Cursing

My youngster has picked up some foul language on the street. He has never heard such words at home. While we understand that there is nothing vicious in words them­selves, we ore definitely embarrassed when he comes out with a phrase that makes all heads turn. In our society, such language is never used in public. We have told him that we personally don’t care about his language, but that swearing in such an unbridled way abashes us before the neighbors. Somehow he just hasn’t taken us too seriously. Even though he tries to curb his language, now and then some pretty awful things slip out. What should we do?

Unfortunately, you cannot break the rules of conven­tional society by telling your neighbors that they are a lot of prudish, hypocritical humbugs who probably privately leer at sex pictures, snicker and rub their hands gleefully when listening to dirty jokes—jokes that aren’t funny—only dirty—and use swear words in their bars and clubs.

I notice that when a chamber pot appears in a film Summerhill children never laugh, whereas the whole movie audience goes into fits of laughter. Very few sex stories are funny; most are only filthy. I have heard hundreds in my time and I have told hundreds, but today I can think of only one dirty story that is funny. I can’t put it in print—a pity—for it is really not pornographic—it’s funny! And readers please don’t write and ask me what it is either.

I suggest that your boy should be advised to discrim­inate between those who are pro-life and those who are anti-life. The boy should be made conscious of the fact that some people are shockable. A wise parent could go on to explain that people are only shocked when they have an obscene, perverted interest in sex,

My pupils use quite a lurid vocabulary. But if any boy or girl uses a four-letter word at a Summerhill general meet­ing when visitors are present, he is reproved by the others. I once had a new pupil of five. When she was packing to go home for summer vacation, I happened to get in her way. “Get out of my way, you bugger,” she said.

“Susan,” I said, “your mother likes Summerhill, but your father doesn’t. If you go home and call him a bugger, he may take you away from here and send you to another school.”

At the end of the holidays, her older sister said: “Funny thing happened at home. Susan didn’t swear once.”

Yet slowly, humbug is giving way. Twenty years ago, one could not use the word fuck in writing. Even in Part­ridge’s Dictionary of Slang it was f—k. When I was a boy damn was d—n; and when Shaw made Eliza Doolittle say the word bloody, the English press printed it as b—y. The publication of “Lady Chatttterley’s Lover” and “The Tropic of Cancer” were milestones on the road to honesty.

The difficulty about juvenile swearing is that it so often is an imitation of adult swearing. Children hear men on the street use four-letter words freely and without con­text. If sex lost its morality and repression, four-letter words would have little point. Swear words are vulgar words be­cause they belong to the language of the common people. A professor says anus, but a navvy says arse. Maybe we should teach our kids to swear politely and shout out Fornication¹. Excrement! Micturation!

Owing to my husband’s employment, we have to live in an area, that to say the least, is not genteel. My little son has to seek his playmates among what, without snobbery, I call the working class. He comes home with rude words. What can I do to protect him?

I like that word rude, it has such a lovely Victorian sound. When I was at school, we read Gray’s Elegy in the Churchyard where “the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” I thought they were buried in the section reserved for those who had used bad language.

Some one might, after reading your question, ask: “Is this lady a snob?” Nevertheless, I think you have a point, for a good Job so often depends on a good accent and you want your son to learn to speak properly and not acquire a sloppy enunciation. In England, a Cockney or a Lancashire accent can damn an applicant for certain jobs. Yet, I surmise that you are more concerned about your son’s morals, espe­cially his sexual morals than you are about your boy’s accent, for I am sure you shudder at four-letter words.

I really do not think the situation is serious. As children of the village school master, we talked the dialect of the vil­lage with the sons and daughters of ploughmen; but the moment we crossed the home threshold, I automatically talked what was then the Queen’s English. The odd thing was that we kids never mixed the two languages.

So take hope. The Anglo-Saxon swear words T learned outside did not corrupt me. They won’t corrupt your son. Words, in themselves, mean little. It’s behavior that counts. Dear mother, your attitude to your boy will have far-far more influence on his future than all the words in the universe.

My boy swears and curses. Is this normal?

Swearing has little to do with having a poor English vocabulary. I say bloody instead of sanguinary; I say hell instead of Hades; my pupils say shit instead of excrement. Why the Anglo-Saxon words are indecent I do not know, but I suspect that the ban on them is a snobbish one. A university professor says sexual intercourse—a sailor calls the same thing fucking. But nowadays, many intellectuals are coming around, too, to prefer the simpler expressions.

Swearing, at times, is merely expressive and has little implication. A Scottish ploughman will describe a chatter­ing man as a “heverin’ hoor,” but the educated Scot will call the same fellow a “blethering bugger.”

Swearing must be entirely due to repression. The four-letter sex words are a healthy protest against our obscene attitude to all things sexual, just as our blasphemous words are a protest against the perversions of Christianity.

Is swearing normal? Whether it is or is not, imitation is normal. Your boy is only repeating with gusto what he has heard others say—with gusto.