Hi Readers! I hope you will run and hide any copies you might have of “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” a poem that has apparently been corrupting young minds — and lungs — sinc3 1822.  You’ll recall that in the poem, St. Nick is not without his vices:  ”The stump of a pipe he held tight [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Infantilizing young folk, Marketing Madness and Gadgets, Miscellaneous | 113 Comments »

Heads up! You will LOVE this Pearls Before Swine comic featuring Humpty Dumpty (and his lawyers) today! This is not just some wacky notion of where our world is going. Recall that in 2009, we noted that a British  TV program was actually assuring children that, “All the kings horses and all the kings men MADE [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Infantilizing young folk, Miscellaneous | 24 Comments »

Hi Folks! Got this letter in response to the post about “Fannie” and “Dick” becoming Frannie and Rick in the updated Enid Blyton oeuvre. (Hardest thing  to spell since “hors d’oeuvres.” Which, come to think of it, is the same word.)   Anyway, this note comes to us from Sarah Thompson, who describes herself as [...]

Filed under: Censorship | 46 Comments »

Hi Readers! I’d never yeard of Enid Blyton, but I’m sure a lot of you have. So enjoy this essay by Kate Browne, a journalist based in Sydney, Australia. Kate is the mother of two little girls and hopes to cure them of their Disney Princess obsessions one day. She can also be found blogging, occasionally, [...]

Filed under: Censorship | 88 Comments »

Hi Readers: While we’re on the subject of whitewashing the classics for kids’ delicate sensibilities, here’s the one that takes the cake: Dear Free-Range Kids: My kids have a children’s bible which says “and Jesus went away.” Kind of destroys one of the central tenets of Christianity. Yikes! For God so loved the world that [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Infantilizing young folk | 165 Comments »

Hi Readers — A recent note from the frontlines of overprotection: Dear Free-Range Kids: I spent a few years as an assistant teacher working with kindergarteners and the amount of mollycoddling the school did was ridiculous. We couldn’t read “The Cat and the Hat” without interrupting the story to mention how no real mother would [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Infantilizing young folk | 95 Comments »

Cave, cave, cave.  Apparently Sesame Street has decided not to air this Elmo/Katy Perry duet thanks to Katy’s own duo — the ones in her skin-tight outfit that had grown-ups worrying about kids seeing “Cleavage Street.” Or so the rumor goes, according to the folks at TMZ. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Look, I don’t use them [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Fun, Media Madness | 132 Comments »

Hi Folks! Just read this bizarre new wrinkle on TechDirt about the case of the Pennsylvania school that gave its 1800 students laptops and then used them to spy on the kids — 42 times! While the school claims it activated the cameras only when trying to track down a lost or stolen computer, nonetheless the [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Marketing Madness and Gadgets | 44 Comments »

Hi Readers — As many of you have pointed out today, a grammar school in California has banned the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary because it contains a definition of “oral sex.” I guess the parents who complained would much rather their kid get his sex information from the geniuses on the monkey bars. Here’s the [...]

Filed under: Censorship, School and Zero Tolerance and Bullies | 108 Comments »

Hey — quick, cool point, brought up by reader Rich Wilson: In The Cat in The Hat, which is hardly what you’d call subversive literature (oh, I’m sure some of you will, but let’s continue this point), the two tots are HOME ALONE! Mom has clearly gone out to shop, solo. And yet the book does [...]

Filed under: Censorship, Helicopter Effect on Kids, Infantilizing young folk | 38 Comments »