School district bans the dictionary to comply with Ron DeSantis’s book-ban law
School district bans the dictionary to comply with Ron DeSantis’s book-ban law
Dictionaries contain words that potentially violate the law's broad language...
A Florida school district has literally banned the dictionary in an effort to comply with Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) 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.
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.
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.
Banning the dictionary seems akin to banning Wikipedia. Am I wrong?
Banning encyclopedias would be more like banning Wikipedia. Banning the dictionary is more like banning dictionary.com.
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?
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.
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"
Honestly Ron probably wants everyone in his state to be dumber so they'll vote for him
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.
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".
Goddamnedfascists
Lol this will definitely improve test rates and IQ scores
I'm a HUGE fan of malicious compliance. When people do stupid shit like, for example, being religious—if you just make them AC TUALLY live with their maleficence, then they give up faster than any other method of confrontation. If women really had to kill a dove every time they menstruated, then it would lose a bit of popularity. LMFAO, just one of an ENDLESS (well, I guess it actually is finite) number of examples.
Leviticus 15:28-30 ESV But if she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest, to the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the priest shall use one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge.
Edit: We'd probably run out of doves too. ><
Most Christians believe in the new law, which abolished sacrifice like that, so it's not the trump card you think it is.
I'm not saying you shouldn't call out religious inconsistencies, just make sure you know what you're talking about, first.
Use turning the other cheek. That's a basic tenet of Jesus, which highlights the hypocrisy of gun-toting Republican "Christians."
It was just a quick low effort example, but yes, you are correct. Take my upvote! LOL
One can always leaf through and pick any of the many examples of awful highlighted on the site: https://www.evilbible.com/
I'd also say, though, that most Christians will use any law, new or old, to support their hatred and evil. If they're looking to support their bigotry or hatred, then any version of the bible is fair game. It's only abolished when it's inconvenient for them.
Sadly, I've had the misfortune of living in multiple areas with mega-churches. ><
Last time I was down at the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good ...🥴