When my editor initially tried to convince me to write for The Reflector’s opinion section last August, my first thought was to decline. Not because I didn’t want to commit the time to writing or because I had a problem with embarrassing myself in front of the entire university (or at least the three people who read my articles), but because opinions and I have had a troubled past.
This has been true ever since the fourth grade when I bombed that “fact and opinion” test, in which we had to analyze several sentences and determine whether they were facts or opinions.
The specific question I missed read, “I think Templeton is trustworthy.” (The class was reading “Charlotte’s Web” at the time.) I, of course, labeled this a fact, since it begins with the words, “I think.” The bit about Templeton being trustworthy may be an opinion by itself, but that doesn’t really matter – what matters is the fact that the speaker thinks so.
It’s kind of analogous to sentences like “Nicolas Sarkozy thinks digitizing books will be a good investment for France’s educational literacy” or “Glenn Beck thinks communism and fascism are the same thing.”
My teacher, however, marked my answer as incorrect. When I protested, she claimed the spirit of the sentence was opinionated in nature, so that made the whole sentence an opinion. I suppose that’s in contrast to a sentence like “I think my teacher is wrong,” which would be a fact with or without the first two words. (She sent me to the principal’s office when I told her that.)
So why do I tell that story? Well, it’s because that story shaped my life in a dramatic way; namely, every time I hear a story about a public school that does something ridiculous involving fourth grade students, I tend to side with the fourth graders.
Of course, this means I spend a great deal of my time siding with fourth graders because there’s no shortage of stories about ridiculous happenings in elementary schools.
The most recent one I noticed occurred this week in Menifee, Calif. Apparently, one of the parents of an Oak Meadows Elementary School student learned that her son had found the term “oral sex” in the dictionary; and, like so many parents in a situation like this, she had a choice to make.
Her first option was to accept the unfortunate truth that sometimes children come across adult subjects at an early age. She could then try to approach the situation proactively, for instance, calmly discussing the matter with her son. While difficult, this would allow her to put the matter in its proper context.
Her second option was to angrily call the school and complain that dictionaries have no place in elementary school classrooms.
Long story short, there are now no more dictionaries in any of the elementary school classrooms in the district.
Also, the dictionary now holds a place on the banned books list, which I guess means hell is about to freeze over. (On the bright side, that gives the Saints a good shot at winning the Super Bowl.)
Now, I don’t really know how much fourth graders use dictionaries. Supposedly they need them to learn how to spell words for spelling bees, but there’s no way that’s true. I mean, you have to already know how to spell the word to look it up, right?
But at the very least, I think it’s worthwhile for them to have some unbiased and comprehensive source for looking up the meaning of any word they don’t know.
In the end, it comes down to parents and schools being overprotective of their students. Yes, it’s sad that occasionally a little kid comes across something he’s too young to be exposed to. But it’s much, much sadder that hundreds of little kids are all being deprived of one of the most fundamental of resource materials.
Then again, who am I to dictate what’s best for those kids? When you get down to it, it’s all a matter of opinion. And based on that fourth grade test, I’m not so good with those.
McNeill Williford is a senior majoring in industrial engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].