Censorship At My Old High School (Shorewood)

July 21, 2005 | 24 Comments

Sometimes I don’t even know where to start.

I got an e-mail recently pointing me to an article in the Seattle Times about what seems to me to be a pretty silly act of sensorship that looks to have some dire and far reaching consequences.

A Poem is Censored

The gist of the story is that a poem was pulled from the schools annual literary magazine after some parents complained about a “dirty word” in the verse. Come on. A dirty word? I can see how this could be a minor concern, but it’s a literary magazine and a poem. A form of art. Can’t we get past a dirty word in this context? Oh and I should add, this wasn’t the first time, not by a long shot, that a profanity had appeared in this magazine.

Here’s the poem, it’s too bad the message here was obscured by all of this:

My first (expletive)
sure he claims he loves me
and holds me oh so tight
he makes me believe this is special
that he can hold on all night
he claims he isn’t pressuring me
but his hand is down my pants
temptation rises and I give in
he turns over
checks the time
gets up and drives me home
no kiss goodnight
no I love you
and no telephone call

I assume the (explicative) is “FUCK” a word that almost every student that read the poem uses on an every day basis. Maybe if they changed it to “Frak” it’d be ok?? Sometimes, I swear…Anyway, that’s not what makes me so annoyed about this story.

The poem’s author, Zoya Raskina, 17, said her verse was about the pressure teenagers face to have sex and the disillusionment that can follow. She said she didn’t expect the reaction, which prompted district administrators to ask Steve Kelly, an English teacher with the district for 35 years, to step down as magazine adviser.

I had Mr. Kelly when I attended Shorewood. He was a great teacher and someone who embraced creativity and the want to be original and unique.

Thing is—he got screwed. There has been profanity in the magazine before and it was no problem. I guess this one is somehow deemed “worse” based on the morals of the powers that be, but if you don’t share those morals and you have been embracing free speech, how the fuck are you supposed to know?

Ok, so you censored and pulled the poem. So you’ve protected the fragile little minds from the f-word. Why would you remove someone who has been there for long time working under the assumption that he’s able to foster creativity and open speaking?

What kind of message does this send to the kids there? I sure as heck Mr. Kelly gets reinstated and to all of those people who would censor free speech like this, here’s a little Jurassic 5:

Fuck the first amendment, my speech was free the day my soul descended.

Filed under: Life
Keyword Tags: free+speech censorship shorewood+high+school mr+kelly

Comments

1. Andy Hume said:

Wow. That is not cool at all is it?

Some people are just living on the wrong wavelength or something. I remember about 7 or 8 years ago, I went with my school to do a bit of theatre in another school on the way up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. My school was generally pretty relaxed, and open minded - and this play was about ‘gays ‘n’ shit’ and there was a fair amount of swearing and dubious gesturing at times.

The fuss they made over it was unbelievable - I think they would have pulled it if they could have, but they just stuck posters everywhere warning about content and banned under 16s from seeing it. Fucking useful that is at a school innit?

Posted on July 21, 2005 11:24 AM | #

2. Shawn said:

Can’t see the forest for the trees. Wow.

It is a shame that the people in control either can’t or won’t stand up to parent pressure.

Posted on July 21, 2005 11:35 AM | #

3. JohnO said:

Society as a whole needs to care a whole lot more about what our culture provides as a value system. Caring about a word here and there is such a pretence. I’m a religious man, and I have no problem with using “curses”, because in most cases they aren’t curses. A ‘curse’ in the traditional definition of the word is something that destroys and brings low. You don’t have to use a four-letter word to do that.

So, the parents care more about four-letter words than going to their kids baseball/basketball/soccer games, or their grades/report cards, or who they hang out with and what they do. It is much easier to put up a fuss about a four-letter word, than to do either of those listed. But the impact is far far less.

Consider the Father who works 60 hours a week, so he can keep his Benz, and his wife’s BMW, meanwhile he’ll never play catch with his son. What kind of values are those? And we wonder why kids are so messed up.

Posted on July 21, 2005 11:38 AM | #

4. Keith said:

JohnO - You made me think of a good point. I watch Battlestar Galactica where they are able to use the word “frak” – it has the same meaning as “fuck” – yet somehow they are able to get it past censors. This doesn’t make sense to me. Is it not the meaning of a word that really matters. The letters themselves and the way they are pronounced should have little to do with it.

I don’t get it. As well you bring up a great point about what people care about. It’s much easier to deal with a profanity than it is to deal with a real issue.

The poem in question is a perfect example! They remove the word and the poem without addressing the feelings and thoughts behind it. I mean it’s art but how often does that happen in real life with real issues…

I’m not a parent so I can hardly talk but it seems like we’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Posted on July 21, 2005 11:45 AM | #

5. Brian Rose said:

I think this is total bullshit. A similar situation almost took place at my high school:

My senior year, the GSA at the school approached the drama department to help put together a production called Removing the Glove. The plan was to use private funds and run the show for three nights. Originally, the hope was to use the school auditorium, but the GSA had already planned ahead in case the school administrators decided not to have anything to do with the show. The drama director was planning to help regardless.

Not only did the school choose not to allow the show to run at the school, but they also threatened several people involved in order to keep the show from being produced. The final threat, which put the show’s production to rest, was when they threatened to place the director on administrative leave if she went ahead with the show.

The school administration should not be police speech beyond that which may actually harm others. Kids should be able to express themselves openly without fearing for their grades dropping and their teachers losing their jobs.

Posted on July 21, 2005 11:48 AM | #

6. Rafal said:

Pretty weird that they’re trying to censor the wrong things these days. It’s ok show murder, drugs, etc on television/movies, but the natural things, like the human body, which everybody knows what it looks like is still a taboo! Get out of your frak’ing holes and smell the coffee because you’re totalling screwing with today’s youth!

Posted on July 21, 2005 12:16 PM | #

7. Coop said:

I have a feeling that it wasn’t the actual word that had parents upset, it was the topic of the poem. Isn’t sad that the real issues that face our children are censored by the very people who are supposed to be instilling this information on their children? I may only be 26, but I have the joy of being a father to two great children, a boy who is 10, and a girl who is 7. While they are not mine naturally, I still am their father. I had to jump into being a father very suddenly, but I have learned that these issues need to be discussed. They need to be out in the open. In all honesty, I think this poem is a conversation starter, not a token offered up to the censorship gods. For parents who have troubles discussing such issues with their children, this opens the door. Parents can use this opportunity to say that it’s not just a parent’s concern, one of their peers has the exact same feelings. Doesn’t this make more sense than to cut it from a literary magazine because it’s taboo?

To punish the teacher who allowed such writing is a crime, and one that is all too often committed. Did you know that you can’t have a child stand in the corner or give them a time out when they are disruptive because it hurts their self-esteem by being singled out? Someone once told me that having your kids stand in the corner for doing something wrong could be considered child abuse. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t hitting your child be abuse, not forcing them to look at paint dry???

Posted on July 21, 2005 01:25 PM | #

8. Carl said:

High School is not real life. It’s all about arbitrary rules that the administration feel they can impose for whatever reason, moral or other. I worked on out High School Lit Mag in our tiny town in Northern VA (Berryville). And we had to censor ourselves heavily because if we did not, the administration would.
It makes me sick how downhill free speech has gone in this country, and int he classroom. How are we supposed to teach these ideals when we’ve stopped living by them?

Posted on July 21, 2005 08:30 PM | #

9. Small Paul said:

I think the best response here is to use the old John Stuart Mill course of action: to comply strictly, to protest vigourously. Perhaps a poem callled “frak”, pillorying the censors.

This kinda stuff fills me with a deep, burning anger, but ultimately, you win by being smart about it. Just make the people who get all antsy appear as stupid as they are.

Posted on July 22, 2005 04:41 AM | #

10. Jim Renaud said:

I think censorship like this is great. Idiot superintendents don’t realize that now people have actually read the poem. If it was left alone half the students wouldn’t have even read the thing.

I guess it does suck that someone got reprimanded for this… that part sucks, but for the sake of the poem, censorship is the best thing.

If I ever was a principle of a school I would censor all kinds of shit like this just so people would read it!

Posted on July 22, 2005 07:54 AM | #

11. Schultzy said:

Fuckers

I bet that teacher was brilliant, Sounds like one we had and people just spoil things.

I mean if she used the words shag, date, love or sex-time no one would have fussed. After all its human kind and letters on a page.

Posted on July 22, 2005 07:20 PM | #

12. Mike Rainey said:

It’s a sad day in this country when you have to use euphemisms to get a point across when the original word is just that, a word.

I agree with George Carlin on this, “It’s not the word that’s bad, it’s how a person uses the word that makes it either good or bad.”

Words are inherently neutral in any language, it’s how we use them that determines their inherent value and weight.

The word, assumedly “fuck”, is just a word that means the same thing as intercourse, action, balling, boff, coition, coitus, congress, copulation, fornication, hump, intimacy, lay, nookie, relations, screw, and sex, it’s just how an individual reacts to the word that makes it good or bad.

If she had used the word “time” or another acceptable euphemism, it wouldn’t have grown to this proportion, but if this society as a whole were as enlightened as it says it is, then it shouldn’t have mattered what word she used.

Fuck the first amendment, my speech was free the day my soul descended.

