Your Daily WTF: California Continues to Suck Edition.

[sechan19]

Copies of the Merriam Webster Collegiate Edition Dictionary have been pulled from K-8 schools in the Menifee Union School District (Southern California), after a parent complained that their child had found the words "oral sex" in them. Apparently, a committee is being formed to evaluate whether or not the books should be permanently banned or returned to the classrooms, and parent reactions have been mixed because there are a lot of stupid fucking people out there.

News flash, people: your kids need to know words to get by in this world; at the rate you're going they'll wind up relegated to the world of fast food service.

News flash #2: if you'd stop making such a goddamned big deal about it every time your kids say a single bad word (which, in my opinion, oral sex is not, although I will concede its potential lack of age-appropriateness) they'd give up on it and find something else to do with their time.

You can read all about the brouhaha here in an amusing post from a British blogger who is understandably perplexed by the crazy, half-witted Americans.

Also:
Menifee school panel will review banned dictionary (The Press-Enterprise).
Via.

Comments

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

Oy gevalt. It's a frickin' dictionary for god's sake! If it were a textbook, I could understand, but the whole point of a dictionary is that it contains all the words in the language, not just the ones you want your kids looking up. Goddamn. And why were the children looking this phrase up to begin with? Now, that's the question the parents & teachers really should be asking.

[reteva.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is the question. People use dictionaries to look up words they heard somewhere else and didn't understand. So, clearly, the dictionary was not the source of the phrase "oral sex" for this child. But clearly, (s)he is saddled with parents too dim to consider such an angle.

[sigh]

[xianpu.livejournal.com]

ugh. this is why the thought of ever becoming a parent in the US really frightens me. look at the company i'd have!

[reteva.livejournal.com]

I know, right? I figure if my time ever comes I'm just going to have to homeschool them. This public education stuff is nuts.

[alateaqoe.livejournal.com]

California is not alone - Virginia joins the ranks of book banners: http://www.popehat.com/2010/01/29/you-know-who-else-disapproved-of-anne-franks-vagina-hitler/

If I was paranoid I would wonder if my living in a place and then leaving causes the people left behind to go nuts. . .

Naw - they were like that to begin with. ;)

[reteva.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? (Too much religion.) What are they so afraid of? (Hellfire and damnation.) [sigh] I pity the fools.