死了was not an acceptable word at 大同中學.

I finished my secondary education at 大同中學 (TTHS) in the Philippines.  TTHS was a school founded by the Chinese immigrants of the Philippines as a school that will teach their children Chinese education.  So Chinese was taught to us from Kindergarten to Senior year.

In my Practical Arts class when I was a Freshman, one of the lesson was silk screen printing of clothing/fabric with whatever design we have created.  In one of the project for the class, I decided to print the phonetic equivalent of the name SHEILA on the shirt I got from my cousin Sheila.  The name Sheila was already on the right chest area of the T-shirt so I decided to print the Chinese characters 死了 under it.  Now understand the characters 死了sounds like Sheila but the literal meaning of the words is "dead already".   Also understand that I could have used a different chinese character that could phonetically sound like Sheila but I did not.   I thought 死了was more controversial and it was totally acceptable since I was just phonetically translating "Sheila".  Of course this project did not sit well with some of the Chinese language arts teachers when they saw it.  They made a big bruhaha over that fact that I wrote "dead already" in a shirt.   It was not even a bad word or curse word but still it was an issue.  Of course I was scolded for it.

Now thinking back over that incident just makes me laugh.  It affirms my belief that my high school was fairly a strict and conservative school.  We did not talk back to teachers and we pretty much followed what was told of us.  So unlike the High school scenarios I see in American movies/TV.  And I feel that that strict boarding school atmosphere is better because many present day kids and teens have no fear and respect for their elders.  I feel a lot of these juvenile crimes could be curved if only they fear and respect their elders more.  Just my take.