Bad words

In seventh grade, my teacher Mrs. Beard called on an unprepared student. “Oh my gosh!” the girl said. That exclamation brought the lesson to a halt. My gosh, Mrs. Beard explained, was a euphemism for another expression she did not say, but wrote on the board: My God! Now, what does the Third Commandment say? (Most of us knew what she was talking about, even if we didn’t have the commandments in numerical order.) What’s the implication? (That we shouldn’t use God’s name in vain or even substitute for it.) Lesson concluded; now back to Texas history.

If Mrs. Beard were around today, I imagine she’d be the subject of a phone call from an irate parent. Today people toss God’s name any and everywhere—even in middle-grade novels. OMG may even be a gateway swearword to other expressions reserved (so far) for teen novels.

“Bad language” divides into two general categories: profanity (misuses of divine things and divine names) and vulgarity (impolite words for anatomy and bodily functions). Young adult literature permits all of it. I’ve encountered teen novels so vile I had to stop reading. Nonfiction isn’t “safe,” either. Steve Sheinkin, a much-awarded author of children’s historical narratives, doesn’t shrink from including quoted profanity—a real problem with someone like Richard Nixon.

Barriers have come down, and it’s obvious why. Os Guinness in Impossible People observes how “the philosophy of secularism, the process of secularization and the public policy of strict separationism have in effect converged” in the common perception that religion is neither authoritative nor relevant. What was once profane is meaningless and what was once impermissible in polite company is now common, thanks mostly to the internet.

This loosening of restrictions makes its way down to children’s literature. A mother’s satisfaction at seeing her boy’s head bent over a book can shatter when he yells, “I found another bad word!”

What’s the solution? Parents can red-light any book that contains a profanity or vulgarity. Or they can read aloud more, and edit out the problem language as they go. Or they can help their children think through the issue for themselves.

We know that our kids are going to be exposed to all kinds of words at an early age. Our Books of the Year committee member Betsy Farquhar tells how her homeschooled 9-year-old picked up truly foul language from another homeschooler on the playground. That, in combination with some “mild” profanity encountered in books, made for an excellent teaching moment.

Discernment means knowing how to make good judgments, whether moral, spiritual, or philosophical. Our committee loved Every Single Second, but some of us found the use of God’s name as an exclamation problematic. However, as Gene Edward Veith points out in Reading Between the Lines, a fictional character may be profane while the fictional work itself is anything but. Idle swearing may indicate God’s irrelevance. But in Every Single Second, God is not irrelevant: He’s the guiding light of at least one character’s life and the source of hope at the end.

Compare that with one of the most-read series of the last decade, The Hunger Games trilogy. Not a single swearword in all its pages, but God is totally irrelevant to the story, which ends without hope.

Readers of nonfiction must evaluate a book’s truth or accuracy, but readers of fiction must learn a different kind of discernment. Fiction weaves a world and invites readers inside. Some of those worlds may encourage false ideologies or raise fatuous expectations. But if a fictional world is true to human life, it can expand a reader’s understanding of times, places, and people otherwise encountered. If the fictional world is morally sound—in line with the divine law written on every heart—it can show something about goodness. The highest demand fiction can make is asking a reader to determine what is true, good, and beautiful about it.

The increase of “bad words” and other problem elements in children’s literature means kids need to learn discernment earlier than they used to. That’s not a bad thing if it helps equip them for the world in which they’ll bear witness.