paeb yə ləm
noun
1. a soft substance that serves to nourish.
2. weak or banal ideas; pablum.
“…we’re in English class, which for most of us is an excruciating exercise in staying awake through the great classics of literature. These works– groundbreaking, incendiary, timeless– have been pureed by the curriculum monsters into a digestible pabulum of themes and factoids we can spew back on a test. Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.”
― Libba Bray, Going Bovine