Menifee school panel will review banned dictionary

The Press-Enterprise ^ | 1/24/10 | DUANE W. GANG, DAYNA STRAEHLEY and SARAH BURGE

[Steve Van Doorn]

yeah because Menifee is in a district that is mostly republican base. also noticed Menifee voted down vouchers stating the school system didn’t have enough control over the charter schools.

[Greysard]

You build vocabulary by using words.

And the best way to learn new words is to read all kinds of books. The books contain new words in context, and they show how to use them correctly.

Dictionaries ( even a collegiate one) should be available to students.

Absolutely. How else would a student know what a new word means? I personally have M-W set as one of search engines in Firefox, and I use it now and then. There are at least 170,000 English words in existence, and I don't claim to know them all (very few people on Earth can honestly do that.)

Besides, banning a dictionary in school does nothing. How much one must be detached from reality to believe that a curious child won't go to a library and ask for a largest, thickest dictionary there? A librarian will give it to him without a second thought; that's what dictionaries are for. And it's not like a student needs to *always* have a dictionary article about sex or something else in front of him. Once is enough, even if the page is not copied right there in the library.

And in any case, I was curious enough to check, and M-W defines "sex" and "oral sex" in such a dry, expressionless way that hardly anyone could get any excitement out of reading that. A child can get much more just out of reading a newspaper, to say nothing of the TV.

[votemout]

Banning the dictionary will not preent the kids from hearing it from each other and using the internet etc. It is amazing how stupid adults can be.

[votemout]

prevent

[wintertime]

This is overreaction of the extreme kind. Dictionaries ( even a collegiate one) should be available to students.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I happen to agree. In our homeschool with had university level dictionaries. ( More than one.)

However...I am not willing to advocate using the power of the state ( that means police force) to **force** other people's children into an environment that I personally would approve for my children. I am not willing to use the threat of police action to ***force** my neighbor to pay for imposing my personal educational worldview on either my own children or other people's children.

The problem here is that behind every government school ( and its non-neutral religious, political, and cultural worldview ) stand armed police to force the will of the state. ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip.)

There is a solution: We must begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education. This means vouchers, tax credits, and charters to begin building a private school infrastructure. We must move toward making all government schools into voucher schools and/or charters. Gradually we must move to having parents take on the full responsibility of paying for their own children's education.

[cold666pack]

I remember getting the book by judy blume, hello god, its me margaret out of the school library just because word on the street was that it was scandalous for having info about boobs in it.

[cold666pack]

yes, agreed. here here....what he/she said.

[wintertime]

Menifee voted down voucher
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I live in one of the reddest counties in the nation. Yet...If an election were held on vouchers my county would also vote down vouchers.

In my county the government schools are the single largest employer with the largest payroll and expenditures of any business in the county. No other business in my county comes even close!

So!...That's a lot of people who directly or indirectly depend on the government schools for a living. Not only are we talking about school employees we also have the vendors and their employees. Even my dentist and his five employees depend on the government school dental insurance that patients bring into the office.

Then add to this that these school employees are **highly** organized politically.

In fact, we have **no** private schools whatsoever in our county. The **only** options available to parents is either homeschooling or the government schools. No church would dare to open a private school because the ministers fear offending the many people in the congregations who benefit either directly or indirectly from the government schools.

I call it the education-industrial complex. (My apologies to Ike Eisenhower.)

[the long march]

My mom still had the best solution for things she didn’t want us to read. We had an extensive library in our own home and some of the books were a bit beyond our understanding. Mom’s solution was to put those books on the book shelves closest to the floor where we could easily reach them. The stuff that she wanted us to read was ‘secretly’ hidden up on the top shelves behind other books. Worked flawlessly

[the long march]

Again purists do no one anygood here. Even if you send your child to a religious school then you run the risk that some nut case parent is going to complain about some word or thought that doesn’t meet their view of the world. Part of our larger problem is that folks are not being taught how to reason. Homeschooling will not guarantee the best possible education because not all parents are equipped to be able to instruct. If you have an ‘outsider’ ( define that as someone other than you) then there is always some risk

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I do not dispute the value of dictionaries, but the problem is that the information provided in school libraries is neglectful of some of the grander, more important, and useful parts of American history and culture. It has been simplified, sterilized, and stultified to the point of being meaningless.

Back in the 1960s for example, I know of two men who wrote a book that I put first on the list. That is, biographies of great Americans. They were both superb historians and scholars, and created a worthy collection of the true greats of American history, who were critical to our nation in their time. And most are little known except to historians, today.

It had a picture or portrait, if one existed, of them and the context of their lives, then just a page or two of who these people were and why they truly mattered. Their prose was carefully crafted, erudite, informative and witty.

They brought it to a school textbook publisher. They soon noted a large chart in front of his desk, just a list of words, and they asked him what it meant. It was a list of words at the 5th grade reading level.

Its purpose was that if there was a word in any textbook manuscript, that was not on that chart, it was replaced with one on that chart, so students would never see a word with which they were not familiar.

The two historians then left with their manuscript, and made no further effort to publish it.

My point is that they *should* have published it. Because even though school textbooks are still vandalized for reasons of political correctness, real knowledge *could* make it into school libraries, where at least some students *might* find it.

[the long march]

This could be said of almost any modern publishing. Newspapers, books of almost any type ( even technical ones), movies, radio, etc. Our educational system has been dumbing down content for the masses for over 100 years. Read a McGuffey’s reader and you will see the difference.

You and I agree.

[Steve Van Doorn]

Sounds more like an organized crime racket. Everyone pay’s twice the far market rate and get less quality for their money and no one dares open competition.