Adele Ferguson: Sensitive word lists

REMEMBER the 9-year-old kid who took a gun in his backpack to school in Bremerton and when he dropped the backpack on his desk the gun went off and almost killed another student?

That was Feb. 22, and the victim just got out of the hospital the other day. The bullet did so much internal damage, however, that Amina Koceer-Bowman will be undergoing repairs for years to come, if not the rest of her life,

She and the accidental shooter made the news again recently over a letter he wrote her apologizing for bringing the gun to school. That apparently satisfies everyone since the boy made a brief appearance in court where he pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment, unlawful firearm possession and bringing a weapon to school.

According to news accounts, he told the judge through his attorney that he understood the meaning of the charges against him. Really? I doubt he knew his lawyer and the prosecutor’s office made a deal beforehand. He was ordered to write the letter, stay in school and out of trouble and his conviction would disappear when the case was sealed after his 18th birthday. Some punishment.

I DON’T KNOW how many 9-year old kids you know, but the couple I do wouldn’t have the vaguest notion what reckless endangerment and unlawful firearm possession means although I’m sure they know not to take a gun to school. But look how many do it anyway? Kids of all ages.

It would be interesting for this or any school to include the terms reckless endangerment and unlawful firearm possession in tests to see exactly how well students do understand them. Unfortunately, those terms will probably be banned to avoid embarrassing some kid like this one.

According to columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., the New York City Department of Education has a list of 50 banned words and phrases it sends to the companies that put together standardized tests and you wouldn’t believe what’s on there.

Try dancing, pepperoni, birthday, dinosaur, divorce, home computers, slavery, Halloween, disease. Each word is believed to offend somebody in the school and God knows we can’t have that.

WHEN NEWS of the list was publicized, the New York board defended itself by saying it wasn’t the only one. Florida bans the word hurricane and California bans the word weed. That no sooner saw print than Florida and California officials denied it. They try to be sensitive in their testing, they said, but there are no lists of specifically banned words.

Democrats are doing their best to make the words rich, wealthy, millionaire, billionaire, as bad as George Carlin’ s seven dirty words, well, actually, his list has grown to ten. You can find all ten on your computer, presumably in Carlin’s biography.

I note that the D’s condemning any rich, wealthy, millionaires or billionaires are usually one themselves but they like to say as Obama does that “we” who are such should pay higher taxes although they don’t elaborate on the financial set-ups they have established to avoid doing that.

There was another column in one of my newspapers recently by Jill Pertler urging dropping of the word retarded from use. Why that’s worse or more offensive than developmentally disabled or Down Syndrome I don’t know. Yes, I know some smart alecks and thugs like to label others as “retards” But they’ll do it to the wrong guy some day and discover the meaning of reckless endangerment.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)