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[Jackrabbit]

My midriff is sexy.

Uh, take my word for it.

[Realmfighter]

I don't trust you.

We need picture. For proof.

[Jackrabbit]

Never! My astonishingly sexy midriff is mine and mine alone!

[Apostolic Nihilist]

Assert similar experience.

As long as this doesn't start some trend of banning words deemed questionable (it had better not -- I have faith in you, Americans), I fail to see a reason to be annoyed. It seems like it's just something that'll get the serious anti-censorship people riled up.

Just a note: I'm not encouraging this behaviour, I just fail to see a problem with it. On a purely fundamental level, it's wrong, but realistically, it's not going to cause any trouble.

You're ok with individual wrongs so long as they don't start trends? 

I ask you this: Who is being hurt or negatively affected by this? It's dumb, but it's only dumb because it's a waste of time and completely unnecessary.
It's not like they're removing words like 'violence' or 'sadness'. They're not trying to funnel the children's thoughts away from those they deem 'bad'. It's just a waste of time for all involved, except the students.

[Cthulhu]

Hey, I've got an insane and completely unreasonable idea.

Keep collegiate dictionaries on the top shelf.  If the parent signs a permission slip, the kid can use one.  Otherwise, they get the kiddie dictionaries.  That way, the smarties and their pants can look up their pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis and all that, and the dummies or immature kids can use their own dictionaries.

Problem solved.

[cowofdoom78963]

Or how about we just forget about it all together becuase a kids probably not going to need to know the meaning of oral sex for any of their classes anyway?

Problem sloved.

[smigenboger]

The problem is not solved until we find another technicality we can debate over with

[Leafsnail]

Well... if someone's looking up Oral Sex in the first place... odds are they already know about it and are just checking to see if the dictionary does.

[Agdune]

@Vector - Sounds to me like you just lay somewhere on the Autistic spectrum (Aspergers is the most popular nowdays and your description would roughly fit. Don't take my word for it though).

I don't mean this to be as insulting as it's gonna sound but with that in mind, we can't really take your story as an example of why teaching for average students should be modified to accommodate the least developed in the class - Students with Aspergers or more severe forms of learning difficulties shouldn't and can't be taught in the same manner as regular students, being chronically prone to misunderstanding the majority of what they're told. The fact that none of your teachers caught on to some pretty sterotypical signs of autistic behavior is a bit worrying and perhaps helps my gist that stock standard educational methods shouldn't try to cater to the least developed because most of the time they just don't understand why there hasn't been development.

There are countless reasons why some students don't perform as well as others and it's rarely because they're just 'dumb'. In fact, the only time I can think of when a student is simply 'dumb' would be as a result of a number of very specific learning disabilities. Think about the underachievers in your schools (no longer talking to Vector) and consider why most of them were doing so poorly - in my school it was almost purely because of:
A) Upbringing - they were raised to believe school was a pointless waste of time and so never gave the slightest amount of effort, instead buggering around in inane social circles and acting like typical brainless gits who looked forward to a life of minimum wage jobs and getting drunk.
B) Abuse - Similar to A except they all had serious issues with authority and had zero confidence in their own abilities (Conveniently hidden behind a wall of rage) and went bezerk at the drop of a hat
C) The kids with the learning impairments, such as fetal alcohol syndrome, mild genetic disabilities and other cognative impairments, like Aspergers (I was one of these kids heh. I could understand almost any course material they threw at me but my total lack of understanding about anything else made my early life hell)

All 3 of those groups require pretty intensive help to become achievers in society (And frankly, group A never will, in my biased opinion :p). Teachers in charge of classes of 30 kids handing out semi-standardized printoffs can barely teach these groups anyone in the class the core course materials, let alone any real insights on society. That's what special education is for (not LEWL RETARD CLASS HUR HUR HUR, as I'm sure most of you picture when you see those words). It's meant to be intensive education tailored around and focused on each persons shortcomings in development, guidance in learning all those societal taboos and generally trying to make the most out of what can be pretty shitty prospects (Especially for the abused underachievers).

As for the original discussion - Who actually looked at those naughty words more than twice when they were growing up anyway? Once you'd had a giggle over "penis" there wasn't much reason to go back to that page. The kids being produced by those parents have more serious issues than finding out what the word for oral stimulation of the genitals is. I'm picturing Buster from arrested development, or in a less funny way, fundie christians.

I find it nearly impossible to discuss the matter of censoring naughty words because I don't understand the logic behind it. I mean, they're trying to protect their kids right? I'll contend that innocent kids are easier to take advantage of and have far more difficulty coping with unwanted sexual advances (or unwanted anything, really, not just sex stuff). I can totally envisage someone trying to entice a kid with the line "want to know what oral sex is?". Might not work for them, but hey, banning the word from the kids dictionary isn't really going to help one way or the other. You can't guard your child 24/7 from the crapsack that is the world, but you certainly give them the support and guidance needed to cope when life turns to shit on them. And you don't have to demonize the good parts of life, just teach responsibility. =\

Also I need to stop mixing this subject with the subject of sexual education in society, don't I? Keep getting the lines blurred. They are related imo, but that doesn't excuse my inability to keep my logic trains nice, clean and smooth.

[JoshuaFH]

Just a question: Are you a teacher Agdune?

[Agdune]

Nah, but in my defence I am probably better educated on the subject of teaching people who have learning difficulties than most public school teachers due to the fact that I'm a disability support worker (Spent 4 years teaching people with varying levels of disability how to perform their jobs in lots of workplaces and got quite a bit of training on the subject) and my girlfriend is a child sexual assault councillor (councils abused kids and teaches sexual saftey awareness.)

