Musings on new junior dictionary in the UK

I read, with dismay, an article on the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary - new version for children, recently published in the UK. In their great "wisdom", the editors have decided to expunge words which do not reflect life today in the UK, replacing them with current, multicultural words - MP3, ringtone, agritourism, etc. Gone are references to many flowers and animals of the English countryside, like blackberry (note - Blackberry now means a device to make phone calls and access the Internet!), barn owl, primrose, beaver! (Canadians have a stake here too - with the removal of the word "beaver" from the dictionary).

This decision has met with many detractors, and not only in the UK. Canadian Robert Bateman has an article on Facebook referring to "another nail in the coffin of human beings acquainted with nature". He is right. My memories of growing up in the Sussex countryside are poignant with certain rituals, such as finding the first snowdrop under the old apple tree early in January, waiting with baited breath for the carpet of bluebells to spread itself under the pale green beech trees in April, or waking up early on a February morning and hearing the first bleating of a newborn lamb in the fields beside the house. Nature played a dominant role in English rural life when I was a child - we followed the seasons with special celebrations: the joy of seeing the apple trees break into drifts of white blossom in the spring, the song of a skylark on a balmy summer day up on the "Downs" and the smell of wild thyme as it was crushed underfoot, the beauty of a September morning with brilliantly coloured leaves rustling softly against an impossible blue sky, and the delight with which my sister and I would ramble through the woods looking for wild mistletoe and ivy for our Christmas decorations, while the Robin in the bushes would scold us with his meloncholy song.

What a sad reflection on life in this technological age. Do we really believe that we are "advancing" as a human race in our technoligical discoveries without teaching our children about the natural world around us in all its awesome beauty and diversity? I don't.