A Sharp View: The “F” word goes to school — The West Ranch Beacon

By admin — Chris Sharpnamed as a column in the paper's own navigation, as published; the post was published under the site account

Image not recoveredSchool.jpg

There have been a lot of things happen- bad and good, good and bad- since I published my book, “Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California.” In fact, to catch up, I am being persuaded to write a sequel. But what will I name the sequel? “The Return of Dangerous Learning? The Son of Dangerous Learning?” Recently, I have learned that a particular word has become even more dominating in the life of California public high schools. Thanks to the epistemological research of the late Dr. Lewis Thomas (author of “Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher,” physician, biologist, anthropologist, linguist) we now know this particular word is one of the oldest in the known world, perhaps only younger that “ow.” In fact, according to Dr. Thomas, this overly used F word originated in the single root language of the human genus.

According to Dr. Thomas’s report, perhaps as many as a million years ago the F word was universally used to threaten and intimidate possible adversaries and invaders. Dr. Thomas continues to report that in prehistoric times, the F word meant “die!” fully accompanied by that exclamation mark.

But like everything else that started about a million years ago, erosion began to build in this word by too much wear and tear. After being used too many times, its effect lost its sharpness. To freshen up the F word, human beings attached a new perplexing meaning to it. According to Dr. Thomas, that is the meaning attached in modern times to the F word, while still intending for use to bewitch and disable enemies of every stripe.

In the times we live in today, of course, the F word is running amok all over the place. It is usually creating trouble and aligned with criminal behavior wherever it goes.

For example, the F word has surely become the gateway password into the massive domestic violence existing in Southern California today. So many times society has seen this word become a rite of passage between a seemingly average husband and a transformation into a savage wife batterer.

The F word is also used today as a dark rite of passage whipping up an average automobile driver into becoming a murderous road rage monster.

And the F word today is increasingly being used and heard among the “mainstream” students of Southern California high schools, or in other words “the good students.”

I began discovering this trend last year when I was subbing for a high-achieving English class. The regular teacher had left a class plan for the students to continue viewing a DVD of the film “Forrest Gump.”

In the middle of this viewing, Forrest Gump played by Tom Hanks was being introduced at an anti-war Yippie rally in the Sixties. After shouting out the F word again and again, the Yippie leader robustly introduced Gump to the huge crowd as a veteran of “Viet F……g Nam!”

Creating a class jailhouse atmosphere

After I had turned the movie off, I could hardly believe how the use of this word could hold such an enchantment over these top students. In fact, I couldn’t stop them from using this word again and again. It was as if these high-achieving students had been transformed within the life of a class into eternally unemployable hooligans.

Generally it seems to have become more common today for California high-school teachers to use Hollywood movies on DVDs as a class plan for when they are absent or as a class reward for some classroom achievement on some “casual Friday.”

These are not “R” rated movies, and all in all they are decent flicks for teenagers chilling out and watching them at home during the weekends. Surely that’s where these movies belong, not in tax-paid public schools.

Among the other Hollywood movies I have played in class at the request of various teachers are “Waterworld,” “National Treasure,” “Oh Brother!” and “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Occasionally I also am asked to play a dumb action movie simply to absorb the students and keep them under control, such as “The Matrix.”

But the question begs to be asked why public high school students are watching these Hollywood Blockbuster style movies when tax payers are spending monies to enrich these students with DVDs from the History Channel, National Geographic, the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel.

I have asked this question also to different teachers. The answer I generally get is:
“The Hollywood Block buster movie controls the classroom effectively. In contrast, the Discovery Channel DVDs about science make the students bored and then then they get out of control.”

Maybe I am from another planet, but it seems to me that if students get bored watching an excellently-produced science documentary, it is the responsibility of the teacher to alter that attitude a bit.

Chris Sharp- Commentary

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. He has recently published a new book titled “Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California..” His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.

Comments

2 · as published

Mark
Mark Says: September 24th, 2011 at 4:27 pm Contrary to your initial claims, wouldn’t the continued use of the word be a positive process? Just as you say in the beginning, “like everything else that started about a million years ago, erosion began to build in this word by too much wear and tear. After being used too many times, its effect lost its sharpness.” As a former California High School student, I don’t see what the big fuss is. ‘Fuck’ is a mainstream word. Sure – maybe in the dawn of time ‘fuck’ was used as a form of intimidation or threat, but its continued usage wears away at that meaning. Furthermore, I’ve been looking through Dr. Thomas’ works to find the notes you reference but so far have been unsuccessful. Maybe you could post a link? All I’ve been able to find is that ‘Lives of a Cell’ refers to the earth as a cell rather than an organism, but not much about the etymology of the word ‘fuck.’ Which brings me to my next point. Humanity in its present sense is barely half a million years old. You really should look up some of the claims you make before posting them. The origin of the word ‘fuck’ can be traced back to 1475, not some prehistoric communal memory. That’s why different languages have different ‘swear words.’ Only after the proliferation of the Latin languages did ‘fuck’ hold its negative connotations. Not to mention that no question is ‘begged’ but rather ‘raised.’ - Mark
Chris Sharp
Chris Sharp Says: September 26th, 2011 at 10:55 am Hey Mark. Get a grip. If you are really that interested in the referred research on the word, and why Lewis Thomas believes the word is prehistoric — it has long been shown that prehistoric man used words as teamwork tools to hunt the big animals — try reading the Thomas book “The Medussa and the Snail.” Why are you so ticked off, by the way? Your ready use of the F word seems to confirm that somehow using this word leads to different forms of rage, road rage or domestic violence rage or another kind of rage. You don’t see me using this word. Also today’s employers are not hiring filthy mouths who use your jailhouse language because they want their work sites to be more like presidential suites rather than jailhouses. I think this may be one reason why so many Indians are being hired today in Southern California — have you ever heard an Indian at work in California use the F word?