Teacher, what mean coprophilia?

I tell my students to tell me if there are topics they'd like to discuss that aren't covered in class. One class wanted to know the meanings of FBI, CIA, NASA, etc. This led to a short discussion of acronyms. One student wanted to know "which is worse": crazy, stupid or idiot.

One student wanted to know the difference between shit and damn.

I said cursing is a surprisingly complicated subject and that I couldn't give a short explanation. I said that in Khmer there are probably things you can say to a friend that you can't say to a teacher or a stranger, right? This is an intermediate class so I said it probably wasn't an appropriate topic for their level. How's that for ducking the issue?

At higher levels it's not necessarily inappropriate. If you're teaching advanced students who are planning on working or studying overseas it might be worthwhile to give them some pointers on how and when to curse or, perhaps more importantly, to know when someone else is cursing at them in jest or in anger.

Last week I had all of my students write a practice essay. In one class it was to write a funny story from their childhood. One student gave me an otherwise decent essay which the word "shit" was used about 20 times.

Whenever I mention this people immediately assume it was a boy who wrote it, a punk kid with a bad attitude. The author was actually a sweet young girl talking about a time when one of her classmates came to class with a shoe caked in doggie doodoo.

I guess I'll have to give a short lesson on the s-word after all. I'll give them the same advice I gave when a student asked how to use a semi-colon. I said "This is the rule for using a semi-colon: Don't."

Maybe I'll play for them the famous George Carlin routine about the seven words you can't say on TV!