So apparently the Oxford Junior Dictionary has been making some tough decisions about which words to include and which to drop in its dictionary. Acorn, bray, and canary are out. Attachment, blog, and chatroom are in. (There is a whole list I’ll be checking against our own Kids Open Dictionary.) Various groups, including Christians and naturalistists/scientists among others, are unhappy at their choices.
This brings out one of the great benefits of wikis (especially open wikis) — you can have your cake and eat it too. There are no arbitrary limitations on page counts because of printing costs, and if one group or another doesn’t like the selection choices, they can also fork off and do their own subset.
I often talk about this with students when we’re talking about Wikipedia (something I’m long overdue for a post on). Kids seem to have a very intuitive grasp of the advantages (as well as the detriments) of having a resource that “anyone can edit.” They get that this means a greater diversity of ideas and that a theoretically unlimited amount of information on any given topic is a good thing.
I wish more adults (especially teachers) got this. What is encouraging is that most people are open to these ideas and hearing kids talk about it seems to open adult minds.
I have been a biology nut, teacher and computer guy, so I appreciate your comment about the broadening effect that the Internet has on publishing and the particular/peculiar decision to remove acorn from their junior dictionary.
I am forced to wonder if editors at Oxford Dictionary will also eliminate “oak” if they eliminate “acorn”. It would only be logical, since without the acorns, there would be no oaks. (I think you can now see why I began with the biology nut description.)