British children’s dictionaries being radically changed

Kilroy M. writes:

According to this article in The Telegraph, Oxford University Press has removed words associated with Christianity, the monarchy, British history, and nature from its dictionary for children, replacing them with words having to with computers and e-mail.

Mr. Auster mentioned in a previous post that to effect national suicide, the young have to be taught carefully to think in suicidal terms, and he cited a recent pop-cultural reference to it: The Grinch. Another example would be the modern adaptation of Planet of the Apes, where the audience is lead on to believe in a romantic climax between the main male and female characters, but where it actually occurs between the male human and the female ape.

Of course, the young also have to be kept dumb about their own heritage, and this episode is a perfect example.

Below is the article that Kilroy sent.

Words associated with Christianity, the monarchy and British history have been dropped from a leading dictionary for children.
Julie Henry, Education Correspondent
07 Dec 2008

Westminster Abbey may be one of Britain’s most famous landmarks, but the word abbey has been removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Photo: Dean and Chapter of Westminster

Instead, words such as ‘MP3 player’, ‘voicemail’ and ‘attachment’ have been included. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

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.

“We have a certain Christian narrative which has given meaning to us over the last 2,000 years. To say it is all relative and replaceable is questionable,” said Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment at Buckingham University. “The word selections are a very interesting reflection of the way childhood is going, moving away from our spiritual background and the natural world and towards the world that information technology creates for us.”

An analysis of the word choices made by the dictionary lexicographers has revealed that entries from “abbey” to “willow” have been axed. Instead, words such as “MP3 player”, “voicemail” and “attachment” have taken their place.

Lisa Saunders, a worried mother who has painstakingly compared entries from the junior dictionaries, aimed at children aged seven or over, dating from 1978, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007, said she was “horrified” by the vast number of words that have been removed, most since 2003.

“The Christian faith still has a strong following,” she said. “To eradicate so many words associated with the Christianity will have a big effect on the numerous primary schools who use it.”

Ms Saunders realised words were being removed when she was helping her son with his homework and discovered that “moss” and “fern”, which were in editions up until 2003, were no longer listed.

“I decide to take a closer look and compare the new version to the other editions,” said the mother of four from Co Down, Northern Ireland. “I was completely horrified by the vast number of words which have been removed. We know that language moves on and we can’t be fuddy-duddy about it but you don’t cull hundreds of important words in order to get in a different set of ICT words.”

Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a leading private school in Berkshire, said: “I am stunned that words like “saint”, “buttercup”, “heather” and “sycamore” have all gone and I grieve it.

“I think as well as being descriptive, the Oxford Junior Dictionary, has to be prescriptive too, suggesting not just words that are used but words that should be used. It has a duty to keep these words within usage, not merely pander to an audience. We are looking at the loss of words of great beauty. I would rather have “marzipan” and “mistletoe” then “MP3 player.”

Oxford University Press, which produces the junior edition, selects words with the aid of the Children’s Corpus, a list of about 50 million words made up of general language, words from children’s books and terms related to the school curriculum. Lexicographers consider word frequency when making additions and deletions.

Vineeta Gupta, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said: “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be—little hands must be able to handle it—but we produce 17 children’s dictionaries with different selections and numbers of words.

“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 semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don’t go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as “Pentecost” or “Whitsun” would have been in 20 years ago but not now.”

She said children’s dictionaries were trailed in schools and advice taken from teachers. Many words are added to reflect the age-related school curriculum.

Words 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

Words put 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

LA replies:

This article reminds me of a thought-nightmare I’ve had from time to time, that not just the schools and the school textbooks and the mass entertainment and the news media get changed, but that all the reference books, the encyclopedias, the dictionaries, the guides to language usage, get taken over by the cultural left and radically changed so that the basic knowledge, the basic reference points of our culture, are expurgated and replaced by something else.

Stories like this give me the feeling that our civilization can only be saved by some kind of revolution, in which the entire existing elite class in Western society is overthrown by force. But people don’t want to contemplate that, perhaps for the same reason that they don’t want to contemplate removing Muslims from the West: the cost would be civil war.

- end of initial entry -

Paul Weston writes from England:

You stated:

“Stories like this give me the feeling that our civilization can only be saved by some kind of revolution, in which the entire existing elite class in Western society is overthrown by force.”

There is no other choice.

