- cross-posted to:
- testing@lemmy.ca
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- testing@lemmy.ca
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
A Florida school district has literally banned the dictionary in an effort to comply with Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s ® book-banning law.
The Escambia County School District has reportedly removed over 2800 books from library shelves as they undergo a review process that will determine if they are inappropriate for students, according to Popular Information. Among the books currently relegated to storage are The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary, Webster’s Dictionary for Students, and Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary.
The district contends these texts could violate H.B. 1069, which DeSantis signed into law in May 2023.
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Mmm. Malicious compliance.
Honestly, it’s pretty ingenious. If they can get their publishers to help push for appeal, then it’ll be worth it in the long run.
Ya, I get it… But now they’re actively participating in making the students education worse.
No doubt, it’s a lose/lose situation. But I find it quite sad for the innocent kids getting caught up in stupid adult stuff. And believe me… I use “adult” strictly to define age/authority position, not mental or maturity level.
innocent kids getting caught up in stupid adult stuff.
This describes what happens in pretty much every conflict ever.
And at least half of the time the conflicts start over “protecting kids” 🤦♂️
Yeah kids are probably bummed they can’t check out the dictionary. Maybe they can find an alternative way to look up words though.
They all have access to the Internet now. This would be much more detrimental to learning if other resources weren’t in everyone’s pocket.
Some of my best education in high school was learning to circumvent school network/internet censorship. I think the kids will be alright.
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Yes, you are wrong. Wikipedia can both be divisive and be deceptively edited. It also has articles about subjects. A dictionary just lets a person know what a word (like ‘divisive’) means. Dictionaries are pretty important to education, especially for a child who likely has a smaller vocabulary than most adults.
Edit: Am I really being downvoted for touting the importance of dictionaries in education?
I would guess that people think that dictionaries play a secondary role compared to that of teachers and adults in explaining the meaning of words. Or maybe some think Wiki is without bias and flaw
But then again, this is just a guess, and I agree with your point to a degree, even if I think dictionaries are not that important in school
A secondary role, sure, but still a role. A teacher is not always around or may not know the answer, but if a dictionary is right there, the kid can look it up.
Banning encyclopedias would be more like banning Wikipedia. Banning the dictionary is more like banning dictionary.com.
You can only hope so. However from looking in from Australia, America is going to shit at an accelerating pace.
Thwy remind me of the movie Idiocracy, something i once viewed as extreme and impossible but now plays as almost fact.
I get that it’s malicious compliance, but part of me thinks this is exactly what they want. The correct definition of words is what they are trying to keep from children. They are constantly misusing or abusing the English language to push their agenda. What better way to brainwash than remove the ability to find out what a word means?
So there’s this thing called the internet, which has dictionaries on it.
Also, 1984 is a great fiction novel, but the linguistics within it is more than a little shoddy. Not to mention, Republicans are not as smart as you think they are.
If you think internet censorship is going to stop at porn you’re in for a surprise. It’s the testing ground.
I think they are dumb as a box of air, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want exactly this. Just because they are dumb makes it even more believable that they actually want this and think it will accomplish anything. One of them read 1984 and said “we should do that”. More probably, one of them watched 1984.
My point, which I guess I didn’t state as explicitly as I needed to, is that the entire linguistic premise of newspeak in 1984 is essentially nonsense. Language simply doesn’t work that way, and people’s understanding of words does not generally derive from dictionaries.
To pose a simple question to you, of all the words you know, how many of them did you learn by consulting a dictionary? Or perhaps even more simply, how many times have you looked at a dictionary in the past year?
For the vast majority of people, the answers are “a tiny fraction” and “single digits”.
When I was a wee lad reading something I would ask my parents what words meant and we would look it up in the dictionary. Eventually I just did it by myself so the answer to your question is “most of them”. I haven’t had to check my dictionary for some time recently but my Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary is still in a prominent place in my bookcase, right next to my Roget’s II.
Given that dictionaries are a relatively recent development in history, and yet people did manage to speak English, I can guarantee you that ‘most of them’ is a massive over-estimate.
To be clear, I’m not trying to imply that dictionaries aren’t useful or that them being inaccessible is a good thing, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people’s linguistic knowledge is learned unconsciously through context and simply talking and hearing other people speak.
Just to throw it at you, of your first sentence there:
When I was a wee lad reading something I would ask my parents what words meant and we would look it up in the dictionary
I would essentially guarantee you didn’t learn any of those words by looking them up in a dictionary, and you probably knew them all before you could even read, with the exception of ‘dictionary’.
