Swearing and inappropriate language in schools, even in primary
classes, is on the rise.
As a child, I don't remember hearing a swear word until I entered school. When I was in the Army COs swore like 'bloody troopers', and their wives had very obvious substitutes for swearing. But this time the decadence would be of a more explicitly sexual variety!
Smolensk these days and the lives of the children I teach are full of foul language. It's in the halls, classrooms, you name it. It's part of their normal vocabulary. I was discussing with colleagues the possible reasons for this. When television shows programmes containing words we would not accept in our classrooms, how can we argue?
Essentially, the purpose of school is to teach children how to be functioning human beings at least, both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Therefore not allowing children to swear in class is essential practice.
As a child, I don't remember hearing a swear word until I entered school. When I was in the Army COs swore like 'bloody troopers', and their wives had very obvious substitutes for swearing. But this time the decadence would be of a more explicitly sexual variety!
Smolensk these days and the lives of the children I teach are full of foul language. It's in the halls, classrooms, you name it. It's part of their normal vocabulary. I was discussing with colleagues the possible reasons for this. When television shows programmes containing words we would not accept in our classrooms, how can we argue?
Essentially, the purpose of school is to teach children how to be functioning human beings at least, both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Therefore not allowing children to swear in class is essential practice.
It did not take long
for pupils to realize that part of the mutual respect between
themselves and me is the lack of swearing. If profanity is blatant
and direct, I ask for an apology. Nine times out of ten, the student
has already caught himself and has self-corrected and apologized.
I
hope and dream of times where children use appropriate language but
am I fighting a losing battle?
As the old social groupings of nuclear families, extended families and church communities are replaced by imagined Internet communities and the state, which is Puttin' money before people, we have a generation that includes many who are isolated and lonely, drifting without any moral anchor or structure to their lives, faced with an endemic on swearing.
As the old social groupings of nuclear families, extended families and church communities are replaced by imagined Internet communities and the state, which is Puttin' money before people, we have a generation that includes many who are isolated and lonely, drifting without any moral anchor or structure to their lives, faced with an endemic on swearing.
