A Custom Objectionable Word List Ate My Homework

theodp writes "Among the first three schools using Chromebooks for Education is the Merton Community School District, which decided to go Chromebook after the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction (WDPI) issued a news release (created using PDFMaker for Word) announcing that all Wisconsin schools can have access to Google Apps for Education by simply downloading a Google Consent Form (Microsoft Word format, oddly) from the WDPI website, completing & signing it, and submitting it to Google. And to help get the schools going, a separate Wisconsin Google Apps for Education website aims to jumpstart things with weekly webinars, the first of which — Getting started with the Google Apps for Education Control Panel — shows school officials how they can sandbox 'Naughty Students' and filter objectionable content. While Google illustrates how a list of 'custom objectionable words' can be used to flag and/or block students' e-mail with some cute examples — different spellings of 'booger' and a regex to block variants like 'b00g3r' — things get considerably nastier in the real world, as this NSFW custom objectionable word list used by the North Canton City Schools shows."

Comments

What an Unreadable and Horrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone cut the extraneous crap and useless hyperlinks of this story and also re-edit so this is actually readable? I have no idea what the story is here.

Re:What an Unreadable and Horrible Summary

[BetaDays]

I agree with you. When people are not allowed to cuss to words that other people find objectionable they start making up words. Just look at how "Frack" is so nicely used now since a TV show started using that instead of what we know it to mean. Also I remember how this one person kept saying "oh Fudge" when they made a mistake. So I think having these Lists only cause more fragmentation of the language in the long run since people will always make up words to get around the "word police".

Re:What an Unreadable and Horrible Summary

[NatasRevol]

Or use fun words - cock is a male rooster, pussy is a cat, bitch is a female dog, ass is a donkey. Make sure to work them into your essays thoroughly AND appropriately.

As I walked through the farmyard, the pussy kept rubbing up against my legs, looking for a treat. I finally came to the chicken coop and saw a very large cock on top of the house. Later, I put on my leathers and got my bitch to round up my ass so I could go for a ride.

Re:What an Unreadable and Horrible Summary

[blue_teeth]

Heh, reminds me of a joke:

A Bus stops and two men get on. They sit down and engage in an animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores them at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:

Emma come first, then I come.
Then two asses come togeder.
I come once-a-mora.
Two asses, they come togeder again.
I come again and pee twice.
Then I come one lasta time.

"You foul mouthed swine" says the lady, "in this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public!"
"Hey, coola down lady" said the man "I'm a justa tellin' my friend how to spella 'Mississippi' "

Re:What an Unreadable and Horrible Summary

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Some therapist should have a chat with them.

Hehhh. Hehhhh. You said "the rapist".


Luckily, I see "fucktard" isn't on the list, so we can still accurately describe the list's author.

Sorry, looks like an unreasonable list to me.

[betterunixthanunix]

Any high school student who uses these words in a piece of schoolwork is either committed a mistake

Oh yeah? How about an essay that contains something like this:

Although it is less relevant in the modern world, the Bible does contain a prohibition on beastiality (sic, the list doesn't spell this word correctly), which indicates that such practices were known among ancient near-east cultures...

Yeah, it is really a stretch to think that a student would use one of the words on the list in their schoolwork. Many of the words on that list could easily be used in an academic context even at the high school level. A student might be talking about dog breeding and use the word "bitch" appropriately, or might write a report about the history of the gay rights movement which contains various slang words.

The actions the school takes matter. But the list itself, as a trigger for action, seems pretty sensible.

It is sensible if your goal is to condition students to believe that censorship is normal and that if you are going to discuss certain topics it must be under the supervision of an authority figure. What do you think reaches students at a deeper level: a class about the US government which happens to cover the bill of rights, or a censorship system that the students must submit to every day? How much respect for freedom of speech do you think these students will have, after spending years dealing with this sort of censorship?

On the one hand, we criticize the Chinese for doing these sorts of things, we criticize Cisco for providing the necessary equipment, and we encourage people to run proxies and Tor exits. On the other hand, we engage in exactly the same behavior when it comes to our schools and students, we use the same equipment, the same sort of policies, and we discourage students from circumventing the censorship apparatus. What are teachers supposed to say when they teach about current events?