on said minuscule event.

Edit: and I will blame Senator Yee for this as well.

Heh, heh. Now this idea I kind of like.

 

[Therumancer]

Too long to quote but i did read it

http://overlawyered.com/2006/09/the-burglar-and-the-skylight-another-debunking-that-isnt/

it dose happen

There are some points that are missing there. For example was the skylight defective? A lot of skylights and such are intended to be walked on by window-washers and people doing maitnence. If that skylight was set up like that and say you had to move accross it to get to those floodlight (which need to be maintained) then there is a negligence issue involved since anyone could have had the same thing happen potentially. What the guy was doing there doesn't remove the responsibility of people to keep their buildings up to code so to speak. It becomes two entirely seperate issues.

Another part of this that is not covered is what order the cases were resolved in. See if the civil suit if faster than the criminal one, when they go to court the guy isn't a Burgler for the purpose of the resolution. He can't even be accused of tresspassing. He's innocent until proven guilty, and hasn't been convicted of anything. As a result in fighting the civil suit, especially if it's time sensitive for medical reasons, the guy is going to be presented as some dude who just happened to be there. The defendant/property owner isn't allowed to claim he wasn't there lawfully, or had illicit intent, due to the criminal charges going on simltaneously and none of that has been legally established.

I'm just saying, while the case is "Burgler falls through skylight, and sues property owner" things are quite like that description entails.

Speaking for myself personally, I think the legal aspects of it if he wasn't convicted can be fairly ridiculous, but the general issue of people needing to maintain buildings and such really isn't all that unreasonable. It becomes a matter of two wrongs not making a right.

What's more consider for a second what would happen if the laws were differant, and people wanting to avoid civil suits for things that were their fault related to property maitnence constantly tried to make cases that the victim was where they were not supposed to be.

Your boss sends you to a store-room to pick something up for him. Not unusual but you don't work in the store room and unknown to you (or anyone) company policie implies store room attendants are supposed to act as runners and employees don't go in there. At any rate while in there and getting whatever your after the supports on a poorly maintained shelf crack and it falls on you crushing every bone in your body although you survive. The company lawyer points to policy and says that you weren't there legally, and it could be considered tresspassing, and your boss comes up and denies you ever having been sent there because he doesn't want to lose his job. Heck, they even imply you must have been there to rob the store room because the policies exist to prevent company shrink. Maybe you go into that store room every day, and the case is 100% BS, but legally speaking your actually in a pickle. The laws as they exist now prevent this kind of thing, or at least make it far more difficult, since the guys owning the shelves are liable no matter why you are there.

So sure, even if you argue that some situations win up playing out like the case you mentioned, ask yourself what kind of occurances are going to be more likely, and which is the lesser of two evils.

I'm only argueing the point because while it wasn't my area of focus I've had enough law and legal logic drummed into my head for various reasons, where I've gained a sort of odd perspective on it, and can usually see the logic of even the most F@cked up occurances and oftentimes why people let them happen. One of the "problems" with the law is that it needs to be consistant and apply the same way in every situation. If you start being subjective with the law things fall apart.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Idiots. And right next to the definition of that word is a picture of Southern California.

 

[zombays]

Kids do that all the time, I blame the kid for even telling his mom, Naive ************, over-protective mother should just tell her son why it's WRONG and not just outcast him from all the fun parts of life. BUT OF COURSE! That would require REAL parenting, something I've seen that Southern Californians lack.

 

[Dastardly]

Okay I think a lot of statements on this thread are just a tad bit reactionary and blanket statements made on very little information. So without trying to be too much of an asshole I'm going to analyze this a little more fairly. Well here goes:

1: This says nothing about the legal system of United States, or the legal system of California, Southern California or even the legal system of Riverside County. These sorts of matters are decided by teachers, school administrators and the school board. There is no involvement of the courts or any formal legal procedure whatsoever. There was also no legislature proposed on any level of government. In short, the actions of the school in no way involved any aspect of the local, state or federal government. I saw someone write about "stupid American legislation" so let me say again There was no legislation! This DID NOT involve the government.

2.

1. Why is a UK news site reporting on this? Are there any US news outlets reporting this?

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about this myself. In fact whenever some smug Brit wants to point out how screwed up they think America is, they almost always refer to a Guardian article. That makes me a wee suspicious of that publication. I mean, this isn't even major news in the US. The Los Angeles Times wrote about it because Riverside is right by LA, But I'd bet that the New York Times didn't cover it. It's a minor issue, hardly the concern of 99.99% of the American population. So once again, why does a publication 5400 miles away in another friggin' country care? Is there no real news in the UK worth reporting or do they just sit around and Google this sort of thing for shits and giggles?

3. This is an 9 month old article. I could've sired a child of my own between then and now. But if you look carefully at the dates between the date of the the original article [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/25/oral-sex-dictionary-ban-us-schools] and the later Los Angeles Times article [http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/27/local/la-me-dictionary27-2010jan27], you'll notice they were two days apart. Yep, those dictionaries were off the shelves for a whopping two days. Also the ban wasn't against all dictionaries, just that particular edition. They weren't trying to pull all dictionaries themselves out of the classroom. Not to say it wasn't still ridiculously stupid though.

4.

Hurray, more stuff to tease the US members of The Escapist about.

