Going to the public library after 3:00 can make for an interesting experience. After 3 school is out and many students come to the library to hang out or work on homework until their parents can come pick them up after work. Today I happened to be sitting near a small group of them. Working around nerds, the types of conversations are very different than what I tend to hear around children. Often I hear bits and pieces of conversations but usually I don't get to hear much. But today I got to sit near a few of them and I listened in.
Unfortunately it was not a pleasant experience. The amount of swearing was disappointing but I looked over it. Kids like to use their new found vocabulary, and hopefully will just grow out of it. I remember being in middle school and listening to Adam Sandler and later ICP with my friends in our basements and rooms when our parents were away. None of us really talked like that, but it was still very amusing to listen to. So I equate the swearing with kids being kids. Unfortunate, but hardly worth getting all upset about.
What did bother me was the lack of grammar. If you're going to be swearing up and down, at least do so in a correct fashion. It's one thing to sound like a sailor, it's quite another to sound like an idiot. In this particular instance, I do not think the entire group of children had been introduced to the word 'is'. Everyone would say something like, "where she at?" or "this not right." No, the words coming out of your mouth are what is not right. I can't blame the children. Someone supervises them. If not the parents, because they possibly come from broken homes, at least the teachers do. They're supposed to be educating these kids. What worries me is that they will grow up speaking this way. I can only hope they don't write that way. But come to think of it I remember being in my senior writing class and our teacher telling us when he taught at the university level he had a student who wrote ebonically.
I've always assumed kids just talk that way because they think it's cool, and that they really know proper English. But I've been told by at least one elementary school teacher that this is not the case, and that these children need special attention to break their bad habits. I've even seen books devoted to the subject of helping teachers come up with lessons that will promote good grammar skills when they have children who speak this way. It was sort of funny because the book had passages written by students on one side, and then a translation into proper English on the right.
Unfortunately it was not a pleasant experience. The amount of swearing was disappointing but I looked over it. Kids like to use their new found vocabulary, and hopefully will just grow out of it. I remember being in middle school and listening to Adam Sandler and later ICP with my friends in our basements and rooms when our parents were away. None of us really talked like that, but it was still very amusing to listen to. So I equate the swearing with kids being kids. Unfortunate, but hardly worth getting all upset about.
What did bother me was the lack of grammar. If you're going to be swearing up and down, at least do so in a correct fashion. It's one thing to sound like a sailor, it's quite another to sound like an idiot. In this particular instance, I do not think the entire group of children had been introduced to the word 'is'. Everyone would say something like, "where she at?" or "this not right." No, the words coming out of your mouth are what is not right. I can't blame the children. Someone supervises them. If not the parents, because they possibly come from broken homes, at least the teachers do. They're supposed to be educating these kids. What worries me is that they will grow up speaking this way. I can only hope they don't write that way. But come to think of it I remember being in my senior writing class and our teacher telling us when he taught at the university level he had a student who wrote ebonically.
I've always assumed kids just talk that way because they think it's cool, and that they really know proper English. But I've been told by at least one elementary school teacher that this is not the case, and that these children need special attention to break their bad habits. I've even seen books devoted to the subject of helping teachers come up with lessons that will promote good grammar skills when they have children who speak this way. It was sort of funny because the book had passages written by students on one side, and then a translation into proper English on the right.
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