"F---'n What?": A Look Swearing and Communication in the 21st Century

Swearing is prevalent in many conversational venues, such as school hallways, bars, concerts, resorts, and even simply walking down the street. However, the types venues that swearing seems to be the most prevalent in (where swear words are used in almost every sentence and throughout the conversation) are, I would argue, not the older traditional settings many of us over the age of 30 grew up in.  I have noticed that the day-to-day and face-to-face conversations that I am a part of, whether that be my workplace (an independent school where openly swearing is not acceptable by students and definitely not be staff), my wife’s workplace (she’s a nurse at the local hospital, where swearing could get the employees fired, and is not tolerated by patients either), stores we frequent (I cannot remember a grocery person swearing at me ever for any reason, and I am confident  that there would be some form of disciplinary action if they did), services we hire people for, etc., do not condone swearing as an acceptable communication norm. However, when I look or converse in more modern and non-regulated areas such as online discussions and comment areas, I find that they can be wrought with profanity. Though not exclusively so, I do also find that most of the swearing I hear in any area I am in seems to be done by teens and young adults (and this seems to diminish as people get older).

Though some of the venues one would find swearing in might have changed or morphed in some way, the concept of swearing has not. Though the words have perhaps changed a bit since their inception, swearing has been around for a very long time. Granted, the history of swear words, and specifically the F-word, is clouded in historical obscurity.  As Geoffrey Hughes (2006) writes in his book An Encyclopedia of Swearing, much of the data has been “buried, hidden, or deliberately ignored” (p. 10). However, it is not the purpose of this writing to research the history of these specific types of words, but instead to look at why we use them in the contexts that we do.

There are a few obvious reasons one might use swear (curse) words in modern conversation. Firstly, these words can be used for “shock” value (thus the concept of the “F-bomb”) – saying something that is usually seen as taboo by the majority of the populace usually get people’s attention. As well, swear words are also used as emphasis (“Holy S---!”). As well, as a colleague of mine recently commented, using these words can actually create a sense of comfort and ease, since using profanity can have the corollary of bringing conversations down to a more simplistic or base level (to the level of everyday people). Finally, these words can be used as exhasperative expletives (“F---!”) that one might say when pain is felt (for example, the every painful hammer on the thumb scenario).

However, regardless of why we use them, there is a grammatical difficulty with the words themselves: many of these words have either no actual meaning (or unknown meaning) in these contexts or can have multiple meanings at the same time. For example, if one says “that was F----‘n awesome”, the F-word becomes an exclamation mark. For arguments sake, let’s say that in this instance, the exclamatory F-word is defined as meaning “really”, as in “that was really awesome” – better than a normal awesome.  If the F- word actually meant “really” in all cases, we should be able to take that same word and use it in other sentences and it would make sense. We could then say “Go really better yourself”. But this is the exact opposite of the sentence’s meaning “Go F--- yourself”. This can become quite entertaining if one were to ask what a person who uttered a curse word meant when they used that word in their sentence. In fact, they would probably increase their F-word usage from that point on.

Now, most people understand what the words mean in the context of the sentences themselves and the situation they are used in. However, with respect to communication itself, there is an issue with swearing which is this: swear words themselves actually contain no meaning, some meaning, or even changing meanings depending on what the user actually meant. If that’s the case (as it is), then these words by themselves are somewhat useless with respect to actually communicating an idea: they instead communicate nothing more than the listeners best guess is to their meaning which is extrapolated from the situation at hand. One could even argue that using swear words shows that the user does not clearly know what they are trying to say (they are exasperated); thus, they use a word that allows them to say nothing – thus getting away with not having to come up with an actual word that communicates an coherent idea. Perhaps, given time, this same person could have thought of an actual clearly defined word that better communicates what they were trying to say, but because of time constraints, they instead swore.

So, who cares? The issue for me is in the lack of clear communication, something that many argue is “dumbing down” our society. Words are quite powerful and are used to create our understanding of the world around us. This starts early in our upbringing: "Babies first bridge the gap between sounds and meaning as early as nine or ten months of age” (Elliot, 2001), but obviously continues into adulthood. Thus, unclear thinking and unclear words can result in an unclear understanding of the world around us. As George Orwell writes in his essay “Politics and the English Language”, the English language can become “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts” (1946). Thus, it can be seen as a downward spiral: we use words with no meaning because then we don’t have to think about the meaning of a certain event, which lowers the meaning of the event itself.

