You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

A few weeks ago we had that call from Dean.

He's a teacher in LA and he wanted to know what our thoughts were about handling teen profanity in the classroom.

Right, or on campus anywhere.

Yes, and we heard from a lot of listeners about that and I wanted to share this email from Judy Heights who lives here in

San Diego. She wrote, I taught high school for years. The rules across campus for language were to say the least variable. I quickly realize that high

schoolers can be lawyers when it comes to negotiating rules and I think any parent

of a team.

For a middle schooler. Right. Or a middle schooler.

Or a middle schooler.

So she decided to talk with them about how words themselves aren't inherently bad,

but in a context they have, and people associate different feelings

with them.

And then she said, I said if they wanted to curse in my class, they had two choices.

I gave them a list of curses from Shakespeare or I told them they could shout,

Moo cow! And as you can imagine, Moo cow was the hit.

Kids would get mad, start to curse and yell moo cow then instead of being mad they would start to laugh you cannot stay

mad while yelling moo cow she said I knew I was succeeding when I had kids come into class

snickering saying someone had yelled,

moo cow in another class and all the kids laughed

...