Censorship: A necessary evil or the righteous path to uprightness?

Just the other day as I was walking in a crowded shopping mall, I saw a bunch of school children in a corner. They were no more than 13 years old and wearing ridiculously made-for-adults clothes. There was laughter and jokes and they looked as though they couldn’t even tell the difference between a goat and a lamb. They reminded me of my days when I was their age. I didn’t care about petrol prices, escalating prices of lattes at Starbucks nor did I know that The Da Vinci Code was actually fiction.

But then again, I don’t remember using the F-word, C-word, or P-word when describing my day at school. I was initially shocked but not really surprised to hear this pretty girl uttering so many foul words when talking to her friends. And she wasn’t even trying to hush it up a little, it was loud enough that its echoes actually travelled to another shopping mall.

It seems that it is fashionable or the ‘in thing’ to call one another “bitch” when you’re 11 and UPSR is only a year away. I was still using “Babi (Pig in Bahasa Melayu) and I thought I was as vulgar as can be.

So the big question is of course, how did they come to learn such words? The ‘who’ doesn’t really matter since you can still be taught to cuss and swear in a remote island of the coast of Johor (Singapore, naturally, denies this). I highly doubt that their English teacher has been teaching them inappropriate content during Grammar lessons, I can tell you that because I would have known.

I remember buying a Pantera CD which I was thoroughly enjoying it and I was just about to headbang when a bleep—which lasted less than a nanosecond—stopped me in my tracks. For crying out loud, there’s no way a Hilary Duff fan is going to listen to this and start learning words he or she doesn’t already know. Just listen to any rap album these days and you’d have to bleep the entire thing. Heck, rap CDs should be covered with a giant sticker that reads, “PARENTS, YOUR CHILD IS ABOUT TO LISTEN TO SOME REALLY INTERESTING STUFF HERE. (HEHE) HAVE A NICE DAY.”

Hypocrisy and double standards are lovely things.

It used to be the obvious that gets censored but even “Hell” and “Damnit” are considered to be insidious to the ears of our young and highly impressionable children. It’s so silly to think that by bleeping out the aforesaid words that our children will be spared by the “evil” of it. The minute they step out of the house and into the shopping mall chances are they’ll be rattling off cuss word after cuss word without so much as batting an eyelid.

And what about a peck on the cheek? That’s acceptable as long as there’s no tongue licking the side of the face. Hugging is all right only if they do it briefly. Any longer than 3 seconds is deemed inappropriate and is punishable by watching Sesame Street for the rest of your life. Showing affection to your loved ones is a bad, bad thing here apparently.

I really believe education is the key to the ultimate door of maturity. By keeping it under lock and key (pun intended), you’re merely halting the inevitable. For crying out loud, children as young as 8 know what MSN Messenger is all about and they chat about things I only knew when I was 14 (and I thought I was so cool back then). So maybe it’s time that WE grow up first before we tell our children to act like us.

Chris is signing off. For now…

PS: “Don’t forget, naughty children will go to Hell. Hahahaha!”

You guys should use that line, it’ll make ANY kid polite and all. And of course, mortally afraid of you.