Youngsters from Canonmills School in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the Treginnis Isaf Farm in 2005. Face-to-face with a day-old chick is 9-year-old Connor Stewart.
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Oxford Junior Dictionary dropping ‘nature’ words
By Eoin O'Carroll | 02.09.09
“Blackberry,” the small purplish fruit, is out, and in its place is “BlackBerry,” the wireless handheld device.
The same goes for “magpie,” “vine,” “beaver,” and “canary.” These words have been dropped to make room for “mp3 player,” “voicemail,” “blog,” and “chatroom.”
In December, the Daily Telegraph ran a story about Lisa Saunders, a mother of four in Northern Ireland who compared the 2007 version of the Oxford Junior Dictionary with previous versions of the 10,000-word lexicon aimed at 7-year-olds. According to the British paper, Ms. Saunders noticed that certain words – particularly those associated with Christianity and the British monarchy – were bring replaced by newfangled information-technology terms.
But in addition to words like “abbey,” “sin,” “vicar,” “duchess,” and “coronation,” the dictionary had seen the disappearance of “acorn,” “sycamore,” “violet,” “drake,” and “cygnet.”
The Telegraph quotes Vineeta Gupta, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, who said, “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it.”
She continued: “When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers, for instance. That was because many children lived in semirural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.”
The dictionary’s revisions astonished Robert Bateman, a well-known Canadian artist and conservationist whose Get to Know program encourages children to connect with the natural environment. The organization released a statement that called the changes a “sad reflection of the fact that today’s youth are disconnected from nature and have almost fully replaced outdoor experiences with indoor and virtual experiences.”
“This move will only help to alienate children from their wild neighbours. It’s taking a step in the totally wrong direction,” said Robert Bateman in response to the news. “If kids don’t know the name of something, they won’t care about it or think about it. This is especially true of our wild neighbours. How can we expect youth to care about porcupines or herons if they don’t know those words?”
The dictionary has seen the inclusion of some new words related to ecology and the environment. These include: “interdependent,” “biodegradable,” “endangered,” and “food chain.”
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2. Annelies | 02.09.09
This is a natural (pun intended) consequence of all the chattering about how the city is so much more sustainable than suburbia.
Well, sorry, but I like the fact that I can look out my front window and see a hawk circling the woods across the street. And see tracks from all sorts of critters in the snow. And NOT see another human!
3. Denise | 02.10.09
This boggles the mind. When children need to look up an unfamiliar term from a book they’re reading–it won’t be there, replaced by some johnny-come-lately tech term??
If there’s no term for violet, they won’t know why the color’s named that.
This is deeply disturbing, on a gut level. Winston Smith was a dictionary editor, wasn’t he?
4. Bob Moss | 02.10.09
Annelies, how many of the world’s 6 billion people can live like you do? It’s time to get real. But urban living doesn’t have to cut one off from nature. That’s what urban parks, zoos, and nearby preserved forests are for. The diversity of wildlife within New York City’s boundaries is amazing. A well-ordered society can offer more. Just two summers ago, I joined a group of high-schoolers who took a train from urban Hoboken to Harriman park, where we hiked ten miles and enjoyed vistas of unbroken forest, then returned the same day. There are limits to everything, however. We have to stop bashing China for limiting the number of children, and follow their example, or we’re all going to sink.
5. Jack | 02.10.09
Pull the heads of the Oxford editors out of the concrete and suspend them for however long it takes them to figure out the world is larger than human constructs. Yet, come to think of it, their new dictionary will make a useful teaching tool for my three-year-old daughter. It will expose her to the fallacy of an allegedly authoritative reference and the arrogance of elevating the human over the nonhuman, a convention that got us into the mess she’s facing in her lifetime. Thanks Oxford.
6. jad | 02.10.09
The thought of a 7-yr-old using the word ‘interdependent’ or even trying to figure out what its older moronic user thinks it means is terrifying.
8. Money is illusion | 02.17.09
I can’t remember the exact words used in those (fiction and/or prophecy ?) books, but they mean exactly that … :
- “Brave New World” (by Aldous Huxley) : “Financial meltdown has brought the dawn of [Brave New World]”
- “1984″ (by George Orwell) : “Words have been banished in the reign of [Ford], to control the thoughts of individuals”
Investigate what Bretton Woods was all about, and wonder why Private Banking Debts are being repaid by People’s Work, through Governmental (that is, your) Money … This intricate Web of BANKS’ DEBTS (along with the World’s Economic Crisis) can simply and truly be quietly DROPPED OUT OF EXISTENCE through simple computer records !!!
… plus so many other things, that I think that the Antichrist / Dajjal (muslim version of it, also banished through the second coming of Jesus Christ)
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1. Alana Ronald | 02.09.09
How inutterably sad that there will be no definition for a songbird that some still enjoy and cherish, and a purple flower that can still be found on lawns, in woods, and in parks.
Is this progress?