Working in the recording studio with Rod Wurtele  in the Card shirt and Millard Dunn in the back.  We were working on a song.  Dr. Dunn was my teacher when I first read The Life You Save May Be Your Own.

For whatever reason I was thinking today of the Flannery O’Connor story The Life You Save May Be Your Own.

For the past two weeks I have been charged with overseeing the ISTEP testing of students in grades 9-11 that needed to take the tests.  It is an arduous process and one that is a bit archaic in the days we are living in.  What happened to the learning styles mantra we were given in the 1990s?  Politics.  My mentor and boss of many years ago, Jim Stewart, once said, “Education is the most resilient thing going.  No matter how politicians screw it up, kids still want to learn and that is the best thing going.”

When it comes to ISTEP we give all the kids a cookie cutter of a test that lasts a few minutes and it is supposed to measure what they have learned in a school year that lasts 180 days.  Gee…that makes sense.  We are not talking the SAT or the ACT here.  Those are traditionally taken after most of the high school student’s body of work is complete.

I know that the school house is a bastion of old world ideology and sturdy social and moral fiber unlike much of the world outside its doors.  I suppose it has always been that way.  But today, when it is not uncommon to hear a folk or two fly foul mouth invective speaks around in a department store.  You look around and no one seems too phased by it.  Is that the norm these days?  It isn’t where I work.  I hope it does not get worse.  That would be tragic.  But, I suppose the President talks foul and that gives all a license to also?

A young man was in some trouble today.  I sat down and talked to him about how the English language is situation specific.  I usually only shared this with the English classes I used to teach, but today it was time to discuss again.  Listen closely.

For whatever reason,  the potty-mouths in the store and in the Oval Office never got this.  The English language is a functional, living tool.  It comes out of the breath we offer it therefore it lives.  We need to understand we need to use it to our advantage.  If we are in a job interview we are not going to talk like we are at a Saturday Night card game.  When I go to speak to a 2nd grade classroom, I don’t talk to the kids like they are in the 11th grade.  We must understand our audience and we must address them properly.

I was not taught to talk nasty talk.  That was acquired.  You won’t hear it out of me.  I will, however, when in the presence of a very few friends I can count on one hand, throw around some colorful language that will not go anywhere outside the room.  This is usually in the midst of a euchre game or on the golf course with no one else in earshot.  This is a case of situation specific rules of language.

The only word I ever used in a classroom that could be considered offensive is the word “hell”.  It is in the punchline of a joke I told just yesterday to a colleague.  I told it to 8th and 11th graders in 1999 in a school building that was built in 1897.  I am not sure I would repeat it today.  In 2018 the world outside the bastion that is the school house is eager to criticize the school and put blame on it.

I have witnessed parents that cussed and beat their kids six ways from Sunday, but if the school starts to impart a punishment there is something wrong.  Those are scary parents indeed.

It’s not easy.  It never was.  It may have been easier thirty-five years ago.  I don’t remember such a run on the assistant principal’s office like we have now and you better believe I paid attention.  I was sent a couple times myself.   We didn’t have cell phones then either.  Had someone said the words cyber-bullying or social media…we would have asked “Huh?”  We had pick up trucks in the student parking lot with gun racks in pick-up trucks with actual rifles in them. No one thought a thing of it.  An active shooter drill?  For what?  It was a simpler time.  We talked to each other more back then.  We hadn’t texted yet.

All that said, I like my new phone.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson