Porn and the Primary School

“Particularly, he said, “with vulgar nursery rhymes and obscenities and vulgar sayings. The reason why they’re quite important is because they tell us a lot about children’s culture. They don’t come from teachers, well occasionally they do. But they have to come from somewhere, and when you enquire into it, you find it comes from older boys passing them down to younger boys.

“And so you have this successive handing down of peer culture which completely bypasses the adult world in the same way that nursery rhymes can be preserved for hundreds of years; they gradually change with the times, but they can be fairly autonomous,

“By studying vulgarities we can map out the emergence of peer groups intimidating and influencing boys, especially in primary school. Boys are most intimidated in primary school, that’s where it starts, with the most negative curse words, and homophobic words. Boys that young may not know the full meaning of the words, of the vulgarities and obscenities they use, but they certainly know enough to realise that they are among the worst.”

Referring to bullying, I asked about the influence of bullying on television shows featuring large public schools in the US.

The Professor agreed it might have an influence on the young; he said bad things do go on, that kids have to be screened for weapons, that in some areas the schools are more like a prison.

“Or a battleground?” I suggested, “and there’s a shortage of male teachers, too, does that have any bearing on the situation?”

“Yes,” he replied, “that’s part of the problem, boys lack role models in teachers. But I think it’s the attitude towards education generally.”

“You mentioned that there are success stories among boys, would that be in mathematics?” I asked

“Yes, engineering is still an area boys respect, there doesn’t seem to be the same loss of face as with language arts. Anything that is considered arts is more difficult for boys to contemplate that the technical. There are subtle impacts, you can make art attractive for boys, for example, watercolours for scenery is a girl’s subject, but if you’re doing graphic arts with the same material then boys can do it.

“There are two things boys need to learn by the time they quit primary school – they are love and language. If they learn love and language then they are set for life. If they don’t learn them while in primary school then you can expect trouble.

They need to experience love from parents, and affection from teachers – to a certain extent – to learn the meaning of love and to have experienced it. Parents are the obvious ones to show and teach love, or aunts or grandmothers.

“Or even fathers and uncles, although the word ‘uncle’ is suspect,” I added. Then, changing the subject to language, “Texting on cell phones is doing terrible things to language,” I said bitterly.

“But on the other hand,” Professor Plummer pointed out, “computers have forced kids to learn to type. And one thing I’ve discovered — this research isn’t just in Trinidad, we cover Guyana, Grenada, St Kitts and Anguilla as well, we’re finding out that where people are scattered across islands there are strong incentives for young men to get computers and communicate; it’s forcing them to develop their communication skills which are, to a certain extent, language skills.

Sometimes their spelling isn’t so good and in some programmes if you don’t spell they are very unforgiving. In that sense computers, I think, are having a very positive effect.

“But what,” I objected, “about pornography?”

“Well, yes,” he agreed, “there is pornography, but when you interview men who grew up before computers, they all say they were exposed to pornography one way or another. It wasn’t downloadable but it’s always been around.”

Next week Men and their Cars.

ahilton@carib-link.net