I learned a huge number of words from dictionaries and vocabulary books in school. Some I learned from context in other books. All three are being banned. Discussions of certain words are also banned.
Further, it is not malicious compliance. It is CYA. When you do something they don’t like that’s not against the rules, they’ll pull this shit out as an excuse to can them. Then, they’ll ban the thing they didn’t like in the first place.
Last, the people around me would largely say I’m pretty smart (not a genius, but I know a fair amount and I’m fairly clever), some of that was just genetic and some of that was my home life, but a lot of that organization of learning and processes came from my formal education, which was all public schools and universities. I would not be anywhere near as successful now without it. Kids in Florida today are taking a hit. They won’t be as competitive as people from states where this isn’t happening.
I get where you are coming from, I do not think the people you are talking about have the mental aptitude to comprehend the problems with the book 1984, hence they would think it would be a good blueprint for control.
I promise you, they simply dont know what books they are banning. They come up with some criteria and then schools have to sort through their books to make sure they all comply. A graphic novel of the book of genesis got banned from my school district. I garuntee they did not intend for that to happen.
Seems like at the point you’ve banned dictionaries that you should stop and reconsider what you’re doing
Except that would violate their objective of increasing their electorate through the erosion of education.
The more educated people get, the more they understand how morally and intellectually bankrupt the political and social right is.
Sounds like some malicious compliance there just from the summary but maybe I still have too much faith in people.
Yeah, this is the district that keeps this deranged bigot, on the payroll, so I wouldn’t ascribe any good intentions to them…
Malicious compliance in my mind would be “We haven’t read all of these books completely, nor can we remember all the texts. Therefore we have to completely empty the library for review”
Could be exactly the argument for a dictionary. Have you read one front to back? Do you recall every single definition? No? Might better remove the dictionary. Definitely have to remove the bible.
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That’s not the “gotcha” it should be. If anything results in future generations becoming ignorant, gullible and uncritically docile towards authorities, that’s just the system working as intended.
Sounds like an Idiocracy
Not even remotely. That is just the production method of copious cheap labour. Just make them multiply uncontrolled by instilling a dislike of anything in the way of birth control, make them docile and exploitable by telling them that unions are evil and corporations are the best there is and their friends and make them unaware of better systems by limiting their education to how great their own country is (and absolutely nothing else).
That caste is then not who gets to run things. That burden lies upon the rich ones who actually enjoy private education and have all the money they don’t have to spend on fair wages etc.
Thats an excellent explanation.
I was making a lame joke about a movie.
Now i feel like an idiot
Honestly Ron probably wants everyone in his state to be dumber so they’ll vote for him
They should ban the bilble like some other districts did. There is sex, murder, incest and all kinds of inappropriate content in there. Makes conservatives go nuts.
Banning it would annoy them, but if they all just went missing without any fanfare then they wouldn’t notice; very few of them read it.
DeSantis makes the law, counties follow the law, the Bible gets banned.
Fox news: LiBeRaLs ArE bAnNiNg ThE bIbLe!!
Of course they had to get rid of the dictionary! It contained words like fellatio and evolution. It even contained evollatio which is the theory that man invented fellatio!
It also contains the filthy words penis, vagina, scrotum, vulva, and gay.
Ooh that’s deeply offensive
Teacher “look it up in a dictionary.” Student “We won’t have dictionaries outside of school.” Other student “we don’t have dictionaries /in/ school.”
2 years later… Melissa S Tafht has finally put together a new book, and what is this book about? All we know is that it is banned…
Oh yes, I started thinking, hey maybe we should write all the words we know. I’m getting older and I see my mother forgetting words so I wrote this book for her. But then, I started thinking, hmm what about kids who don’t know all the words? And people might actually come up with new ones. Anyway, I’m calling this “Words Book”.
This is a worrisome sign.
No it’s a good thing. Malicious Compliance will bite Desantis in the arse.
Really? People are going to destroy his political career over a dictionary?
From little acorns, mighty oak trees grow.
That sounds like something someone with a small acorn would say
Actually I have a couple of small acorns, thankyouverymuch
You are missing it.
They pulled the dictionary in malicious compliance it wasn’t that DeSantis ordered it pulled.
And DeSantis is destroying his own career
Lol this will definitely improve test rates and IQ scores
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