Stupid isn’t a bad word

Ok. 

I was teaching a class of first graders and I could tell they were getting restless so I stopped what I was doing and announced. 

“Ladies and Gentleman, for the first time ever at a public School, we are going to play RANDOM BOOK A-PALOOZA”   I will walk over to these shelves and I am going to pick a (now wait for it) a book and we’re going to read it. 

Believe it or not everyone got excited 

So I reached into  one of the rows of books and I pulled out this JEM..  THE STUPIDS GO DIE!

The class erupted. 

STUPID IS A BAD WORD… STUPID IS A BAD WORD……

Once I had finally calmed them down, I tried to explain the deal with the word STUPID.

Look guys, STUPID is not a bad word per se.  It’s how you use it that can make it a bad word, but almost any word can be bad if used the wrong way. 

When you call someone STUPID! To hurt their feelings, now that is a bad use of the word and it becomes a “bad word”

But stupid is just a word and in the case of this book, its used to DESCRIBE a family who isn’t that smart.  So it’s OK to use the word 

I am thinking, who the hell brainwashed these kids about this word and why couldn’t they use their evil powers for something else other than demonizing this STUPID word.  They must be one of the most uptight people on the planet which would not be surprising in an elementary school as we have some real head cases in this profession.  I guess if you have been teaching Kindergarten for twenty years your brain must have melted and hardened so many times that you are one step away from being committed!

Speaking of which… My first year of teaching, the teacher across the hall from me was actually picked up at school by her husband and and ambulance with two orderlies.  She actually went insane and became a blubbering mess and no one knew what to do.  Eventually her students went and got someone and they realized she had a complete mental breakdown.  

So I read the book.  

Every time I said STUPID, someone screeched, which was kind of fun.

When book check out time came, every single STUPIDS book went out.

Fast forward 3 hours later. 

I get an email from a “pseudo-administrator” which is a teacher who has administrative duties, I suppose without the money or job title but probably gets out of teaching.   She wanted to address an incident at recess and was kind enough to CC’ the Superintendent of schools. 

I am sorry, but in education when you CC’ the Superintendent of schools you are basically saying FUCK YOU ASSHOLE I GOT YOU I HAVE POWER OVER YOU AND YOU’RE IN TROUBLE NOW.   Hahahahahahhahah. 

Turns out a group of boys was spotted on the playground reading a book and laughing so of course someone was dispatched to investigate. 

They were all reading THE STUPID DIE!

I have told students time and again.  Don’t ever look like you are happy and god forbid you look like you are enjoying yourself particularly in the Library.   Someone is going to walk by and just know that something is not right. 

So the book was confesticated and now she wanted to get to the bottom of this debacle. 

“Well first off you fucking asshole, why are you involving the Superintendent of Schools in this? “  I didn’t actually say.  Power Hungry Much?

Actually, I launched into a long diatribe of how if we banned every single book you or anyone else found offensive we wouldn’t have anything left to check out.. yaddda yada.  Harry Allaird and James Marshall are famous and respected authors.. here’s links to their work and review etc etc 

In the end it was discovered that there was a stamp on the book that said it was purchased by the district, so I actually hadn’t snuck out to the Playtime Boutique on Route One and hit up their smut for elementary school kids section.. and I guess more importantly I hadn’t bought it so she couldn’t nail me with anything. 

This was my first inkling that thing were not going to be bucolic at my new job and the the honeymoon period was going to be rather brief.