Bullying by teachers - What to do?

[mking3181]

I am looking for a bit of advice regarding a fairly nasty situation my son has going on.

Last year, when he was 8, he was accused by the school of making a 'racist comment' to a teacher. He was told (without my being in attendance) that they were going to report him to the local authority and to the 'racism reporting unit', the other kids heard him being told off and started calling him a racist, he got taken to his class teacher, his deputy head, he was made to sit out the next morning in breakfast club, all sorts, and all the while he didnt really understand what racist meant. I took this up with firstly the deputy head, who tried to deny it all, then the head teacher who said to me, and i quote, 'what do you want me to do about it'. Not satisfied with this, i then took it to the board of governers, who carried out an investigation. He decided that the matter had been handled badly and that my son was not a racist after all, and had requested that any reference to racism be removed from my sons record, and replaced with 'overfamilliar and disrespectful to a member of staff' which i felt more accurately described what had happened. I was still not happy about the over the top way i felt my son had been punished and ridiculed by the other children but having moved him to a different school over the incident, i decided to leave it there.

HOWEVER, i have just bumped into one of the other mums from his old class, i didnt ask anything about the old school, not wanting to put her on the spot, but the first thing she said to me was 'how pathetic is it that theyve been told not to talk to him anymore' (meaning my son), i had no idea what she was talking about so she explained that the kids have been told they arent allowed to contact or speak with ds on social media games, animal jam being the one she mentioned which my son does use.

Now i was planning to leave the matter where it was but now i hear this, it just makes me feel that there is some kind of witch hunt against him now, more than likely because of me, and my not letting the matter drop in the first place. I have emailed the chair of governers again asking him to investigate as a matter of urgency once school starts again but obviously the school are going to deny this.

Does anyone have any advice on what i should do now? Should i just put it down to a bad school, be glad hes out of there and let it drop? Or is there anywhere i can escalate the matter? :-(

This all sounds horrid.

But as the latest twist depends on the word of one mother quoting her child from an unspecified amount of time ago, I think this might be one to let go.

I hope things are going well at his new school.

I think you have used your child's name. I think it is unlikely that the teachers would have told the children not to talk to your son but if they have then you have every reason to ask the school for an explanation.

I'm so sorry. If I had disciplined my child that way and I would expect someone to report me to social services for emotional abuse.

God bless, he's 8. How would you feel as an 8 year old if a set of adults were telling kids to ostracise you.

Thanks for your messages, reassures me im not being totally paranoid. Dont get me wrong, my son is no angel and i fully supported the school previously to this when he got in bother, but in this instance i just feel like they went way over the top and gave him punishment after punishment, rather than sitting all the kids down and explaining what he did wrong (it was in after school club that this happened so a room full of kids heard what he said, he wasnt insulting or anything, purely mentioned skin colour, no malice at all). The school is in a very multi cultural area, half of his class is non white, and racism is just a subject that i didnt think he needed to know about yet so he didnt realise. Kids dont care about skin colour do they, not that young anyway, they just see the person, and skin colour is a way to describe someone (when talking about people he would say the one with whitish skin, or golden skin, etc). The school have made an issue where there wasnt one previously, my son is now a bit wary about what he can and cant say when describing someone and looks to me to see if im going to tell him off if he mentions skin colour, and that has happened when he has been describing various races, people on the tv or whatever. I dont really understand what he did that was so wrong, or what to tell him about it all, i dont really want to say to him dont ever mention skin ever, because then it makes him think why not, and is a massive can of worms.

Has anyone else had anything similar, or anyones kids broached the subject with them? What do you say?

My son made a racist comment at school in response to a bigoted comment about him. However, my son's comment was much worse. It was an 'innocent' mistake, but a great learning experience for my son to never make the mistake again. He was 8. The school didn't blow their top over it at all. I actually approached the school and apologized for him - son had told me what he did and was upset about it - so the next I had a chat with his teacher.

my DD - younger than your DS - was on the receiving end of a comment by a class mate about her skin colour which to adults sounded trivial but which over a year later is still something she will bring up in conversation and which upset her deeply. Words can wound even when not meant in a racist way. Far better to talk to children about how we all come in different colours etc and it is normal and doesn't need to be something commented on.

Having said that, the way you describe your DS was treated was awful. If you have any proof the school has bow done what this mother said I would not be contacting the governors, but a solicitor.

You should also send a message to MN asking them to edit your son's name out of your opening post.

Get the facts before you go in all guns blazing.

When was the comment said? Who said it? What exactly was said? In what context? Did the mum get told it by the school or is this 2nd or 3rd hand from a child?

I could have been something like the teacher saying if someone says nasty things to you don't speak to them online, and this other child had linked it in his head to mean to your son because of the incident.

I think it would be nigh on impossible to get all the facts (or any of them). It's hard enough getting facts when your child attends a school. If your child has left you'd be on a hiding to nothing. Nobody has any compulsion to tell you anything. And if ostracism is the aim of the game then not coming clean about it fits perfectly, really.

This sounds really horrible - v sorry for you and your son.
I don't know what your son said, but I think that it is wrong to put racist comments (assuming that it was racist) on some kind of high pedestal, so that they are seen as 1000 times worse than any other kind of offensive comment. And wrong to treat a child of 8 like this, whatever the comment.
My DC at a similar age said to a schoolmate that he was lucky that he didn't have to worry about putting on suncream as much as she did (she has v fair skin which burns very quickly) because he had brown skin. He complained about her to the school for being racist. It was not racism, simply a statement of fact.