Swearing has always been around. No doubt cave men swore when faced with a Mammoth.
I swore as a kid but I wasn't a career swearer. I never swore at home - my parents would have gone nuts! Maybe the odd bloody hell or bugger slipped out at home but that was it.
I didn't swear much at school either. There was a real taboo surrounding some high-value swear words, the C word especially. I wasn't a great effer and jeffer. I was more drawn to insults like pillock, prannock and dimmock and phrases like get stretched and the universal get stuffed. I never swore in public spaces.
Nowadays, with my time in education, I hear every swear word under the sun all day long every day and there are no taboos about using any of them at any time, in class or out, or in any type of sentence. It has become common currency in school despite the best efforts of the grown-ups there. I'm not going to effing Maths so you can F off is the rallying cry of the modern secondary schoolkid.
It is also a facet of life in general. I hear swearing everywhere from adults nowadays too; in the cinema, in cafes, in shops and in the street.
Kids are pretty much reflecting back what they hear themselves and sadly some of it will be in the home.
It all feels like its part of a wider rise in aggression in society, of aggressive language and posturing, of hostility toward each other in general, although this could be my age getting in the way there!
Is gaming making kids hostile? I dunno. I've never played a computer game in my life but its all modern kids do. Our generation had toys. We still talk about them here on this blog. We don't seem particularly aggressive. Did toys keep us happy and calm as kids?
Don't get me wrong about swearing though. I do swear - but its a private cursing that I do. Nothing in public.
But it seems that I'm old-fashioned in this regard. Having Grandkids has made me sensitive to public cursing, as I don't think small youngsters still shouldn't have to hear it.
What do you think?
