According to Fox News Online, citing a story published by The Sun (a British newspaper) on April 4, 2009, “A British school was blasted Friday after kids as young as 11 were told to shout obscenities during a lesson in swearing…. St. Laurence School in Bradford on Avon, Wilts, claims it was part of a sex and relationship education program to ‘dispel’ the myths of swear words.”

A lesson in swearing??? Teaching kids to shout obscenities??? What on earth was that teacher thinking?!!!

The article went on to cite a parent who said, “This is a total disgrace. Our children go to school to gain an education, not qualifications in swear words. Most kids had no idea what the words meant and were forced to grow up faster than their parents want. Heads should roll for this.”

The idea of teaching young kids to shout obscenities is absurd, outrageous, and infuriating. That is not the kind of “free speech” teachers should be encouraging.

Don’t get me wrong. We believe in encouraging kids not to “stuff” their emotions inside. In fact, one of the novels we publish is called Violet’s Hidden Doubts, a story about a Victorian teenager who struggles with troubling doubts and fears that she feels she can reveal to no one. (She wrongly believes she is responsible for her father’s accidental death.) When Violet eventually reveals her feelings to her mother, she finally gets the relief she’s long been seeking. In this book, we model for young girls the importance of expressing their inner struggles with parents, trusted friends, and godly advisors. But not through swearing.

When I was about twelve years old, I picked up some nasty language from my peers at school. Like most bad habits, it caught on easily. My mother warned me that she was going to “wash my mouth out with soap” if I didn’t stop “talking like a guttermouth.” One day, which I vividly remember all these decades later, she actually made me stick a bar of soap in my mouth. Guess what? It worked! In that very instant, I learned the virtue of self-control. That was the end of my swearing, and the only “lesson in swearing” that I ever needed.

I am not advocating washing your child’s mouth out with soap. What I am advocating is taking a real hard look at where education is going. Just this week we watched as violence, window-smashing, and fires erupted in London during the G-20 Summit. You can bet that a lot of those violent protestors were shouting obscenities. Perhaps if as children they had been taught self-control, we would not be witnessing such lawlessness.