As society speeds up and our lives get busier, the ability to quickly communicate in an accurate fashion becomes more and more important. Many of us have had emails or texts misunderstood because of their innate lack of being able to clearly communicate ideas; these can cause issues that then take time to fix or apologize for. We (and youth especially) are being asked to do more and more, faster and faster, and with other people, even to the point of having to collaborate with individuals from other cultures and countries. We need to learn to be clear in our increasingly faster and shorter communications with each other.

Therefore, in this highly technological and multicultural world that we live in which is shrinking daily due to our ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time , perhaps we should begin looking at swearing as something to be avoided in most (if not all) communication. If we want to have others completely understand what we are saying and feeling, perhaps we need to use words that are easy to understand in the context they are used in. Yes, I am not naive enough to think that swearing will disappear altogether (it hasn't yet), and I do believe that there will be years when people will use it for the reasons mentioned at the beginning of this writing, but I feel that, if we know the truth about why we use them, then perhaps they can be used more sparingly and perhaps disappear from our vocabulary quicker than it is now. This, I believe, will help us to both better understand the world around us as well as to better interact with those in it.

Eliot, Lise (2001) Early Intelligence: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life

Orwell, George (1946), "Politics and the English Language.” Https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Hughes, Geoferry (2006). Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World.

When Students are Given New Tech, The First Thing They want To Do Is...

Don Tapscott (2009) is the author of the book Grown Up Digital: How The Net Generation Is Changing Our World." (Toronto: McGraw-Hill) and in it he lists eight characteristics of what he terms the "net generation", the first generation who have grown up in the digital era we teachers are now teaching. One of the characteristics of this generation that Tapscott writes about is the push to customize themselves and the things they use. He writes that net gens like to "modify products to reflect who they are" (p. 78). This goes not only for devices, such as phones, laptops, pads, etc., but also for work, jobs, cars, and almost anything else that can be modified to reflect their personality (p. 79).

As a case in point, the school I work at has recently made a purchase of a class set of iPads for classroom use. I have been spearheading a committee of teachers and administrators whose purpose is to make a plan for successfully implementing the iPads into the grades and classroom (K-12). I have been using a document from the London Knowledge Lab 2013 (http://pdf.thepdfportal.com/?id=61713) that looked at classroom use of the iPads during a three year study both in the UK and globally to help structure our plan.

We recently had a couple of teachers use the iPads in their own classroom settings so far (as trial runs). The grade 5 class used the iPads to work on writing reports using Apple's Pages program, while the grade 7 class used the iPads to do web-based research on certain elements in the periodic table. When the iPads came back from the grade 5 class, they were in exactly the same condition as they went out with no added features, pictures, or customization (something that the grade 5 teacher specifically mentioned she did not want them to do or they would lose the privilege of having the iPads). However, when the iPads came back from the grade 7 class, there was a lot of individualization of the iPads themselves (background pictures were changed, iMessage was used to send information, sharing of pics between iPads, etc.).

This seems to indicate a couple of things. Firstly, the type of task that students were asked to do with the iPads could play a role with respect to keeping the students interest up. Secondly, the trend to customize at the older grade level does suggest a confirmation of both the London Knowledge Lab report and Don Tapscott's book with respect to a student's drive to customize their experiences with the technology.

This raises some interesting discussion points. Firstly, the London Knowledge Lab report does suggest that having personalized access and individual ownership of devices like iPads is "highly motivational" and even a "crucial element in successful adoption and effective use of the iPads" (p. 11). Thus, perhaps the best model is to have a more 1:1 iPad to student ratio. But how does a smaller school with limited income do this? Also, if you are not able to do the 1:1 ration for the entire school, could you do this with upper age groups? Are the iPads the way to go with this type of technology use (they can get quite expensive as well, sometimes even rivaling the cost of a laptop)? Finally, is there a way to lock down the iPads so that there isn't the ability to customize it as easily (of course, anything you do to such a device to try to lock it down simply creates a challenge for students to try to figure out a way around it; furthermore, crippling such a device does go against the ease-of-use aspect of the device itself)?

I end with this: one of the other net gen norms that Tapscott mentions in his book is freedom. Perhaps we, as teachers, are asking students too much when we try to bring a technology in and get them to use it the way we want them to instead of allowing them to have the freedom to use it the way they see fit; in fact, is this not where innovation, one of the key aspects of a 21 Century learner (www.bced.gov.bc.ca), takes root?

WIKI Unit

As I have now done a few years in a row, I will be doing the WIKI unit again.  The idea is simple: the students will use our WIKI server (MediaWIKI) to create a WIKI page. They are put into groups of four to five and will work collaboratively on a WIKI about one of five topics that come out of Chapter 12 in the BC Science8 chapter. For example, one deals with ocean pollution, one with freshwater, etc.

Students were given an assessment page that explained to them exactly what I am looking for them to do, both individually and as a group.

My biggest concern right now is simply dealing with my server: it seems to not be super fast and bottlenecks a bit at times. This creates issues with access to the WIKI at times and students have to refresh the page. This is annoying and can contribute to the successfulness of the unit itself. Time to put on my "techie" hat and take a look at it tomorrow.

However, as a tool, the WIKI is fantastic and does do what I envision it doing: it gives a group of students the ability to truly collaborate on the WIKI page and make something that is better than any one student would be able to do on their own. However, each student is marked on their own ability and contributions to the page on a whole. This is an important part to the success of this: historically, students hate group work because they feel that they will be assessed as a group and, thus, one student can bring their mark down (or visa versa I guess). The WIKI makes this a non-issue (this year, no student mentioned this as an issue, something the first year group did mention as a problem).

Finally, this year should be the year the study which deals with the WIKI (which I now did two years ago) will be published! I am so excited for this! In the meantime, the journal that my hopes rest on (The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology  - www.cjlt.ca) is a great online journal with many good articles. For those reading this, there is a great resource for you all to read anyway.

Part 2 of the Freedom Post - How did they do?

No lie here, the students in my Grade 8 Science class did not complete this assignment perfectly the first time around. Here are a few observations:

1. I found that students worked together and looked like they simply "copied" drawings one from the other. Either I do not allow them to work together, or I watch much closer to see if they are drawing it on their own. However, I do think that the collaborative work is beneficial if they come to the right conclusions, of which most did not it seemed.
2. Students seem to have the right definitions, but could not translate the definition into the drawing correctly. Thus, they would need more time to truly understand what the definition really meant.

My plan is a simple one: give them back and have them correct them and then hand it in.

The issues above might be corrected if a) students were not working on this assignment all a the same time, and b) weren't all asked to do the same thing! Perhaps, as my previous posts alluded to, if students were able to simply show me that they knew it but were not asked to draw it, I might get better results. Also, the hand in / assess / hand back / correct scenario might be how this type of assignment would have to go: I should not be looking for perfection the first time - how would student's learn if they were not able to try and fix?

Giving the Students Freedom - Saving Your Sanity and Getting Results!

Today, I decided to really try out giving my student's a complete list of what I am looking for in an assignment before they begin the assignment. Here's a copy of the page I gave them:

 

As was mentioned, true, this might not be a true rubric, but that is what I called it here (it is more of a checklist only). The concept was that, if the student's knew what they needed to do without marks involved in the discussion as the reward for the work, they would simply do it. Here's how I did it in total: I placed this on their desk. I explained to them that today they were going to create a drawing of the bottom of the ocean and that the drawing had to have these parts in it. I also explained that they needed to define each term (they could do that on a separate piece of paper) and then attach that to the drawing, along with this rubric. I didn't explain any of these terms beforehand to them either, but simply told them they had to find the definitions on their own (textbook, internet, etc.).

 

The concept is that the drawing would show me that they understood what each thing was as they had to draw it correctly (placement wise).

 

I have to admit that it was one of the classes where the majority of the students were consistently on task! I was also very amazed at the work they were able to do on this assignment; everyone that handed the assignment in nailed it! Therefore, everyone got perfect marks on this assignment (how could I give anything else?).  They knew what they needed to show and could keep track of it themselves.

 

As I said before, the rubric concept is front heavy, but sure makes the marking easier at the end.

Teaching for Mastery - A Look at David Langford's Philosophy

Masters Academy and College (http://www.masters.ab.ca/) in Alberta is a fascinating school with a very interesting philosophy. One of the strategic partners in the school is David Langford. His view of assessment and education is one of the key cornerstones to how Masters teaches their students, from what I have been able to glean. I have included his article below. I have personally enjoyed trying to figure out how to incorporate this into my classroom teaching, though there are some challenges. As I look deeper into this, I'll post more on the pros and challenges to incorporating this into the classroom setting here in BC.

BACKGROUND:
Teaching for Mastery in the classroom is a concept based on the business-world work of W.Edward Deming. This concept took shape when junior high school teacher David Langford joined with Deming to develop principles of educational reform that could raise the quality of school and classroom practice to a higher level. What they came up with was a system that adapts quality practices used in the industrial and technological world to the public schools. Their aim was to develop a system in which students could learn to develop quality products in the classroom, in the same sense that businesses create quality products in the competitive free market.

