After something like a half-century of writing both news and opinion about everything from community events to murder trials and such as claims investigations, military orders, and zoning fights, etc., in between, I am left with only one certainty: there are always at least two sides to every story.

Someone once said there are three sides to the stories: yours, mine and the truth. Truth might be found in the grey areas in between.

In that time, I have covered five boards of education, audited both undergraduate and graduate classes in two faculties of education, edited papers at both levels for more than one student including a Master’s thesis, and had a 17-year marriage to a teacher who completed a Master’s in Language, Learning and Culture plus both parts of a principal’s qualification but chose to remain in the classroom.

I think that qualifies me to know something about education and the running of schools. But getting back to my topic, the difficulty in cutting through the grey is the reluctance of either one or both sides of an argument to state the full scope of their reasoning or, in many cases, to embellish it via a media relations department.

This is especially true of some corporations and most government departments at the federal and provincial level, and now it has filtered down to the Upper Grand District School Board offices in Guelph, where Maggie McFadzen – an honest and forthright person though she is — is responsible for handling inquiries about a delicate, controversial and vital issue at Shelburne’s high school, where principal Deidre Wilson is under public criticism for her cancellation of a school play and where a 19-year-old is facing serious criminal charges for his obviously impulsive and youthful reaction to the cancellation. I could also speak to that from experience with Grade 12 military recruits. But, back to the issue.

Ms. Wilson is a Master of Science and Honour Specialist in Mathematics, among other qualifications, a teacher since 1993 and a qualified principal from 2003.

She has shown herself to be supportive of initiatives of the Centre Dufferin District High students based, at least, on my experience with the efforts of four Grade 11 students to raise funds for a monument to former students who served in the wars.

I cannot imagine she would have taken an action such as the play cancellation at the risk of alienating and demoralizing the student body – as well as many of the staff

without there having been some manner of outside influence along with valid reasoning.

It seems Ms. Wilson, however, is not at liberty to discuss her/their rationale with me or anyone else for publication. It would be easy to criticize the timing of the cancellation, given that it was somewhat at mid-stream in production, but at whom should the criticism be aimed?

Apparently the script, including amendments, was available at the school. In a phone interview, Ms. McFadzen said Monday the editing was not to the satisfaction of the CDDHS administration. She said the cancellation was a local administration, in-school decision; that the play is cancelled, period, and that other student activities are planned to replace it.

She did not know, she said, whether the school could recover any of the reported

5,000 it paid for the script if the play does not run.

For my part, I have mixed emotions on this – quite apart from the obvious fact that I am denied access to the source.

Most everyone has likely seen the film version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It portrays in comedic fashion a reality of which every female should be aware – there are a lot of guys out there who want no more than your body or your money or both, and have nothing to give in return. They are experts at what they do.

The reality is that these charlatans are everywhere, the lowdown dirty rotten skunks, and you can read about them in the mainline media frequently. The film comedy is educational in that respect.

I am reminded of a colonel who rode his horse into a lecture hall at Camp Borden in about 1956 and, dismounting, proclaimed: “What’s needed in these lectures is a little levity.” Comedy and surprise are powerful tools in any educator’s arsenal.

I have not seen the musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels but I do realize it would be constricted by the limits of the stage. In any event, it can be expected to differ from the film both in stage actions and in language.

Ms. McFadzen said the problem was with both language and content. On language, people of my generation are shocked by the language of the streets of some residential areas of Orangeville and Shelburne. The Scoundrels language cannot be worse than that heard by kids on their way home from school.

I can agree to some extent that some content might be offensive, but only to the extent of how it is portrayed and not to the content per se. The same kids are subjected to Viagra ads and such other sexually charged and yester-yore unmentionables even on prime-time TV.

I suppose I am something of a puritanical and prudish old fogey in some ways as I do not condone, much less encourage, amoral or immoral conduct.

Yet society has changed, and our emerging adults need to be aware of the multitude of scoundrels – both male and female – they shall face.

A way must be found for the show to go on. If it were replaced with, say, Showboat, would we have some female student singing about how she vamps on stage but “once the curtain’s down my life is pure, and how I dread it ... I’ve got talent but it ain’t been tested....” How suggestive is that?

The public, paying for their kids to be educated into adulthood, have a democratic right to be heard on the specific issues of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

The comedy and the message need to be portrayed, even if it takes drastic rewriting.