Controversy over update to the OUP's Junior Dictionary

At today's Daily Telegraph:

'Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.

But academics and head teachers said that the changes to the 10,000 word Junior Dictionary could mean that children lose touch with Britain's heritage.'

First, let's look at some of the words added in:

Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue.

Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro.

Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph.

Now let's take a peek at the ones taken out:

Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe.

Dwarf, elf, goblin.

Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar.

Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade.

Adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.

Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow.

Now let's use a few words the OUP felt fit to add to the Junior Dictionary to address them on the day of their reckoning:

Dear Oxford University Press,

 

As we live in an evermore digital world, you appear to want to remain in analogue mode with your changes to the Junior Dictionary, more narrowband than broadband.  They have created debate and conflict; caused high emotion in response; and are considered by some to be an act of vandalism on an English language resource for those in childhood.  Sadly, your incisors have sliced out a whole raft of beautiful plants and animals making the words as biodegradable as the living things.  What is democratic and tolerant about the removal of so many words relating to Christianity, in an era of multiculturalism?  How can we expect to export a citizenship of bilingual talent in the future when words in each language are interdependent and the children of today will be exposed to a drought of words in English?

 

Your current policy appears to be allergic to growth in the English language and does not promote a sense of attachment to our home shores and heritage in the young.

 

But, above all, your lack of common sense – and I wonder how you have defined this expression in the Junior Dictionary – leads to the wealth of words we have in the English dictionary becoming an endangered species for the young, brainy or not.  This will only serve to place us further down the food chain in terms of education on the world stage.  We need more boisterous ambitions than just to take the English language and classify the curriculum in terms of the colloquial only.  (With no apologies for the alliteration, there.)

 

I urge you to think again before your next update, to negotiate on the creep of political-correctness that appears to have fixed fast in your apparatus.  In fifty years’ time, I hope for all our sakes that your actions now do not become a cautionary tale then.  Perhaps you could try a compulsory committee of bungee jumping exercises to bounce some sense into your heads?

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Crimeficreader

P.S. And with all reference to aisles and pews, pulpits and parishes, psalms and sins removed from today’s Junior Dictionary, how are our children going to appreciate the re-runs of The Vicar of Dibley in 50 years time?  I bet David Attenborough is feeling miffed too.

Comments

[Maxine]

Philip - I understand your probably correct concern, but they are not actually banning these subjects, rather they are merging them with a couple of others into a meta-subject. Does not bode well I agree, but the good schools will carry on as now under this new banner, and I suppose it might make some of the less good ones include a bit of history/geog on their curricula? Who knows....state education is woefully underfunded and over-micro-managed.

[crimeficreader]

The Junior Dictionary is aimed at children of 7+, Krimileser.

And yes, you are right, the OUP does monitor English language useage, with changes based on adaption rather than prescription. I recently bought a couple of books published by the OUP which might interest you. They are Susie Dent's "Words of the Year" and "The Language Report: English on the Move 2000-2007". I listened to her speak at Hay the other weekend. It is culture and changes in culture that lead to the creation of new words/expressions or the resurgence of others. One example she highlighted was that "credit crunch" is not a new term but one that was first uttered in the 1960s.

[krimileser]

Crimeficreader,

sorry to ask but how old are the kids/children who use primarily the OUP's Junior Dictionary ?

And I find this somehow comforting. Almost everyday I read about well educated people who think that the end of the German language is near - which in fact isn't true, it is just changing.

I guess this lists are a result of statistics analyzing language usage and therefore teach me more about your country than long articles do.

[Randolph]

Brava, Crimficreader! What an eloquent response to this sad absurdity.

"Narrowband" is a fine coinage and should be included in the dictionary's next edition along with all of the words they have deleted.

Apparently, it will be left up to people like you and dogs like myself to preserve and expand the English language.

Fondly,
Randolph
www.adogabouttown.com

[Philip Amos]

If I really start in on this I shall never stop, so I'll just confine myself to one observation. The day before I read this horror I read that the teaching of history and geography is to abolished in primary schools. What that means is that children will not to begin with have the temporal and spatial contexts in which to place and make sense of many of the objects and concepts removed from the dictionary and others still in it, such contexts and the sense of them depending upon the structure that comes from teaching those subjects as disciplines, not as subordinated elements in 'themes', which, temporally and spatially, confuse young minds. These are just two more of the things which, reviewing from afar the news and the goings-on in my native land , utterly bewilder me on a daily basis. How this all came about and what these people are thinking, from the cabinet down, I cannot fathom.

[crimeficreader]

Thanks, Juliet. Simple and beautiful words from our childhood are consigned to the dust; meaningful words of our heritage are lost. It is indeed a sad day, but I remain optimistic because of the reaction and believe that people with real common sense will outlast the idiocracy.

[Juliet]

Great post. But oh, how utterly, unbelievably depressing to see the list of words deemed 'irrelevant' to modern yoof . . .

[crimeficreader]

No Norm, alas it is not April Fools' Day, just the UK's Fools' decade or so. But who are the fools here? The establishment that led to this or the rest of us who were asleep until it was too late to react with meaningful actions? (Apart from a big "NO" to come at the next election.)

I hope we can turn around our society to reflect the values of the past, for which we were once lauded. But for now, we are a laughing stock internationally and some of us know exactly why. More to come on culture in a future post, especially after my visit to the NL and a post I have seen on an author's blog after his visit to the UK.

[Norm]

Is it April 1st ? You have got to be joking. Surely incisor was in there already?