Southwest Riverside News Network:  “A parent complaint that a dictionary in her son’s classroom at Oak Meadows Elementary contained the term and definition for “oral sex” prompted school officials in the Menifee Union School District to pull all copies of the book from its fourth and fifth grade classrooms last week.  Copies of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (published in 1994), were taken from a recommended reading list and put into use in district classrooms a few years ago to accommodate higher level readers, said Betti Cadmus, spokeswoman for the district.”  One parent said,

“You want to dumb down the kids? You don’t create lifelong learners by sticking them in a box and telling them what books they can read,”

Why didn’t they just take a black pen or magic marker and black-out the word and definition?  With educators like those at Oak Meadows Elementary school, it’s easy to understand why our education system sucks.

UpdateThe school district lifted the ban.  My guess is the district got a ton of negative feedback and agreed the decision was stupid.