Fighting words

Profanity is on TV, in the movies and laced into chart-topping songs. You hear it on the street and in grocery stores and restaurants.

As profane words pervade everyday life, profanity also has grown more prevalent in public schools.

A girl at Coeur d’Alene High School, for example, got a scolding recently for using profanity in the office lobby. A Lake City High School student worked lunch duty for swearing within earshot of the principal.

And three years ago, a Central Valley High School senior says, he got “at least three detentions” for writing a profane word on a window steamed up with his breath.

Local educators say the “f-bomb” and other bits of off-color language still should be taboo in the classrooms and hallways.

“I don’t even know why anyone would even misunderstand why it wouldn’t be appropriate,” said John Brumley, Lake City’s principal.

But walk down a high school hallway or attend a sports game in the Inland Northwest, and you’ll probably hear it.

“You don’t even notice it anymore because you’re so used to hearing it,” said Kayla Wearne, a junior at Lake City. For every curse word that elicits a reprimand, students say – and some educators grudgingly admit – many more go unnoticed or unchecked.

“It’s just an everyday thing. It’s just part of their vocabulary,” said Corey Comstock, in-school suspension supervisor at Coeur d’Alene High. “I think the biggest thing … is just making sure they’re aware that they’re even doing it,” Comstock said.

The issue surfaced during Coeur d’Alene School District discussions a few months ago, after parents at a school board meeting shared stories of their children being subjected to profane language at school. They want to wipe vulgarity from the schools and call for the kind of student-led anti-swearing initiatives that have popped up across the country.

The leadership class at Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley, for example, is addressing the issue with a “steps to respect” campaign implemented this year. Its goal: reducing foul language, name-calling and other disrespectful behavior.

The program isn’t just focused on swearing, and students don’t think it needs to be. Profanity is hardly an epidemic at Central Valley, leadership teacher Leanne Donley said.

“I think they understand their audience,” she said.

Testing boundaries

“The first word we talk about … is respect,” said Mandy Surratt, principal of Mullan Trail Elementary School in Post Falls.

That’s similar at elementary schools around the region and nation, where students develop social skills through staff-led anti-bullying programs and character trait promotions.

The focus lessens in middle school. Kids get more freedom and don’t have all-day supervision from one teacher. They’re hitting puberty and beginning to test boundaries.

“Saying the f-word when your parents can’t hear you, it’s like your first way of, like, feeling like you’re older than you are,” said Justine Ezzell, a senior at Lake City. “I think that’s why a lot of kids cuss.”

Ezzell and her classmates contend elementary school kids swear more than when they were that age. But Debbie Morris, a Coeur d’Alene resident, said she first noticed profanity on school grounds when her children entered middle school.

Nationally, profanity is becoming more common, said James O’Connor, author of “Cuss Control,” a self-help book for chronic cursers.

“It’s gotten out of hand,” O’Connor said. “These individual rights that people feel they have are overshadowing the rights of the community” to not hear profane language.

Local schools have districtwide policies against swearing, but students’ and parents’ opinions vary on how they’re enforced. The Coeur d’Alene district’s policy allows for students to be suspended for as long as five days for their first offense, but students and administrators can’t remember the last time that happened. A warning is much more likely, they say.

“Everything is situational,” said Mike Nelson, vice principal at Coeur d’Alene High. “If I had a student, publicly, from across the way, scream at me, ‘f-me,’ well, certainly that’s a much different thing than someone patting their friend on the back and saying ‘how the f are ya?’ “

Swearing that’s combined with defiance can lead to a more severe punishment, educators say. That’s what earned a girl at Lake City lunch duty after she uttered the f-word in front of Brumley, the principal.

“It’s sort of an attitude test along with the language,” Brumley said.

What’s wrong with it?

Gordon Grassi, principal at North Pines Middle School in Spokane Valley, said on the rare occasion swearing becomes an issue at his school, it’s usually part of a bigger matter such as harassment or fighting.

Dave Bouge, principal of Bowdish Middle School in Spokane Valley, contends there’s actually less swearing in his school than in previous years.

And Coeur d’Alene High Vice Principal Warren Olson, in his 31st year at the school, says he hears no more cussing now than he has in the past.

Lake City sophomore Alex Graves questions why certain words carry such bad connotations in the first place.

“A word is just a word,” he said. “You could say ‘the’ is a bad word; you could compare it to the f-word. … It’s how you see them.”

Comstock, the Coeur d’Alene high teacher, recalls a student last year who unloaded a mouthful of profanity at a classmate. When Comstock separated the two, the student seemed shocked he could be punished for his language.

“He honestly thought in his mind, ‘What’s wrong with swearing?’ ” Comstock said.

A community issue

Parents swear. Coaches swear. Even some teachers swear. Graves, the Lake City sophomore, remembers a substitute teacher occasionally dropping swear words in an apparent attempt to win the class’s approval.

That touches on what profanity expert Timothy Jay said is wrong with anti-swearing efforts in schools: It gets blamed on teens instead of the entire community.

“It’s always been looked at at the superficial level,” said Jay, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and author of books on profanity. “It always gets framed in terms of the student’s problem and not the community’s problem.”

Spokane Valley resident Ginny Foster gained national attention for her anti-swearing efforts, including a “hush up” Web site that she started in 2004 to encourage people to watch their mouths in public. Though she’ll never condone swearing in public, Foster said society is changing in such a way that people need to be more tolerant of language.

Foster points to the word “sucks” as an example, which she says was often used as a reference to oral sex 30 years ago. Now, the word is often used as a synonym for “lame” or “stupid.”

“People are just used to a more casual use of terms that might have been offensive in the past,” Foster said.

Conrad Malinak, a Central Valley senior, said the increase in swearing isn’t about maliciousness.

“It’s not directed at anybody in particular, it’s not degrading at all, it’s not hurtful or demeaning,” he said.

Anti-swearing programs

O’Connor’s biggest beef with swear words lies in their negativity. The author points to a high school in Indianapolis that implemented an anti-swearing program and saw a decrease in fights at the school.

But an effective anti-swearing program needs wide support from a school’s staff and students, he said.

That formula is what Madonna Hanna credits with the success of a program started by her students at Bremerton High School in Western Washington.

A spawn of Hanna’s marketing class, the “Dare not to Swear” program began last school year after teachers and students indicated in a survey that there was too much swearing at the 1,500-student school.

Through school-wide activities, assemblies and advertising, the phrase “dare not to swear” has been embraced by students as a hip way to discourage profanity, Hanna said.

“You walked down the hall and if a kid said a swear word, three or four kids would say ‘dare not to swear, dare not to swear,’ ” Hanna said, “and the kid would say ‘oh, I’m sorry,’ or they’d confess and say, ‘I didn’t even know I was swearing.’ “

Peer pressure seems to be what drives profanity at school, students say. Freshmen swear more than others, said Shelby Conner, a junior at Ferris High.

“They think they’re cool if they do it,” Conner said. “If people realized how stupid they sounded maybe they would (stop).”