Language

I've had language on the brain quite a bit lately. Logan is now almost five months old and when any of us are around him we make quite a spectacle of ourselves encouraging him to vocalize. And he's getting very good at it. That kid is loud!

Jump to another piece of my life: school. Here I'm taking the opposite tack; trying to get kids to vocalize less. It's not so much I mind the conversations my students have. Topics can be quite interesting; loaded with more information that I often want to hear and details I don't really need. What I do have issues with is their lack of creativity in choosing their vocabulary. It's as if name-calling, putdowns, slurs and curses have become normally accepted in society and therefore, public school.

I find it really disheartening that my students can't understand my feelings about their verbal communications. They don't seem to comprehend that you get one first impression. The most attractive person in the world quickly becomes very unattractive when all they spew from their lips is offensive garbage. And I'm more than a little disturbed that language seems to be deteriorating at an incredibly fast rate. Vocabulary, context and syntax don't seem to be important to many people any more; even among some rather well-educated individuals.