[Staff] Teaching Bad Words
As teachers, parents, mentors, journalists, media makers (the list can go on and on), we are the ones responsible for teaching today's youth bad words. We are the ones guilty of introducing the latest additions to this infamous list of words. These are words so bad, so loaded, we ourselves don't dare to mutter them in the presence of youth. And because of this we are doing a major disservice to the generations younger than us, who cannot tell you the meaning of the words other than that they are something bad.
The "bad words" I refer to are words such as "genocide" and "Darfur". They are terms showing up in newspapers, shouted out in the latest stints of celebrity activisim, yet rarely mentioned in an educational setting. As part of the "Deconstructing Darfur" application process, teens were asked to write a short description telling us why they wanted to be a part of this action project looking at the situation in Darfur today. Reading over forty applications, I was left with one common response. It went something along the lines of "I know Darfur is something bad... and I want to help... but I don't know who or what Darfur is".
The atrocities in Darfur have grabbed the attention of religious groups, human rights activists, professional athletes, television and movie stars, you name it. All these voices have made one thing clear. Darfur is bad and today's youth know it. Beyond that, however, there are an awful lot of teens who can't tell you much else and it is not their faults. It is ours. We need to do a lot less labeling of situations and a lot more explaining about what is going on in the world today. We need to stop referring to such words as bad words that we are too scared to say in the presence of young people... we must start talking, asking, and explaining before we find ourselves in a world where no one dares to even utter these words any longer.
