Just Us Guys

I had to think about it for minute, but I don't remember that I spoke differently in the classroom because it was the classroom, it was because I was in "mixed company".  I do know that all of us guys spoke differently when we were among ourselves than we did when there were adults or girls around.  At some point I noticed that male adults spoke differently when there were women and/or children around, probably when I became a male adult myself.  Even then, the male adults of my generation spoke differently than the male adults of my father's generation, at least they did when male adults of my generation were around.  I have always wondered how the girls, adult women, and adult men spoke when I wasn't around, but there's no way to know because I'm not around when I'm not around. 

When the content of the Watergate tapes were made public, I was surprised at how many expletives were deleted, so maybe everybody speaks differently when they are among their own kind.  To this day, a politician or other public figure gets in trouble now and then for saying something when they didn't know that the microphone was on.  When one is a public figure, one should assume that the microphone is always on, just like, when anybody handles a firearm, they should always assume that it's loaded.

I seem to remember that there was a guy named Horace Mann who was largely responsible for the establishment of public schools in the U.S.  I don't remember any of the details, but that might be a good place to start an internet search of the subject.  Before that, I think that many kids learned to read and write from their parents.  The rich kids surely got more eduication than the poor kids but, even out on the frontier, there were one room schoolhouses that were probably funded by local communities.