has removed a number of words from its new edition,
replacing them with words they feel our technology-driven children
need more - like database, chatroom, analogue, broadband, bullet point, etc.
Here is a sampling of what has been left behind.
I write them out to hold them near, alive and singing,
resonant names of our natural world . . .
Barbara,
ReplyDeleteI'm deeply saddened and troubled. Thank you for honoring these words.
Eloise
I'm not sure what "profile" means. Interesting. Perhaps I'm too much a part of the natural world, though I've been accused of being a "techie."
Hi-I'm confused- are you saying these words were left out of the dictionary? I'm waiting to har back before I feel disturbed!!!!
ReplyDeleteDear Friends -
ReplyDeleteMany people have emailed me feeling sad and confused by this posting.
For clarification - yes - these are all words that have be removed from the Oxford JUNIOR dictionary. It shows how adults perceive children moving away from an awareness of the natural world.
For myself I was surprisingly lifted up by this act of writing them out in all their diverse visual voices. What can we do but continue to touch and speak the wondrous naming of things ? I fell in love with these beings all over again.
I am stunned at how many of these words pertain to the animal and plant life of this earth!
ReplyDeleteIt makes you consider more deeply the relationship of language to life in the truest sense and brings forward the frightening reality of the state of the natural world around us.
But the optimism that conservation can offer us beginning as subtle an idea/thought process/language into a real action (consciousness) is possible and uplifting.
An academic institution of this scale should know better than that. On a greater level it highlights the willingness of many to accept defeat versus empowerment. Words become passe/get placed in history & suffer premature death too readily, it seems. We should think of this as an opportunity to look more closely at the way our society unconsciously participates in hindering not helping/redeeming meaning in our world.
Stunned, saddened.. what troubles me the most is the fact that, some of these plants are Bach flower remedies: for harmonizing too much self-centeredness, too much speed of mind, for helping us to take responsability for our own lives, for time when one has completely lost faith in life and is in despair. And last but not least, poppy (a californian flower) is for creativity. It's scary to think that symbolically, there are taking that away from children!
ReplyDelete