Are lexics becoming too bold for our children? Should dictionaries, encyclopedias and thesaurus justifiably be placed on a controversial literature list for school-age children? Recently, I was reading an article about a school district that banned the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary from its school’s bookshelves. Although I believe that parents and guardians have every right to censor certain things in their children’s lives that could be potentially dangerous to their personal and spiritual development, I do not think removing the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary from the shelves is the best and the wisest academic decision to make.
Too often, I find many elementary and high school students who rarely use a dictionary or thesaurus. The dictionary was a continuous and necessary resource for my academic growth and advancement from primary school to graduate school. It remains a very important reference guide for knowledge and research that I use practically every day. When new words or jargon are used in an unfamiliar context while listening to speeches or reading a book, I write those words down and refer to my old, tattered university dictionary for help.
While this is not a personal attack on advocates seeking to ban the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary from school shelves, it is a petition to proceed with caution in hiding our children from certain educational resources that may prevent didactic vulnerability when they are not in our school. Watch out. At the same time, this offers parents and guardians a great opportunity to teach their children about certain toxicities that may be detrimental to their well-being.
Here are twelve credible reasons for legitimizing the continued use of lexicons in our school system:
1. Improves literacy and academic progress.
2. Expand and develop your oral and written vocabulary.
3. Helps understand syllables, abbreviations, spelling and punctuation.
4. Assists in discovering the history of the English language.
5. It reveals pronunciation symbols.
6. Help familiarize yourself with the explanatory tables and explanatory notes.
7. You are able to understand signs and symbols.
8. You learn to use the style manual.
9. You will learn geographical and biographical names.
10. It helps to understand the origins and categories of words (ie, noun, verb, adjective or adverb).
11. It is advantageous for the development of verbal and written communication.
12. It is an indispensable mechanism for students, leaders, writers, speakers and educators.
Let’s be honest, in our world full of advanced technology to research just about everything your heart desires, no matter where you look, one way or another, our children will be exposed to good, evil and ugly. As much as we wanted to protect them from the horrors of life, families have the opportunity and the power to open consistent lines of communication to teach their children about morals, love, peace, and ethics, as well as the dangers of diabolics.