It’s a Merriam-Webster Collegiate and contains naughty bits that kids might stumble across or even look up on purpose. [Southwest Riverside News Network via Popehat]
Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
by Walter Olson on January 26, 2010
It’s a Merriam-Webster Collegiate and contains naughty bits that kids might stumble across or even look up on purpose. [Southwest Riverside News Network via Popehat]
Tagged as: schools

Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
Get your copy today! My new book tackles the question of why so many bad ideas come from the law schools. "Cutting-edge commentary, hard-hitting, witty, astute." -- Publisher's Weekly. "Excellent... A fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions" -- Wall Street Journal.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 9 comments }
Better ban all dictionaries since they contain the exact words you will find in many undesirable publications like Huckleberry Finn and Mein Kampf (English translation, of course). Maybe we should stop talking altogether since language itself can be offensive if you put the words in the right order and speak them to certain people.
Better get that Bible out of there too.
Bob
The real problem is with reading itself. If the schools didn’t teach kids how to read, they wouldn’t be able to read naughty words in the dictionary or anywhere else. So really, the solution is to stop teaching the kids this nasty skill altogether.
@GregS
Your assumption that public schools are teaching reading (or, really anything much) is false-to-fact.
Possibly you have not interviewed any high school graduates lately.
/end snark
What’s this lady going to do when her kid goes to web-dictionaries and discovers that you can make your PC audibly pronounce such terms?
mmm, not as heinous as the berkeley high school banning the science labs, but yeah, pretty bad.
Time for some turn-about. The visiting parent was looking up lewd words in the presence of children? Charge her with intent to corrupt a minor and forbid her to enter the school building and remain 100 yards away from the property.
No, the worst aspect is that the word “supposedly” found, according to an update, was NOT in the dictionary the parent cited. Seems she had her own agenda here.
This is a ridiculous case and it certainly will find its way eventually to the courts. Not sure why it is being cited here, no lawyers involved here that I can see.
Comments on this entry are closed.