A Blog Post Full of Really Bad Words

The ever-helpful New York Department of Education has alerted us about some really bad words that offend people. They want them banned, at least from standardized test. But let's go for broke and ban them altogether.

Here are some of the nasty words dinosaur, Halloween,  birthday, dancing, homes with swimming pools, running away, rap music, rock music, and disasters such as tsunamis and hurricanes

A kid dressed as a dinosaur for Halloween, thereby
offending the N.Y. Dept. of Education in two ways.

There's a "logic" to the Ed Department's wish to scrub the words from standardized test. "Dinosaur" suggests evolution, which would offend some religious types who don't believe in it. "Birthday" is bad because Jehovah's Witnesses would be offended because they don't celebrate birthdays.

"Halloween" is bad because it suggests paganism. The house with the swimming pool is a no-no because it suggests rich people, which could inspire jealousy. And people are afraid of disasters, so keep those out, too.

CNN reached out to Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg, who thinks the N.Y. Ed. Department is being stupid. (By the way, "stupid" is probably a banned word too. Says Wineburg:

"The purpose of education is to create unpleasant experiences in us. ... The Latin meaning if education is 'to go out.'  Education is not about making us feel warm and fuzzy inside."

Wineburg questioned the idea that the New York City Department of Education would want to "shield kids from these types of encounters."  He said the goal of education is to "prepare them," adding "this is how we dumb down public schools."

Geez, though, I think any word can offend anybody out there.  Maybe we should ban all kinds of words. I have some suggestions.   The word "the" offends me, since it's used so much and I'm sick of it. I have the same problem with words like "and" "it," "a" and "of."

So we just ban words completely, just so we don't offend anybody.