Engaging Schoolkids

Young kids are taken with the verboten. And when you're really young, whatever is impolite is quietly treasured. This is before kids are old enough and bold enough to assert themselves and surreptitiously, among themselves, use the kind of language that their mothers would never utter. But when they're young enough kids adore the juicy language of the bathroom. It hits their collective funny-bones. And the truth is, it's not just kids; the truth is some men remain juvenile in their happy attraction to scatological references.

Want to get a guffaw out of a kid? Pump up the underarm and product a sound that seems suspiciously like a gusty bout of flatulence. Which, of course, belongs in the bathroom, not in the drawing room, or even at the kitchen table where the entire family is assembled, eating dinner. The offending child is embarrassed and excused. But when he's with his friends, in the schoolyard, that's another matter altogether. Then there's a conspiracy of bathroom humour that's funny to kids, tiresome to adults.

If you want to get a kid's attention, you use the secret language kids use. That unleashes it from its secret hideaway, gives it legitimacy without taking away its hilarity, and immediately impresses the kid that anyone who plays around with language and the hidden bathroom acts it describes is one of them. If you can also write kiddie literature aimed at youngsters who have to be enticed to read, and install a few scenarios that he (since it's mostly boys who love scatology) can thrill to, you're in the process of grooming a reader.

Of course most people in the teaching profession are too strait-laced to loosen up their language, or even bypass instances where kids forget where they are and to whom they're speaking and let fly with a questionable phrase. And even while too much of an emphasis on bathroom humour isn't a terrific idea, there's no point ignoring the fact that this is what engages kids. So when the principal at Manor Park elementary school yanked writer Kevin Bolger off his reading podium because of his kid-engaging language, you might say that was true to a certain form.

Of course that principal should be put in a corner with a dunce cap since clearly, he's an idiot. The writer in question, Ottawa teacher and kids' book author Kevin Bolger is someone obviously imbued with the love of teaching. He reaches out to kids in the language they understand and enjoy and piques their curiosity by his creative outreach. Writing stories that appeal to them, using language that they find hilariously appropriate to the story.

Sir Fartsalot and his sturdy minions and co-characters speak to the kids who need that extra pick-up to incite them to read. And those kids who will read anyway will also get a kick out of the clever word manipulation and ideas promotion that Mr. Bolger is skilled in producing. From his kid-lit to a wide, wide world of literature, old and new. There are too many people in the field of education who are stiff and not even remotely capable of empathizing with kids.

Insulting an invited and highly-appreciated writer because one has insufficiently done a minimum of homework bespeaks a puny mind. The children who witnessed a favourite author's reading being summarily halted by their principal will have no reason whatever to hold him in any kind of esteem. They will feel confused, cheated and annoyed.

The principal of Manor Park elementary school should have his knuckles rapped for extreme stupidity.