The Jump Blog

Editorial Note: I like profanity and find it very useful (as I often demonstrate on this blog). There are times when no other word will do. I also hate governmental intrusion, artistic insincerity, and the criminalization of thought. All of those feelings, and not any specific animosity toward the author of the comments, lead me to write this response.

JACK ARMY

In discussing the recent case of the high school student prosecuted for his free association writing assignment, Jack has decided to highlight the following comment and ask for discussion. It happens to be a subject I am passionate about.

As an ex-high school English teacher I would like to make a couple of simple points. First, I always encouraged my students to think about their audience when writing. They were told not to write anything that would not be appropriate for me or other teachers to read. Sexual content, bad language, violence all being things that would not be appropriate. Hey, this was public school, and it was important to control the atmosphere

I ask who gets to be the deciding authority of what is appropriate? If sexual content is not appropriate should we stop teaching Shakespeare? It’s impossible to understand his work fully without really delving into the sexual content, which is often graphic if veiled.

If bad language is inappropriate should Walter Dean Myers no longer be required reading in many high schools? His book Fallen Angels is liberally profane but also one of the best pieces of fiction written about the Vietnam War. And that’s not to mention e.e. cummings, John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Tennessee Williams. Even To Kill A Mockingbird contains some salty language, so how could one say “read these, study these, emulate these, these are the master works” and then follow that up with “please do not use profanity”? If high school kids are still anything like they were when I was attending some two decades ago, the vast majority use language that would make Lenny Bruce uncomfortable, as do most of the teachers.

As to the violence, again, was Orwell not violent? Dostoyevsky not violent? For the love of Christ (oops, there’s some profanity right there), look at Shakespeare, by the end of most of his works one has to mop the blood off of the page. Then there is the simple fact that high school is violent. Now admittedly, I attended high school at a small, Southern, rural school, and I am given to believe that such environments were not the norm nationwide even in my time, but violent bloody clashes were a weekly occurrence. In the four years I was in high school I must have witnessed two hundred fights, missed two hundred others, and was involved in an even dozen myself.

The teenage years are a tug of war between the urge for sex and the propensity for violence. So, when given an assignment to write whatever is in his head, is it any surprise that violence, sex, and rebellion are what come out of the teenager’s pen? And if it is a true reflection of their daily experience then why should it be limited?

Just because school is public and free doesn’t mean you get to do and say whatever you want. Sure a kid could write how he hated the food in the cafeteria, but he could not write that he would like to kill the cafeteria workers.

No it doesn’t mean that one gets to say or do anything they want, but you’d have to give me a pretty damned good reason as to why a kid shouldn’t be able to write whatever they felt. Not every expressed emotion is a threat. Have you never said “I could kill that guy!” Should you be prosecuted for it? Writing is often cathartic and a means to express in words what one cannot or would not do in deed.

For instance, I do not actually want to “kill an Islamic terrorist by wrapping him in a bhurka and beating his goat raping ass to death with a flaming Koran soaked in Everclear and stuffed full of hot dogs.” but on July the 7th of 2005 it felt pretty fucking good to write that. It was a cathartic response to what I viewed as an unconscionable act that I was impotent to retaliate against. Had I been a high school student I might have been prosecuted for what I wrote, which strikes me as intimidation and thought control.

Having freedom of speech sounds great, but nothing is ever truly free. There are boundaries everywhere - from public schools to the work place to the everyday life. Kids must learn to function within those boundaries. If an employee wrote sexual or violent fantasies in the work place, you bet your bottom, it would be dealt with seriously.

No, no, Lou. It doesn’t just sound great, it is great. Let me tell you how great, so great that the founders decided to insert this tidbit as the very first amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…” It’s right there on page 21 of my handy-dandy desktop copy of The Constitution. I see nothing about boundaries. Are their possible ramifications? Certainly. That mythical company of yours would likely fire the employee, as is their right. But what you are talking about is not a private company, it is the government coming into a government run school and saying “you can’t say that, you can’t think that, and if you let us know that you are thinking that then we are going to charge you with a crime.”

And that’s a whole new kettle of fish right there.

Being taught what is appropriate for different situations or different audiences is part of education not stifling the imagination. There is plenty of freedom in writing other places, but not necessarily in public school.

Skipping entirely the fact that it is not the responsibility of government to teach my kids what is and is not appropriate, could you name some of those places Lou? And what’s their attendance like? Where should a kid in public school learn to write if not in a creative writing course?

Okay, one quick example: A few years ago I was in charge of the youth portion of a local art show. It was a typical small town art guild art show. Local schools were encouraged to send in student art work. One school sent in a drawing of a person looking into a shattered bathroom mirror pointing a gun at his own head - basically a kid committing suicide. Truthfully, it was a great piece of art work - thought provoking and well drawn, but the audience was horrified as was the judge of the art show. It did not win any prizes and most people had comments like, “That kid needs serious help.” The art teacher was angry that the drawing did not win and said it was because our art show was a bunch of old fogies and that in a college environment the drawing would have done very well. I agreed, but pointed out that a painter or writer must keep his audience in mind. That school has never participated in our art show again which is too bad for the students - another form of stifling the imagination?

What you are advocating could not rightly be called art, it is artisanship. The second that an artist decides to modify the message to make it more acceptable, palatable, or viewer-friendly, at that second he or she has stopped creating art and has started producing a product. I do not blame the school for not participating, and I doubt that not participating in a show that expects the artist to moderate the message based on audience demographic has any stifling effect whatsoever.

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