CA: Nutty ban on a dictionary

Officials are going through dictionaries looking for naughty words

"Students in some Riverside County schools are now without certain dictionaries, as the district banned them.

Officials with the Menifee Union School District say the growing controversy over the removal of a dictionary from the classroom has led to the misconception that all dictionaries have been pulled. The district is responding to the controversy that is attracting national and international media coverage after officials temporarily removed copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition for containing graphic terms like “oral sex.”

A parent volunteer working in her son’s classroom came across the term, according to Betti Cadmus, and submitted a written complaint to the school’s principal, who contacted the assistant superintendent of curriculum. The complaint resulted in the district removing the dictionaries from the fourth- and fifth-grade reference section at Oak Meadows Elementary School, which Cadmus said Monday was the only district school to be using that dictionary.

“One of the misconceptions is that all dictionaries are being banned from our district,” Cadmus said. “That could not be farther from the truth. There are dictionaries available for use at all school sites; the dictionaries (in question) are still on site, but are temporarily not in use.”

Cadmus said it was not just one parent that complained, but that there was a growing parent concern at Oak Meadows Elementary over the explicit term, which it turns out was not contained in the dictionary; though other words that might be considered age-inappropriate were found.

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