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Opening Arguments

Curse of the times

If cursing is a problem in schools today -- anybody prepared to say it's not? -- there are two extremes we can approach in trying to deal with it:

Students in Hartford, Conn., now have to pay for what they say - literally.

Under a new plan, 2,800 students at two high schools in the district could be subject to $103 fines for uttering profanity on school premises.

Or, we can go the other way and follow the "just go with the flow" approach:

At Boca Raton high school in Florida, principal Geoff McKee says that some words, in certain contexts, carried much harsher connotations years ago and no longer require out-of-school suspensions. They revamped their policy accordingly.

As one person notes in the article, "The problem is not so much the words themselves, it's the negative attitude that accompanies them." Students who cross the curse line are deliberately testing the limits set by schools. The latitudinarian approach does nothing to address that underlying reality.

Comments

LP Mike Sylvester
Tue, 12/13/2005 - 10:05am

At least in both of these cases the decision on how to handle the situation was made by the local School Board and NOT the State or Federal governments...

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