Democracy is more or less over in Europe. The U.S. is better, but four to eight years of Obama may well see a genuinely Socialist America alongside a soon to be Communist European Union.

I do not see any serious opposition to this from any mainstream politicians, so we either accept it, or we revolt.

Revolution—From The Middle—as Sam Francis put it, will become the main talking point within a couple of years.

We number tens of millions, our oppressors in the political parties, the councils, the police, media and schools amount to tens of thousands.

This gives me hope. We could do it easily if we ABSOLUTELY HAD TO. The millions will not sleep forever.

Ben W. writes:

LA: “Revolution? Curiously, what set off that thought was not something big and dramatic, like the media covering up for Muslim terrorists; it was alterations in a British children’s dictionary.”

Vineeta Gupta, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press … the name that launched the revolution? Vineeta Gupta? Vineeta Gupta … Vineeta Gupta … I keep repeating that name to myself trying to find the significance of this name for Western civilization and culture. Vineeta Gupta? Vineeta Gupta …

Alex K. writes:

I think the British children’s dictionary thing was so horrifying, prompting you to revolution more than the usual left-wing media stuff, because it was so accurate. It wasn’t so much a wrong-doing by the editors, as another media cover up would have been, it was what they did right. As a reflection of Britain’s change (death) the editors did a good job choosing which words to drop and which words to add. Reading the list of old and new words was staggering because the words were so accurately chosen.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Thanks for another good post, this one about the Oxford children’s dictionary atrocity. As I read the attached Telegraph article, I could not help noticing that the head of children’s dictionaries (some title, that) at OUP is one Vineeta Gupta. Isn’t part of the West’s problem our over-willingness to entrust cultural and religious aliens with the maintenance of our heritage, and to assume they will defend it? Objectively speaking, why should one expect a British dictionary program run by an Indian woman to take pains to preserve references to British heritage? The sooner British heritage and culture are swept away, the sooner once-Great Britain becomes the sort of multicultural non-country where the Vineeta Guptas of the world will feel just as at home, if not more so, as native Britons.

This is another, maybe minor, example of the terminal naïvete of Westerners. Another more serious example is the U.S. ambassador to the diabolical UN, Zalmay Khalilzad. In what real sense are Americans and their interests truly represented before the world by an Afghan Moslem? Still another is France’s almost completely non-French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who once safely in office lost no time revealing himself as a rabid anti-Western—so by definition anti-French—multiculturalist. I have the same reservations about America’s president-elect.

Westerners need to realize that if we want Western civilization to survive, its custodians and guardians have to be actual Westerners. (Not, of course, that there aren’t plenty of Westerners who have sold it out—see Sarkozy, above, and for that matter GW Bush. Even so, we cannot rely on aliens to preserve what is ours for us, when their natural inclination is to replace it with what pleases them.) HRS

Hannon writes:

Fascinating how a “mere” article about modifications to a children’s dictionary can arouse such industrial-strength reactions. From the article, this is an astonishing statement:

“The word selections are a very interesting reflection of the way childhood is going, moving away from our spiritual background and the natural world and towards the world that information technology creates for us.” [Prof. Alan Smithers, Buckingham U.].

Creates for us. That is the key concept here and in so many other aspects of the relation of the populace to its entrusted experts and managers. Are we creating nothing for ourselves as a society? There are always dedicated souls among us but have we become totally passive at the group level? While this dictionary symptom maybe negatively symptomatic, it is the living generations who keep and change languages; dictionaries merely try to catch up. The elite class we constantly refer to, usually in onerous terms, fancies itself the leading causative edge of progress, but this position is illusory.

As to your revolution, well, it sure sounds like a hearty prescription for Change and Hope, but it seems to me the rebellion is really against a Western population that has gone wallowing in complacency, wealth, obesity and indifference. They do not deign to take the reins, or even mount the steed, of the democratic system with any real spirit and this tells me they are perfectly satisfied with the status quo. If the couch is comfortable, why get up?

This attitude allows the elites to conjure their fantasy world around us and to make it attractive enough that we embrace it like a long lost spiritual faith. So we are attacking them for doing what they do naturally (cf. Islam), as if their demise could open up the opportunities for needed change, while the millions, the majority, are more or less stooges of the former because of their sloth and ignorance.

A few thousand revolutionaries cannot accomplish anything transformative and durable … except under very, very special circumstances.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 07, 2008 11:19 PM | Send