I am a regular but have name changed for this as I don't want to be outed.
DS is five and has just started year one. Yesterday he was in the playground and a boy from his class took hold of his hood and started swinging him round. Eventually this boy swung him into a wall.
When I arrived to pick ds up I was asked to see the Deputy Head as there had been an "incident" involving ds. When I got there ds was with her with a huge graze down the side of his face and an ice pack on his arm. The Deputy Head took me out of the room and said she had a serious issue to discuss with me. I assumed it was to do with the injury (and the fact that his coat is destroyed). But no she wasn't that interested in that and refused to say what was being done about the other boy.
She wanted to discuss with me a racist comment that my son had made. Apparently when he was asked who had injured him he replied that he didn't know but that the boy had "brown skin".
It appears that this has been logged as a racist incident. DS has been told that he mustn't use those words. I was told that I would get a call from an inclusion unit at the council who would advise me on race issues and would come to my home to discuss it with me.
I had the phone call this morning. They want to come to my home to discuss racism with me. I am furious. Firstly I am not racist. I haven't said a word to anyone and my son merely pointed out the most obvious thing about this boy. He said nothing negative about the boy's race or colour. Secondly when I pointed out to her that amongst our good friends are families from Libya, Singapore, Cambodia and Taiwan she said it was possible to be in that position and still be racist!
I have refused to meet her and she is apparently planning to "discuss it with the head teacher". I am a little concerned as I help out in school and am a governor at another school in the area.
My ds is baffled because he doesn't know what he's done wrong. He said this morning over breakfast "but mummy I thought it didn't matter what colour your skin is?". That's the way we've bought our children up. We haven't discussed colour or race because it doesn't matter. Everyone is equal. I tried explaining that to the caller and was told I was "naive".
Was I naive in not discussing it with the children? The only vaguely "race" education we've done was to take them to the slavery musuem and show them how nasty people can be to each other and how we must never let that happen.
So am I being unreasonable? Naive?