The Language Arts of Obscenities
By Emil Levitin (07/17/06)
To Ann Coulter, for giving me courage to speak the truth!
The times when a child would pick up obscenities from foul-mouthed buddies at the playground have passed. Elementary and middle school students nowadays can look no further than a typical classroom setting, and learn the obscenities from the horse's mouth: the Language Arts teacher.
Middle schoolers must find censoring of four-letter words on TV hysterical, since they are privileged to hear the uncensored version daily, at their own public schools, from authority figures! Moreover, the 'foul mouth' and obscene gestures are praised by the teachers and counselors, due to the cock-eyed and condescending politically correct messages which they are supposed to accompany ('rainbow equality', 'handicap superiority', 'cross-racial solidarity', 'commiserating social justice').
You don't believe me? Here is one book which has recently found its way to numerous schools, according to multiple complaints I have received, and is apparently studied in many a Language Arts class: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The book has received high marks from the liberal reviewers, since it carries a trendy politically correct message of intellectual superiority currently assigned to an autistic teenager. In the following analysis I will address neither the literary merits of the book, nor its social or intellectual content. Let us focus on the Language Arts of Obscenities which this book brings into the classroom.
Rick Plouffe, a Wellesley, MA High School parent, had bitterly complained about this obscenity-laced book being assigned last year as a mandatory summer reading (see http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/afa/272005c.asp) He pointed out that one needs to look no further than the 4th page to start counting vulgarities, profanities, obscenities and curses, invading the book. They consist of "just about every swear you can think of, including the 'c-word'."
Nevertheless, I have received reports that this book is still widely recommended, and even read out loud, in a variety of public schools around the nation, including my native 'progressive' Massachusetts where it is gaining popularity at the middle school level. Elementary school parents and kids, beware! Cursing is quickly becoming a highly acclaimed Language Arts skill.
The fact that the children's edition of the book is identical to the adult version reflects a current attitude towards exposing young children to cursing and obscenities. Such an attitude is expressed clearly by one of the amateur net reviewers of the book: "Maybe the language is a little too strong for a younger audience, but this language is out in society today, and it is a foolish parent who thinks their child can be protected from obscenities for ever."
Foolish, indeed, is a teacher who could not foresee the consequences of such an early exposure to obscenities! How would they prevent the kids from using their newly acquired vocabulary in the classroom setting? Imagine the glee, with which the social progressives in the public schools read aloud the items like the following (excerpts from the book are courtesy of Amazon.com's book search feature):
"… And he said, "What the [f-bomb] are you … ? That's my cupboard , Christopher. Those are … Oh [s-word] … [S-word, s-word, s-word, s-word, s-word." Then he said nothing for a while."
Note: That's 7 curses in one quotation mark, and 5 curses making up an incoherent sentence. Wow, that should set a literary record!
"… And then the train jiggled and itt [sic] began to move. And then the policeman said, "[S-wording f-bomb]." And then he looked at the ceiling of the train and he put his hands together..."
According to Amazon.com's book search, there are only 12 pages in the book which feature the f-bomb (usually in multiple instances). Most parents who consider such a text admissible for their children are advised to browse through the printed version: you will be unpleasantly surprised. Almost every page contains an s-word, and b-words, as well as c-words show up in various parts of the book, to say nothing about their creative combinations.
Isn't it fun for the teachers and counselors to classify all these curse words and, perhaps, even to philosophize how some of them are not as bad for a child as the others, and how the social good here outweighs the old-fashioned, prudish myths about raising children? Wouldn't it be more honest to simply FORBID all the curse words in the classroom setting, not only for students, but also for teachers?
I, for one, in spite of being bitterly accused in my hate mail of being a 40-year-old pedophile, am in fact 13 years old, and I do not claim to know what most of these words mean. However, I believe my parents who were outraged by every page of this book, and I realize that these words can't be good for me, even though I seem to be pushed at school to learn them with some urgency!
How ironic it is that hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year for parental control programs on TV, computers, etc, only to go down the drain, thanks to the public schools serving as social experimentation laboratories. How do these ideological cloning institutions get away with providing students the same content and context which parents everywhere are urged to block out? They achieve it by means of a careful and thoughtful book selection process, of course, and by making their politically correct choices, scandalous though they may seem to a non-progressive mind, a mandatory reading!
The liberal social engineers instantly rush to defend their smutty choices from the criticism by concerned parents like Mr. Plouffe. In Wellesley, MA High School, for example, Principal Rena Mirkin rushed to endorse the book, saying that its merit "outweighs its profane content." Outweighs for whom? Certainly, not for the children and their powerless parents! But the schools, though thriving on taxpayer's money, have long seized to serve the people! They are predominantly locked unto themselves, serving a much higher social purpose: their own survival and proliferation.
