New York Times News Service
CITRONELLE, Ala. — It’s shaping up to be a darn nice Valentine’s Day here in Mobile County.
An optimistic band of middle school students hopes that for just one day no one in the county will curse. Perhaps people can substitute “sugar” or “snap.” Or even the powerful “Oh, pickles!”
The Mobile County Commission, acting on a request from students who have formed no-cursing clubs at Lott and Semmes middle mchools, has declared a daylong ban Monday on bad words.
Commissioners also gave Lott Middle School students $5,000, which will finance an assembly featuring McKay Hatch, a California teenager who founded a nationwide No Cussing Club in 2007 as a way to get an entire expletive-loving nation to stop using profanity.
“I know children who grow up in homes where profanity is as prevalent as English,” said Merceria Ludgood, the County Commission member whose district includes Lott Middle School in this small town north of Mobile.
“The small issue is cussing,” Ludgood said. “The larger issue is civility. As a nation, we have gotten meaner.”
Getting schoolchildren to stop using profanity seems a Sisyphean task. Still, the anti-cursing movement has grown in fits and starts in recent years, particularly as school administrators, parents and students themselves have looked to new ways to stop bullying.
Elsewhere, administrators at a high school in Hartford tried slapping $103 fines on students who cursed, but that effort was abandoned quickly, a school administrator said. They are still trying it in Texas. In October, a teenager who confronted another student with a profanity was hit with a $340 ticket.
Some experts say the notion that cursing leads to bullying is misguided. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently added a section on bullying to its policy statement on the pediatrician’s role in preventing youth violence, but cursing was not mentioned.
Although Mike Dean, a Mobile County Commission member, voted to finance the anti-cursing program, he also called it a gimmick. Dean, 55, is more of an infrastructure guy. Five thousand dollars can buy a lot of playground equipment or pave a parking lot, he said.
“In my day, they taught respect,” he said. “They used what they called a paddle.”