"Oh, pickles!"

“The small issue is cussing,” Ms. Ludgood said. “The larger issue is civility. As a nation, we have gotten meaner.”

Getting schoolchildren to stop using profanity seems a Sisyphean task. Still, the anti-cursing movement has grown in fits and starts in recent years, particularly as school administrators, parents and students themselves have looked to new ways to stop bullying…

Anti-cursing efforts are simply not effective, said Timothy Jay, a psychology professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and the author of five books on language and behavior, including “Why We Curse” and “Cursing in America.”

“There’s been swearing since the beginning of time,” he said. “If one of these things worked, we wouldn’t swear.”