Back to our petty complaints: surely, only crazy gadflies of the extreme Religious Right could think of complaining about this nauseating book being read out loud or assigned to be read at home, for the whole family to enjoy the smut! How can you go wrong with writing of such caliber?
"… door half open and it said TOILET on it, so I went inside. And it was horrible inside because there was poo on the seat of the toilet and it smelled of poo, like the toilet at school..."
"… went to the toilet and then they came out again, but they didn't see me. And I could smell their poo, and it was different from the smell of the poo that I smelled in the toilet when I went in ..."
"… And 6 people went to the toilet but they didn't do poos that I could smell, which was good...."
All of the above, as well as this awe-inspiring description of graffiti, would surely make even Charles Dickens jealous:
"… and EPBIC and suck my cock and Q Obstructing the doors can be dangerous and BRV and Con. IC and TALK TO THE WORLD. And there was a pattern on the walls which was like this ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ And there was ..."
Then again, there exist numerous fans of this book's age-inappropriate curse offerings. In Massachusetts, at one of the middle schools, for example, a student expressed discontent about reading the book out loud, since it is not an acceptable language at home. A teacher readily explained that the curses are a 'wonderful form of literary expression'.
Not only are some advocates stating that the book's merit outweighs its content, the truly progressive 'core' defends the language itself: it is being used in front of the children by the teachers to show a good example! The progressive experimentalists are asking for it, for they will soon be greeted by a middle finger from students every morning, and an f-bomb will be directed at them in place of homework (or are they assigning the obscenities for homework already?)
A rather effective and disarming spiel being spewed out by powerful proponents of these kinds of books and any other kind of activities/programs, which generate parental resentment, is the cunning method which I call Disperse the Annoying Parents by the Principal (DAPP). This school defense mechanism, created by the ever so arrogant establishment of the ideological cloning institutions (did you know that the current term is 'faculty', not 'teacher' anymore?), appears to carry the following underlying message: getting the pesky, ignorant parents out of the classroom, so that indoctrination may proceed in peace.
This is how DAPP works in practice. Unless the parents are in compliance with the conformist PTAs and agreeably provide additional 'charitable contributions' to supplement one's property tax, so that the public schools can exceed their legitimate funding to buy 'progressive' books, and unless the parents are absolutely ecstatic about the teacher's and school's every progressive move, they are likely to hear the following incantation:
"We are so surprised to hear about your concern. Everyone seems to enjoy our new approach/program/activity (e.g., the skill in obscenities being a highly valuable skill, its mastery will be significantly reflected on your child's grade in Language Arts). You are the only family to bring up such a complaint, you know."
It is not unheard of, for this type of answer to be given to a number of complaining parents, within one day! This serves as a useful tool to intimidate the parents who are being led into fear of being singled out, and standing alone against the consensus (not a pleasant feeling in a progressively conformist school environment).
Moreover, the parents never forget, even if you do, that their child is kept hostage by the very same school which the parents have now thoughtlessly put on the defensive! The hostage capturing mechanism clicks into place instantly, which involves the child being made a pariah, feeling the consequences of parental foolish behavior via the atmosphere of academic suspicion suddenly surrounding him and leading to severe grading penalization by the teachers who, nevertheless, still appear to be threatened and even offended.
Thus, FEAR is the reason why such highly objectionable books continue to be read and admired throughout the school system. Once Mr. Plouffe stood up against the mandatory reading of the book he felt was objectionable, many parents who sympathized "were concerned that if they voiced their opinion there might be some negative ramifications as to their particular child," says Mr. Plouffe, "… so they've told me, 'Rick, we're behind you—but don't use our name.'"
The incident at Wellesley High School ended with Mr. Plouffe's moral defeat: he ended up allowing his daughter to read the obscenity-laced oeuvre, albeit "with serious reservations." Short of crossing out the countless number of curses found on almost every page, it is hard to imagine what such reservations may achieve for his daughter in the long run.
For the multitude of children who were made to read or to listen to this book this year, the situation is the same, save for 'parental reservations'. Most parents switch on their own defense mechanisms of "I am sure, that's all right" or "I have no time to get into every detail", or "I never get involved in school work". Thus, once again, my fellows and friends, in middle and high schools: we are on our own! If we do not help ourselves and do not make the school officials consider our needs when making academic choices, we will end up cursing like drunken sailors before we are 15!
Emil Levitin is 13 years old. A "hostage" of the public indoctrination system in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, he is the President, Editor in Chief, and Founder, of RepublicanVoices.org , as well as a diehard conservative Republican.
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