![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oh, for fuck's sake.
Apr. 12th, 2005 02:25 pmThis article about the Growing Problem of kids who swear all the time has me scratching my head quite a bit.
I mean, I hear what they're saying about how elementary schools aren't the place for profanity, and blah blah blah. But, first of all, are these (often youngish) teachers seriously looking us in the eye and saying they never made a concerted effort to curse up a blue streak when they were twelve? It's a thing kids do, frankly, and yes, as much as I normally take the teachers' side in disagreements with the administration, YES, your principals and other administors DO have bigger fish to fry. There are metal detectors in your schools for a reason, people, and in case you missed it there's federal education policy that cares less and less about you doing your job and more and more about your students correctly filling in bubble sheets, and if kids aren't learning things it's not because their brains are full of words you think they're too young to use.
JESUS.
Teach them, since you're teachers -- teach them about register, yeah? There's language that's appropriate for this or that situation, and inappropriate language for the classroom isn't limited to profanity, after all. For the love of god, if I had kids in school and you tried to suspend them for what they said (and what they said wasn't a threat of violence against a classmate or a teacher), fuck YEAH I'd be in there arguing with you about it, and you might not like my language either. And I'm the child of public-school teachers, okay? I'm one of the ones who's ON YOUR SIDE.
And secondly, here's this quote:
Yeah, and there's a big difference between whining and wanking, bonehead. There are words disappearing from our language. News flash: THAT HAPPENS. Words appear in the language, as well. This is hardly, as I mentioned above, the first generation in which any of this has occurred. GAH. Maybe pull your heads out of your collective ass and recognize that the vitality of language is neither new nor the end of the world, and stop trying to make us believe that's your major concern in trying to get kids to clean up their language on the goddamn playground.
I mean, I hear what they're saying about how elementary schools aren't the place for profanity, and blah blah blah. But, first of all, are these (often youngish) teachers seriously looking us in the eye and saying they never made a concerted effort to curse up a blue streak when they were twelve? It's a thing kids do, frankly, and yes, as much as I normally take the teachers' side in disagreements with the administration, YES, your principals and other administors DO have bigger fish to fry. There are metal detectors in your schools for a reason, people, and in case you missed it there's federal education policy that cares less and less about you doing your job and more and more about your students correctly filling in bubble sheets, and if kids aren't learning things it's not because their brains are full of words you think they're too young to use.
JESUS.
Teach them, since you're teachers -- teach them about register, yeah? There's language that's appropriate for this or that situation, and inappropriate language for the classroom isn't limited to profanity, after all. For the love of god, if I had kids in school and you tried to suspend them for what they said (and what they said wasn't a threat of violence against a classmate or a teacher), fuck YEAH I'd be in there arguing with you about it, and you might not like my language either. And I'm the child of public-school teachers, okay? I'm one of the ones who's ON YOUR SIDE.
And secondly, here's this quote:
Horwich said constant use of profanity reveals a poor vocabulary, and O'Connor lamented the toll it is taking on the language.
"There are words virtually disappearing from our English language," O'Connor said. "When people are mad, what do they say? They say they are pissed off or [expletive] pissed off. No range. There is a big difference between being upset or livid. There is a big difference between irritated and infuriated."
Yeah, and there's a big difference between whining and wanking, bonehead. There are words disappearing from our language. News flash: THAT HAPPENS. Words appear in the language, as well. This is hardly, as I mentioned above, the first generation in which any of this has occurred. GAH. Maybe pull your heads out of your collective ass and recognize that the vitality of language is neither new nor the end of the world, and stop trying to make us believe that's your major concern in trying to get kids to clean up their language on the goddamn playground.
