The English Lesson

In a suburban courtroom just north of Detroit last week, a high school teacher named Nancy Timbrook clutched a shredded Kleenex as she defended her actions before a judge. She admitted that she had, as charged, written a four-letter variant of the verb "to copulate" on her classroom blackboard.

Prosecutor: Didn't you know that it was an unfit word to use in front of children?

Mrs. Timbrook: That's what I was trying to teach -- that it was indecent and immoral. It's always made me sick every time I've seen it. I've seen it every day in the [school] john. I wanted to stop it.

Prosecutor: Did you know that writing that word was a crime?

Mrs. Timbrook: I didn't know I was doing anything that would send me to jail.

Judge: Ignorance is no excuse.

Mrs. Timbrook: Perhaps I should have studied law instead of literature.

While the four-letter word under discussion has become commonplace in the works of many modern novelists, its use is far from accepted in high school English classes. Any teacher who makes it the theme of a classroom exercise can expect a strong reaction -- if not from the students themselves, at least from their parents. Which is what happened to Mrs. Timbrook, 36, a truck driver's wife and the mother of nine children, who teaches at Lamphere High School in Madison Heights, Mich.

Led by God. The incident took place last month after Patrick Eady, 32, a social-studies teacher at Lamphere, invited two college-age youths who are mem bers of a local left-wing group called the White Panthers to address his students. Their talk was freely sprinkled with the provocative verb (or noun, or adjective, depending on how it is used).

News of the highly unusual lesson spread quickly through the school. Annoyed by the students' snickering, Mrs. Timbrook decided to discuss the word in class the very next day. She printed the word on the blackboard for each of her four English classes and asked each what it meant. "I was led to do that by God," Mrs. Timbrook, a deeply religious woman, later recalled. "I didn't know what I was going to do until I walked into the classroom."

For the most part, the students merely giggled and answered that the word meant "sexual intercourse." But many of the 42,000 residents of the town questioned Mrs. Timbrook's divine inspiration. She insisted that her lecture's purpose was to prove that the word was "devoid of life and love." Nevertheless, parents besieged the superintendent of schools with irate phone calls and, at hastily convened meetings, vilified Mrs. Timbrook as a "whore" and "a disgrace to womankind."

Eady was fired from his job. When Mrs. Timbrook was given nonteaching duties in the superintendent's office, other teachers boycotted the school for a full day. Then one father, Police Lieutenant William Sloan, brought criminal charges against Mrs. Timbrook and Eady. Both were arrested on a state charge--"depraving the morals of children." Mrs. Timbrook was also charged with violating a local ordinance that forbids the writing of "indecent and immoral language."

In court Judge Edward Lawrence conceded that her motive had been a moral one. But he was not inclined to minimize her offense. "People may commit murder in the heat of passion," he said, "but that doesn't excuse murder. People may write obscenity for various reasons, but that doesn't excuse obscenity." While the state charge against her was dropped, Mrs. Timbrook pleaded guilty to violating the local ordinance. She faces penalties of up to 90 days in prison and $500 fine at her sentencing next month. Eady, who comes to trial next month, is not likely to get much more sympathy.

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