I have to admit that when learning a language, it was always fun to know a few bad words: merda, bastardo, Scheiße… you get the picture.  You could swear and your friends and your teachers wouldn’t know what you were saying and thus you couldn’t get yelled at! Come on! How awesome is that?  

Ok, now take that scenario and reverse it.  What do you do when your 11 year old student comes up to you and asks, “Teacher, what does ‘Fuck you’ mean? ” over and over and over again.  Do you admit its a bad word and he shouldn’t say it, obviously encouraging a small boy to say it continuously.  Or do you pretend it means nothing, and risk them walking around saying ‘Fuck you!’ to everybody.  My gut reaction was to tell him it was bad.  That way at least he knew for certain it was bad, since chances are he was going to repeat it anyway.  

Sure enough, 2 minutes later I hear ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ in the hall…followed by laughter and more Chinese.

Oh the joys of teaching.