Oh man, I really hope you're not from the UK, because I have so much ammo against the UK legal system that if every piece of bad policy and every crappy thing that's happened because of them was a bomb, I could single-handedly win World War III and IV. If I listed them all alphabetically the resulting document would be the size of a, well... dictionary. I'm not going to list them right now unless you really ask for it, then I'll be happy to give you 7-8 of my all time favorites from this year. These, incidentally, are from the UK government instead of just a school board. I've looked this stuff up so I could rebut the aforementioned smug Brits. (This is not on the Escapist. These people are extra smug with a side of fries.)

5.

Goddammit stupid Californian majority, stop making the rest of us look bad.

Majority?! Are you serious? Read the above linked LA Times article carefully. Almost everybody in the school was against it. From the article: "the move immediately set off cries of censorship among many, including the president of the local school board, who warned that banning one book would inevitably lead to the banning of more and more." The president of the damn school board didn't like it because he was afraid it would lead to further censorship in his school district. Smart guy. If the majority of those involved only with the school thought the dictionary ban it was a bad idea, how can you make the jump to think that the ban reflects the views of the majority of Californians, let alone the rest of the country.

Basically this is such a small isolated incident involving relatively few people, and is hardly news-worthy on even the national level. Hell, I live in Northern California (way north), and I didn't even hear about it on the state level. Nobody here cares, it's over. Nobody here thinks something this minute and trivial reflects the state of the nation. Seriously. Here's how the whole thing probably went down:

Little Timmy and Johnny look up "oral sex" (I'm assuming it's listed as one term.) in the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary. *On a side note I used to look up 'fuck' in the dictionary all the time because in was funny when you 10 giggle giggle.*
They get in trouble or go home and tell mommy and daddy.
Angry parent(s) call and tell the teacher that the dictionary shouldn't be in the classroom.
Teacher groans and call the principal.
The principal picks up his phone. "What? The dictionary? What's wrong with the dictionary? Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me." *facepalm followed by head-to-desk*. "Okay uh, just pull the dictionaries out out the classrooms for now and I'll call the school board." Principal calls the school board director.
"Hello. What? The fucking dictionaries?! Please say you're just shitting me on this one and it's just an April Fool's joke." *glances at calender* "Dammit it's January!" *massive wallbanging* Okay I'll gather the school board."
After a day a bickering and bullshitting the principal calls in the teachers.
"Okay guys, this is going to sound really fucking stupid, but here's a bunch of permission slips to *winces* use the dictionary. Pass them out and when the students come back with them signed, they're free to look up words again, we won't have to order PG-13 dictionaries, and I can get back to doing my damn job."

The permission slip was the best course of action. It's really, really idiotic, but it's a win scenario for almost everybody. The school district has all it's bases covered, no one can complain now. The teachers win because they don't have to worry about as many spelling errors. Most of the students win because they can now look up the words. The rest of the parents and every other sane person there also wins do to the fact that morons aren't running the school. The only people who lose, sadly, are the few students that have whiny overprotective dumbass parents and will now have more trouble getting their work done. And you just know they're sitting in class, waiting to go home so they can just Google "oral sex".

So, this is my wall 'o text. I've restated a lot of things that other posters have already said but people still don't seem to get the unimportance of this whole thing. This "America sucks." or "California should be nuked.", or "US culture is falling apart because this." is just dumb. Laying so many implications on such a minuscule event is ridiculous. When this bullshit starts cropping up everywhere then I'll be concerned. And ironically I just wrote a whole lot on said minuscule event.

Edit: and I will blame Senator Yee for this as well.

Heh, heh. Now this idea I kind of like.

Pretty much exactly what goes on in any teacher-principal-school board discussion chain. That's just par for the course under our current system. To be a first-year classroom teacher, you have to:

1) graduate high school in the upper portion of your class, so you can...
2) get accepted to, pay for, and attend college at a four-year institution.
3) jump through several gateways and hoops to even get into the teacher-ed program.
4) pass (and pass well) many, many classes regarding your content area.
5) pass (and pass well) many classes about the psychology of learning and developing minds.
6) successfully complete the program for a bachelor's degree.
7) apply for and take an expensive test to receive a teaching license...
8) ...which you must renew every five years.
9) interview and be offered a job.
10) undergo drug testing and background screening to ensure you're fit to work.
11) go through a rigorous probationary period during which you're watched like a hawk.

That's just to get your foot in the door. Keeping it there is a whole 'nother thing.

In contrast, to be a parent, you have to:

1) have functioning genitals.
2) figure out the dinkus goes in the hoohah (cf. "how babby is form").
3) buy dinner (optional).
4) wait 9 months.
5) holy shit where'd this baby come from?

NB: This is not to say there are not good parents out there. This is simply to say there is absolute no way to screen out bad parents, and that simply HAVING a child is in no way going to magically MAKE someone a good parent.

 

[shootthebandit]

oral sex [oh-ral-seks] (verb): an act which occurs very rarely for a male human despite constantly being begged for

i think its a good idea to ban it, best not to raise thier expections at such a young age

seriously though when i was a kid we were constantly looking up things like this in the dictionary

 

[frago roc]

Only in the States... and perhaps Nazi era Germany.

 

[frago roc]

edit

 

[JokerCrowe]

I think it makes more sense to ban the Internet.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Dictionaries are as dangerous as smoking, gambling, prostitution, violence, drugs and DEVIL WORSHIP!!!!!!!!!






/sarcasm

 

[8-Bit Grin]

Um... hasn't everyone done that at some point?

Looked up 'Dick' and 'ass'?

Then we're educated to learn that an ass is a donkey, by reading the definition?

Oh, over protective parents.