A Tax And Spend Idea
So every time I boot up my web browser the personal google home page pops up. In the bottom right hand corner of my personal home page is the ever popular "word of the day." Everyone does it. Yahoo, Google, AOL and generic internet providers alike put that up there to give the subscriber that he or she is getting an education just by accessing the internet.
My problem is that these definitions are woefully inadequate. You get three words maybe one complete sentence and from that one is suppose to derive meaning. For example today we had:
orotund: full in sound; also, bombastic.
Notice the lack of pronunciation key. Notice that the simple abbreviation to denote part of speech is missing. Notice how this is the only possible meaning given for the word.
But wait! There is a hyper link. The more discerning individual can get the full Dictionary.com definition.
Here we have two entries, a pronunciation, part of speech, use in a sentence and short bit on the etymology of the word. It has the appearance of a Good Thing (TM).
But lets look at those sentences. They are clips from the New York Times and books hosted at Amazon.com. Meaning is being provided on a basis of who is willing to pay Dictionary.com to link to their products.
Now every day we here about how the internet and computers are an important tool of education. I think a deeper truth would be that the most important tool in education that a person could have is comprehensive understanding of language. We think in words. We express ourselves in words. The more words we know, the more precise our thinking, the better able we are to express ourselves. Putting access to these words in the hands of students and educators should be a top priority.
I propose that in order to do this we should set aside funds for a national online dictionary. I'm sure the dictionary publishers would disagree. I don't particularly care. Dictionary.gov would probably be one of the best uses of this internet. Though I can't work around how one would set up the necessary bureaucracy without making it so that any political party could ever influence the content.
Well that is my idea to make the world a better place.
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My problem is that these definitions are woefully inadequate. You get three words maybe one complete sentence and from that one is suppose to derive meaning. For example today we had:
orotund: full in sound; also, bombastic.
Notice the lack of pronunciation key. Notice that the simple abbreviation to denote part of speech is missing. Notice how this is the only possible meaning given for the word.
But wait! There is a hyper link. The more discerning individual can get the full Dictionary.com definition.
Here we have two entries, a pronunciation, part of speech, use in a sentence and short bit on the etymology of the word. It has the appearance of a Good Thing (TM).
But lets look at those sentences. They are clips from the New York Times and books hosted at Amazon.com. Meaning is being provided on a basis of who is willing to pay Dictionary.com to link to their products.
Now every day we here about how the internet and computers are an important tool of education. I think a deeper truth would be that the most important tool in education that a person could have is comprehensive understanding of language. We think in words. We express ourselves in words. The more words we know, the more precise our thinking, the better able we are to express ourselves. Putting access to these words in the hands of students and educators should be a top priority.
I propose that in order to do this we should set aside funds for a national online dictionary. I'm sure the dictionary publishers would disagree. I don't particularly care. Dictionary.gov would probably be one of the best uses of this internet. Though I can't work around how one would set up the necessary bureaucracy without making it so that any political party could ever influence the content.
Well that is my idea to make the world a better place.
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posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 1:35 PM
2 Comments:
what? you wouldn't get a kick out of seeing george bush's picture next to the word "failure?"
Tom -- in an ideal world I would never see that, because george bush would never have even made it through the primaries.
sp -- Ilike the crossword in the weekly world news. everything is better when the answer is elvis or batboy or zombies.
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