Still, my entire theory hinges on basically my personal logic and experiences. I think it's reasonably solid regardless but I'm always open to more solid proof.

(Edit for a bit more clarity)

[Vector]

((Will she also stop talking about herself in third person? Also, have you
considered using something like Gödel numbering to somehow use that intuitive sense to
generate proofs indirectly, or does that involve TO much arithmetic?
Hmm, depending on a few factors (including but not limited to that story actually being
about you) I find myself interested in perhaps discussing math over PMs or something.))

Damn it, I didn't notice I'd started going into third person >_>  Screw English
grammar.

Arithmetic is a bitch, and Gödel numbering is the correct answer to a certain problem. 
In matters of mathematics, the correct answer to "I solve problems in my sleep and
while brushing my teeth, but can't tell you how I got there" is "go work harder
on learning how to prove things elegantly."  As such, that's what I'm doing.

It's your choice as to whether or not you believe me.  Do what makes sense.

Did you put that whole post in parentheses?

I believe the point was to signify the continuation of a derail, without the use of an
unnecessary spoiler.

I don't mean this to be as insulting as it's gonna sound but with that in mind, we can't really take your story as an example of why teaching for average students should be modified to accommodate the least developed in the class - Students with Aspergers or more severe forms of learning difficulties shouldn't and can't be taught in the same manner as regular students, being chronically prone to misunderstanding the majority of what they're told. The fact that none of your teachers caught on to some pretty sterotypical signs of autistic behavior is a bit worrying and perhaps helps my gist that stock standard educational methods shouldn't try to cater to the least developed because most of the time they just don't understand why there hasn't been development.

I will submit here that some of my teachers did seem to catch on, but didn't put two and two together: "She almost never makes eye contact or looks away from the ground, won't let anyone else talk, has no interest in other children, and is almost impossible to convince to work on things that don't fall into her current interests" is pretty much the gist of one of the letters sent home at the end of the year (though couched, of course, in far prettier language).

Of course, they might have caught on and run screaming into my parents' beliefs about childrearing (and in particular, me): "She'll get over it eventually, especially if we don't do anything about it or give her any special treatment.  This is because she's a completely normal child."


You have a very good point, and I feel that some of my meaning was shielded behind unfortunate word choice.  By "catering to," I really mean that there are certain areas in which such students cannot be taught like the rest of the class, and further that the things they learned in a normal class would be detrimental to the wellbeing of themselves and of those surrounding them.  Thus something must be done about them.  They cannot just be ignored, as you can easily ignore a struggling algebra student (and yes, I've been one of those, too).  The situations are different.


Well, anyway.  I may just be spewing more crazy all over the place, so I figure I'll stop here.

[Jude]

I'd say that culture does have an impact - 100 years ago or so it was a woman's ankle that was meant to be the unspeakable area, and other cultures can ascribe beauty to different body parts (for an extreme example, think of the foot fetishism in ancient China).

Yeah but I'll bet the ancient Chinese thought boobs and asses were even more unspeakable than ankles and feet

or maybe they were just a whole civilization of Quentin Tarantino

[Leafsnail]

I'd say that culture does have an impact - 100 years ago or so it was a woman's ankle that was meant to be the unspeakable area, and other cultures can ascribe beauty to different body parts (for an extreme example, think of the foot fetishism in ancient China).

Yeah but I'll bet the ancient Chinese thought boobs and asses were even more unspeakable than ankles and feet

They didn't though.  Chinese girls and women had to have their feet bound and crushed into certain shapes in order to make them more attractive.  The reason why is not nice.

@Vector - Well, autism is more a spectrum than a straight forward disorder.  After all, everyone's on the spectrum somewhere, it's just a matter of when social interaction becomes difficult.  I have a couple of features (tendancy towards obsession, dislike of eye contact, not being able to give working out when providing answers) so... I dunno.  I'd regard it more as a personality trait than a disorder or disease.

[Armok]

((

((Will she also stop talking about herself in third person? Also, have you
considered using something like Gödel numbering to somehow use that intuitive sense to
generate proofs indirectly, or does that involve TO much arithmetic?
Hmm, depending on a few factors (including but not limited to that story actually being
about you) I find myself interested in perhaps discussing math over PMs or something.))

Damn it, I didn't notice I'd started going into third person >_>  Screw English
grammar.

Arithmetic is a bitch, and Gödel numbering is the correct answer to a certain problem. 
In matters of mathematics, the correct answer to "I solve problems in my sleep and
while brushing my teeth, but can't tell you how I got there" is "go work harder
on learning how to prove things elegantly."  As such, that's what I'm doing.

It's your choice as to whether or not you believe me.  Do what makes sense.

Well, I said Gödel numbering or something like it, I was referring more to the idea of making the PROOF of one mathematical problem be the solution to another, and as you can get solutions easily, you should therefore be able to use that method to prove the first one. this is not instead of learning how to prove things elegantly, it is how you learn to prove things elegantly.
I find myself indeed interested in taking with you more about this, but perhaps we shouldn't hijack the thread, so feel free to respond in a PM.

Of course, they might have caught on and run screaming into my parents' beliefs about childrearing (and in particular, me): "She'll get over it eventually, especially if we don't do anything about it or give her any special treatment.  This is because she's a completely normal child."

That sounds like very bad parenting to me. ))