RATIONALE:
Teaching for Mastery is based upon the following assumptions:
• Grading is not a motivator
• Grading and ranking people only serves to defeat the majority
• Students can take responsibility for their own learning
• Students can and should help plan their learning process
• Students can and will track their own progress if given the chance.
• Students are colleagues

THE APPROACH:
The Mastery approach to evaluation and assessment allows each student to develop skills and knowledge to his/her maximum potential. Student work is considered Mastery when the product submitted exhibits the highest quality of which the student is capable. It is important to remember that students work at differing speeds, and achieve at different levels of quality. When a student masters an assignment, he/she is rewarded with an A on the report card and, more importantly, the knowledge that achieving Mastery exceeds any letter grade. This achievement instills an intrinsic realization of self-worth and a higher sense of self-esteem.
Mastery can replace traditional grading systems that cater to high-achieving students who set the scale. A rigid traditional scale fails to motivate the greater number of students in the classroom, leaving them with a sense of futility and failure. In short, it defeats the majority. Mastery reflects the real world practice of quality production whereas traditional practice emphasizes rote memory and testing based on rigid scales. Mastery provides for individual excellence while traditional systems emphasize a “herd mentality.”

MASTERY TEACHING PRACTICE:
• Eliminate worksheets, quizzes, and tests – work with students towards the creation of quality documents and products.
• Eliminate the letter grades B, C, D - Offer As or Incompletes only.
• Emphasize critical thinking - eliminate rote memory or ‘mindless transfer of information’ assignments.
• Allow students to work in teams to create products, share ideas, and stimulate each other’s thinking - alternate between team products, and individual work that results from team analysis. Allow students to work in teams on difficult units of study.• Allow students unlimited opportunity to bring work to a Mastery level.
• Replace due dates with target dates - do not hold to a rigid schedule - producing a quality product is more important than on-time behavior.
• Teach students to graph all academic and conduct behaviors that are important to success
- this practice creates a “graphic reflection” that stimulates intrinsic motivation.
• Constantly circulate and engage students during work periods – be a colleague.
• Supplement student research with mini lectures (five to ten minutes), whole-class discussions, film spots, and guest speakers.
• Use rubrics to guide and evaluate all student work.
• Democratize the classroom as much as possible - seek student input about assignments, evaluation, and rubrics. Later in the year, you will enjoy working with them to create new units of study.
• Understand that you cannot be the teacher in the traditional sense - become a coach or facilitator.
• The teacher’s role is to make quality possible - the student’s job is to create quality - learning is the student’s responsibility.
• Write a large, circled M at the top of the student’s or team’s product when Mastery has been achieved - this will become a coveted symbol of achievement.

RUBRICS:
Provide rubrics for all student work, work with students to create rubrics for each assignment, or allow students to create their own rubrics. At the beginning of each unit of study, provide for two rubrics. A guideline rubric should lay down specific instructions and steps for what students or teams are expected to know or do. The second rubric is for assessment - it should list every quality upon which the project or product will be evaluated. At times, the guidelines rubric will be the same as the evaluation rubric. If students are working together in teams, provide a process or participation rubric. Go over the rubrics with all students at the beginning of the unit - provide them a copy that they can reference from time to time during the work period.

GRAPHIC REFLECTION:
Maintaining a graph of their academic or conduct behavior provides students with a graphic “look in the mirror.” When we look in a mirror, we want to see something that pleases our eye. When it is not pleasing, we fix it. It is the same with graphs that reflect something about us. When we look at the graph and see something that is not pleasing, we naturally want to improve it or, again, fix it. Graphing also facilitates the Mastery principle of turning the responsibility for learning over to students. Academic or conduct behaviors that can be graphed include:
• On-time behavior - the tardy bell becomes an on-time bell - line graph
• On-time assignment behavior - remember, it is a target date! - bar graph
• Number of errors in first submission of product - line graph
• Learning behavior - self-evaluation weekly or monthly - bar graph with space for comment
• Enthusiasm - self-evaluation - bar graph with space for comment
• Mastery record - record of submission on which Mastery was achieved - line graph (or included in On-Time Assignment Graph)

A COMPARISON:

Mastery:

1. All students can make an A

2. Students are intrinsically motivated

3. Students create products and documents

4. All students can achieve excellence

5. Students have multiple chances to create a quality product

6. Reflects the real world

7. In depth examination of important issues

8. Provides for profound knowledge and enduring understanding

9. The student is responsible for learning

10. Focus on primary sources

Traditional:

1. A small number of students can make an A

2. Students are extrinsically motivated

3. Students fill out worksheets - take quizzes and tests

4. Most students are relegated to mediocrity

5. Students have one chance to make the grade

6. Only in schools are students held to a fixed scale with no recourse

7. Skims the surface of a wide range of topics

8. Up to 99% of information is forgotten within six months

9. The teacher is responsible for learning

10. Focus on secondary (textbook) sources (according to one of my students, “textbooks are

vague and shamefully boring”)

IMPLEMENTATION:

In getting started, it might do well to consider having students master one thing only. Since writing lends itself so well to the principles of Mastery, anything from paragraphs to essays could be a logical place to begin. Start with simple assignments, conduct whole-class examinations of their work, and build levels of difficulty throughout the year as student performance improves.

 

Progress to team projects rising to higher levels of quality throughout the school year. Before you begin to Teach for Mastery, consult with your principal and let him/her know what you  intend to do. He/she may want you to ask for a waiver from your school board allowing you to  depart from the county grading scale. A waiver, however, would not be necessary if you allow students to choose between the Mastery and traditional scales. Either way, your principal will be knowledgeable and prepared to deal with questions from the public.

Assessment In The New Age of Education

As many schools have done, the school I work at has recently adopted the following protocol for reporting marks:

• K-3 are given anecdotal comments only
• 4-9 are letter grades only
• 10-12 are letter grades and percentages

The biggest change comes in the 8 and 9 grade levels where percentages were historically a part of our reporting marks. The change came for various reasons, but the staff are divided on the subject. Many argued that we are being less specific and thus sharing less information with parents about how their child is doing: why give "less" information than is needed? Would it not be better to give more? Does a percentage not, in fact, make our reporting more specific than other schools? Is this not something that would make our school better, perhaps, than other schools?

I personally wondered about this as well. I do understand some of the pedagogical concepts behind the move. I too agree that, at times, looking at assignments and assigning a number to either an assignment or a term on the whole can actually be, dare I say, inaccurate. For example, is an essay really worth exactly 73%? Does that mean that 27 words were incorrect in some fashion? Is it not easier and perhaps clearer to grade as the provincial exams do for papers and mark with a rubric for what constitutes an "A" or "B" paper? True, there is some subjective marking of any essay (what each teacher might consider clear thoughts or good transitions will change from teacher to teacher), but is this any worse than assigning a number? As well, looking across a marking spreadsheet and seeing a jumble of numbers could mathematically tie a teacher's hand with respect to giving useful feedback or insight on how to improve. For example, mathematically, imagine a student does three assignments and gets the following marks: 90, 90, and 88. However, he then gets a  73 on the fourth one, he could be assigned a "B" (85%) as a final mark. However, 3 of the 4 assignments were "A" work. In my opinion, this shows how we as teachers can succumb to the hard line of numerical assessment strategies. In fact, why don't we take this one step further as the Summerland school district has done and go so far as to get rid of letter grades altogether for grades 4-9. As Darcy Mullins, a teacher in that school district, writes the following in his blog:

"Letter grades force students to focus on the product as opposed to the process.  It is the process where the learning occurs.  It is during the learning where students can get the feedback they need to grow.  Using letter grades sends the message that once something is complete the learning is done.  Not using letter grades, but instead using descriptive feedback sends the message that learning is continuous." (http://darcymullin.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/rethinking-letter-grades/)

My personal experiences with our transition to only letter grades for the middle grades have been positive so far. First, during our most recent parent-teacher interviews, no parent asked about the change, or asked specifically about their percentages. As well, I decided to mark two assignments specifically with only letter grades (these being reports and an experiment paper). What I found was that I had to be very "front heavy" with the assignment: in other words, I had to really think about and write down what constituted an "A" work for that assignment, and what changes from that work would make that assignment a "B", and so on, and make sure that the students knew what I was looking for. My rubric, therefore, was quite large. However, once I had the rubric completed, looking at the assignments and marking them accordingly was much easier and faster on a whole.

One book on the topic that has been recommended to me (and consequently is mentioned in Darcy Mullin's blog) is Tom Schimmer's book Ten Things That Matter From Assessment to Grading.

I do feel that our job as teachers is to assess and grade as accurately as we can. However, I also feel that the assessment and grading should be part of the learning. Why stop students from learning more because they have reached a number when they should instead be taught to strive to be lifelong learners?