Moron of the Week #10
I started the Moron of the Week series nearly three years ago, but unfortunately didn’t keep up with it. It’s been nearly two years since the last one and, in that time, I’ve considered reviving it. After this past week, I realize now is a perfect time. I hope I can keep up with it this time. We’ll see.
This time around, it’s a collective award, going to a group of people for a particularly moronic event in California, of all places. The mental faculties of one elementary school student’s parent, apparently already in a feeble state, overloaded when said student discovered the compound noun oral sex in Merriam Webster’s 10th Edition dictionary. The parent, most likely imagining the child was now in danger of suffering a horrific destiny (like becoming a homosexual pedophile, or worse, a liberal), lodged a complaint with the Menifee Union School District. Officials there promptly banned the book from all schools in their district.
The Moron of the Week is not the parent, despite the objection to a child being exposed to reality a dictionary definition. The real morons here are the officials of the Menifee Union School District. These people are supposed to be in charge of ensuring children get a solid education. If they start censoring books based upon the complaints of parents, you can’t help but lose confidence in their competency. Fortunately, not all parents in the school district agree with the decision.
“Censorship in the schools, really? Pretty soon the only dictionary in the school library will be the Bert and Ernie dictionary,” said Emanuel Chavez, the parent of second- and sixth-grade students. “If the kids are exposed to it, it’s up to the parents to explain it to them at their level.”
Don’t get too happy about Mr. Chavez’s reasoned response, though. As long as the reasonable people aren’t the ones in authority, this sort of stupidity is bound to happen again and again. Consider the words of school board member and elementary school teacher Randy Freeman:
…it’s “a prestigious dictionary that’s used in the Riverside County spelling bee, but I also imagine there are words in there of concern.”
He’s concerned about students looking up words in the dictionary. And he’s an elementary school teacher. Think about that.
So, congratulations to the Menifee Union School District. Despite fierce competition from Culpeper County Public Schools in Virginia, who pulled the Diary of Anne Frank because of an inquisitive passage about her vagina, you are officially, and collectively, Moron of the Week #10. After all, banning a dictionary is quite a few degrees more moronic than banning a literary work.