When reading the title of this article, you may be thinking, “Well of course cursing is not school appropriate. It’s bad.” That’s what I thought originally when I was a teenager. Cursing in school is “not appropriate” because it’s bad. That’s it. There’s not rhyme or reason why it’s bad. It’s just bad, or “it’s not nice.” While cursing not being nice is true in some cases, students are not always cursing to be rude, but for some other reason. They think it’s “cool” or they think it’s “no big deal.”
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Even as a substitute teacher, I’ll admit that when I heard a teenager say a curse word it was “no big deal” (which I now realize is wrong, and I no longer allow teenagers to use foul language). Why was I going to correct a student for cursing? They were not harming anyone, unless they were using those words to be rude. Mind you, I was just a daily substitute teacher who had not begun my student teaching yet and didn’t understand the importance of the example we need to set for our students, even as daily substitute teachers. For substitute teachers who are in school hopeful to have their own classroom one day, substitute teaching is the perfect time to start setting the best example for students.
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Another thought that occurred to me is, “At what age cursing is appropriate?” When I substitute taught in elementary school, I never let an elementary school student curse while I was in the classroom. The reason for this is simple, it just was not appropriate for elementary school students to curse. We condemn that language because of the shock value of hearing a second-grade student curse. While it is indeed shocking to hear a young child curse, do you realize how one-dimensional that answer sounds? It basically has the same logic as saying, “It’s just not right.” Why is it not right?
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The Answer is More Complex Than You Would Think.
Cursing in school is not right because when students go out into the real world, there are some formal and professional settings where cursing is just not acceptable. For example, when students attend a job interview and they say the f-word, their chances of getting hired are very slim. If they curse around someone they just met, that person could see them as rude or improper. When you first meet people, whether formal or informal, cursing around someone could make a bad first impression on someone. Students could even know someone close to them who does not like hearing profanity. It is just not acceptable to speak this way in certain situations, and that should include school.
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So why should an intolerance for profanity happen in public schools of all places? After all, public schools are not as formal as a job interview or some future careers they may have. Students come to school in regular clothes (unless they wear uniforms, of course). While students may not come to school dressed like it is, we need to teach students that school is a professional environment. As I said before, cursing will not be tolerated in most jobs. Of course, most young students do not have jobs yet, so more likely than not, school is probably the most professional environment in their daily lives. As teachers, we need to treat it as such. Most of us go into teaching to prepare students for the real world, and we have to model what behaviors are expected of students when they graduate high school and enter their post-secondary education or career. If we never correct a student when they use foul language, we are sending the message that cursing will be acceptable wherever they go. It does not matter if the child 7, 14, or 18. Every step in a child’s education counts. Elementary, middle, and high school educators all make an impact on students. Grade level does not matter.
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So Why Did My High School Teacher Let Me Use Profanity?
After reading all this, you may be thinking, “Well, aren’t high school students too old to be told that cursing is bad?” or “I had some teachers who let me curse in class.” or “I was allowed to curse in high school under certain conditions.” I did, too. You probably had a few teachers in high school who let you curse because they understood that these words slip sometimes, and that’s okay. One example of a teacher who let us know it’s okay said to us, “We get upset sometimes, and we curse, and that’s understandable.” She’s right. We get upset and we curse. It happens. However, she did say that she did not want us using those words casually in every other sentence. That is also understandable because like I said before, that will not be acceptable everywhere you go. At this point, I think high school teachers do this to let you know that you are old enough to know that you don’t have to never curse, and if it slips, that’s okay. However, there is a time and a place for it.
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As teachers, we are all aware that we do not just teach the content students will need for the real world, but we teach proper behavior and etiquette they will need. While profanity in school may not seem like a big deal in a particular moment, it will be in some point in a student’s life. When a student uses a curse word when they are trying to make a good impression on someone, it may cost them an important opportunity. They may not get a job, or a speech could be poorly received, or it may be as simple as someone not wanting to be around them. If we do not correct the language students use in the school setting, who will be there to correct them in the real world?
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Elementary school teacher who writes about education, children/young adult media, childhood, and disability. Full-time grad student who rediscovered anime!
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This publication is about my interests as a teacher and a writer. I like to write about topics in teaching, childhood, children and young-adult media, and disability. I write pieces from analytic essays to opinion pieces to bits and pieces about current projects I’m working on.
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Father’s Day is tough for me. I don’t have a dad, because the man who was my father made a choice, when I was a child, to be my bully, instead.
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For my entire life, this man was implacable, inscrutable, and entirely unwilling to have any kind of relationship with me … yet he still felt entitled to my adoration an attention. Every day was a new puzzle to be solved, a new set of circumstances I had to figure out, so I could somehow evade his wrath and his cruelty.
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In short, the man who was my father is an awful, selfish, cruel, racist, narcissist, and he made a choice to withhold his love and affection from me. Instead, he poured his rage, his shame, his scorn, and his cruelty into me. In my dysfunctional family, he made me the Scapegoat, and my mother went along with it. …