Indeed.

(If anyone hasn’t guessed yet, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU and a big advocate of free speech.)

Posted on July 23, 2005 04:17 AM | #

13. Tony said:

There was a great episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! where they examined the concept of profanity. They had a lady on there who is on an anti-cursing crusade. She advocated using different words in place of curse words. That’s silly enough by itself (as has been pointed out, it’s not the combination of sounds but the intent that defines a curse), but she also said when she is really upset, she uses the Spanish phrase “santa vaca.” Which, if you remember 8th grade Spanish class, is holy cow. In other words, her solution to not cursing is to take someone else’s religious figure in vein.

Posted on July 23, 2005 06:28 AM | #

14. Todd Finley said:

I wish authorities would worry more about teaching our children about how to create healthy relationships. Karl Rove & Bush seem to think that if you erase a word, you make the concept behind it go away. George Lakoff does a nice job of showing how this practice is filtering down. Meanwhile, “making love” is very different than “fucking.” The author’s use of the curse word is appropriate to the act that is described.

Posted on July 24, 2005 10:32 PM | #

15. Paul Solecki said:

Anyone remember the South Park movie with Mr Maccy’s song? Seems particularly relevant here ;)

We have a series (finished a while ago) called Father Ted and they use ‘feck’ all the time. It just makes it funnier not using fuck for some reason :)

Still, I’m glad no-one over here has decided that it’d be good to invent a device that automically cuts out swearing etc from films…that’s just utter madness!

I think the authorities in the US give in to too much. I mean teaching the story of Adam and Eve as fact!?!?! In which case you can teach anything, I mean what about the Vorlons out of Babylon 5 being God ;)

Posted on July 25, 2005 05:33 AM | #

16. Jason said:

They ought to censor the freakin’ coke machines.

Posted on July 25, 2005 05:35 AM | #

17. Lea said:

Ah, school administrations. They are full of as much politics as any other place. When I was editor of my pithy high school newspaper, I had this issue of censorship happen on me as well. I tried to publish a transcript of a speech our vice principal did during one of our winter recital thingies. It was a funny speech, and it was just meant to be filler in the paper.

So, this is something that’s already been aired in front of the entire student body, just being reprinted.

What follows is me being called to the principal’s office for the first time in my life, and telling me that if I publish this transcript that it would have a bad image for the school, that parents will get angry and complain, and that I’ve more or less contributed to the downfall of my vice principal’s career. Yes, my principal actually told me that by printing this piece, I’ve contributed to destroying one of my teacher’s careers!

All this on a newspaper that I had barely even had enough content to string together that I had to find filler and only read by a school of 300 students ages 15-18. I’d asked my parents, both intelligent professionals, to read the transcript. They thought it was lame, but harmless, and made a point to say they wouldn’t have even read the paper if I hadn’t pointed it out.

Which is true – what parents goes and reads their child’s student newspaper often? Not many!

Needless to say, I tried to print it off to the side until some teachers told on me – apparently, the principal escalated this ridiculous thing to involve other staff members to side with him – and then got sent to the principal’s office again to reiterate his above points. This ended with me in tears and not getting the article printed as I had wanted as at the time, I didn’t have the funds to go and print it off and distribute it myself.

At any rate, there was no expletives in the transcript; it was just a funny rant from my vice principal one winter claiming that she works too hard and makes a couple of jokes that might have hit too close to home for some of the faculty.

Posted on July 25, 2005 04:49 PM | #

18. Molly said:

I’m doing a school project on censorship and i totally agree with what is being said, I’d like to let you know: Now that the generation that’s been censored is growing up and realizing how there lives have been screwed with, were trying to do all we can to change it for the next group of kids. It’s great to know not just teenagers complain about the school system

Posted on September 14, 2005 03:26 PM | #

19. Molly said:

Posted on September 14, 2005 03:26 PM | #

20. Dr. Geddings said:

oh please. there is enough use of the F word around i think it was smart to say to not to use it. seems thats all thats in music and movies nowdays. First of all if the girl was really smart she woudnt have “f-ed him” in the first place.

seriously get a brain in your head im tired of whiney girls who cry that the guy was a jerk when you know you got wet the first time you saw him cuz he was “hottt”. shallow pathetic people.

Posted on December 6, 2005 05:07 PM | #

21. soma said:

I’d like to let you know: Now that the generation that’s been censored is growing up and realizing how there lives have been screwed with

Posted on December 26, 2005 08:42 AM | #

22. online backgammon said:

seriously get a brain in your head im tired of whiney girls who cry that the guy was a jerk when you know you got wet the first time you saw him cuz he was “hottt”. shallow pathetic people.

Posted on June 7, 2006 11:54 PM | #