People who go to our school should stop using curse words and stop writing them on the walls. We see and hear curse words and other inappropriate things in the bathrooms, cafeteria, on the bus, and in the playground. In the bathroom, there are curse words and scribbles on the walls. We don’t want to go into the bathrooms and see those things. We only trust the gym bathroom because there are no curse words and only one person can go in at a time. It’s also not good because the custodians have to clean up the curse words. Today when I went to the bathroom there were scribbles on the wall (Quinn). The custodians shouldn’t have to clean up our mess like that. I feel bad for the custodians (Fatima).

In the cafeteria there is cursing, too. One time I heard a fifth grader use the F-word at lunch. It made me feel uncomfortable. We shouldn’t be hearing that at this age. Especially because second graders share a lunch period with older kids. Cursing is also a problem on the bus. I don’t sit in the back of the bus because I’ve had bad experiences. One person was using the S-word. It made me think, “Why would you want to say that?” There is no reason to use curse words. You don’t become a cool person by using curse words. You become cool by being accepting and kind.

Cursing makes school less fun for everyone. When we saw curse words written on the playground our teacher wouldn’t let us play where the writing was. There were fun things like climbing rocks and bars that we couldn’t play on because of the writing. Why do that and take away our fun?  I only know two curse words and I’m glad about that (Fatima) and I know a lot of them from school. I wish I didn’t (Quinn). The fewer curse words you know the better you feel. If you know none, you’re a happy person. —Quinn Pellegrino and Fatima Riaz