March 9, 2007--Fanaticism LXVIII: The I-Word
Anyone who wonders why kids these days are turned off by high school only need to visit John Jay High School in Cross River, N.Y.
Three 16 year-old girls from there were suspended the other day for uttering the V-word, vagina, in public at a forum sponsored by the school’s literary magazine. It wasn’t that they were being “bad,” but rather they were participating in a reading of The V Monologues, I mean that racy play The Vagina Monologues. (See NY Times article linked below.)
The principal who suspended them, Rich Leprine, told them not to use it because young children might be in the audience, and who knows what would happen to them if they heard that terrible word.
The girls, all honor students, are refusing to back down or apologize. In fact, they are fighting back, saying, that they read the passage because they wanted to “embrace our bodies, our femininity, and our womanhood.” And classmates are rallying in support of them, wearing T-shirts and making posters that assert their right to use the word and read from that well-regarded text.
Even the playwright, Eve Ensler, who grew up in the same part of Westchester County, has expressed outrage: “Why a school has a problem with teenagers saying the word vagina is beyond me,” she said, and added, a bit hyperbolically, “It is truly a throwback to the dark ages.”
But the girl’s got it right—“The use of the word vagina in this place wasn’t sexual,” they said, “and the piece and the context of the word is empowering.”
The principal, on the other hand, got it wrong. In addition to his having the cognitive problem of not being able to distinguish between the literal and metaphoric use of language, he claims that the use of the word itself was not the problem—since the girls were told in advance not to use it and then proceeded to, he suspended them for insubordination.
Here we may be getting closer to the truth of the situation—schooling in general and high schools in particular are as much about teaching and requiring certain forms of discipline and submissive behavior as they are concerned with teaching young people to be literate. Thus, being insubordinate is one of schooling’s deadliest sins.
These John Jay girls got under their principal’s skin more because they were disobeying him than because they spoke that “obscene” word in the presence of children. Children who we assume never heard it before.
Three 16 year-old girls from there were suspended the other day for uttering the V-word, vagina, in public at a forum sponsored by the school’s literary magazine. It wasn’t that they were being “bad,” but rather they were participating in a reading of The V Monologues, I mean that racy play The Vagina Monologues. (See NY Times article linked below.)
The principal who suspended them, Rich Leprine, told them not to use it because young children might be in the audience, and who knows what would happen to them if they heard that terrible word.
The girls, all honor students, are refusing to back down or apologize. In fact, they are fighting back, saying, that they read the passage because they wanted to “embrace our bodies, our femininity, and our womanhood.” And classmates are rallying in support of them, wearing T-shirts and making posters that assert their right to use the word and read from that well-regarded text.
Even the playwright, Eve Ensler, who grew up in the same part of Westchester County, has expressed outrage: “Why a school has a problem with teenagers saying the word vagina is beyond me,” she said, and added, a bit hyperbolically, “It is truly a throwback to the dark ages.”
But the girl’s got it right—“The use of the word vagina in this place wasn’t sexual,” they said, “and the piece and the context of the word is empowering.”
The principal, on the other hand, got it wrong. In addition to his having the cognitive problem of not being able to distinguish between the literal and metaphoric use of language, he claims that the use of the word itself was not the problem—since the girls were told in advance not to use it and then proceeded to, he suspended them for insubordination.
Here we may be getting closer to the truth of the situation—schooling in general and high schools in particular are as much about teaching and requiring certain forms of discipline and submissive behavior as they are concerned with teaching young people to be literate. Thus, being insubordinate is one of schooling’s deadliest sins.
These John Jay girls got under their principal’s skin more because they were disobeying him than because they spoke that “obscene” word in the presence of children. Children who we assume never heard it before.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
9:50 AM
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