Should I read aloud profanities to students?

[Rejoice]

Because I will soon be student-teaching in an eighth-grade English classroom (public school), I am preparing to teach a few novels, at least one of which (Of Mice and Men) contains numerous profanities: taking the Lord’s name in vain. I know it is a mortal sin (assuming full knowledge and deliberate consent) to speak this way, and I never do; yet I’m not sure whether to apply this to the recitation of a text whose characters or narrator sin in such a way.

Obviously, most books, the classics of the Western canon included, are filled with characters who sin gravely and sin often. By what guidelines should I determine when and to what degree to censor the oral reading of a text? Do I read all of it but first make some sort of declaration to the class explaining that the language may sometimes be objectionable and include things that I myself would not say? It’s worth noting that my cooperating teacher remarked to me that she and her co-teacher do not read the “n-word” whenever they come to it in the same text.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

If the book is otherwise appropriate to read to the students, there is no need to censor the language in it. Indeed, it should be the purpose of teaching literature to teach students how to read and comprehend difficult language, rather than simply expunging such language from the text.

I must say though that I find it sad that schoolteachers would be scrupulous to excise racial slurs from works of literature – without, apparently, considering such instances an opportunity to teach students the context in which the language was used and the laudable reform of the English language in the decades since the texts were written – but not be equally concerned with sacrilegious or blasphemous language. However, if prudence suggests it or if your supervisors require it, there is nothing wrong with excising racial slurs from your reading of the literature.

Recommended reading:

morally offensive?Is The Great Gatsby
The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor