Help - DS accidently made a racist remark at school today and its being reported to education auth........

[porkypoo]

DS (11) accidently rhymed a teachers name (Jackie) with a well know racist word today and was over heard. The teacher is white though. He said that it just slipped out and that he knows these words should never be used. He is mortified as the school has said it will be reported as a racist incident although he will not be named. Can anyone help me as to why this might be? I am alittle embarrassed of the whole situation TBH. Thnks.

I think he was in the 11 yr old boy, trying to make other 11yr old boys laugh, situation. It had abosolutely no racism meant whatso ever. The teaching assistant who overheard at the time, told him he could be excluded for this, which is an entirely different post all together!!!!!

Can I just ask whether Jackie is in fact black?

Sorry I didn't read the OP properly - erm why the fuss?

Well i did think that too, but then a rush of guilt and bad mother syndrome hit in....

Don't feel guilty - what can you do - just unfortunate - pity DS is going to be keelhauled -

I just hope that he learns from this experience. He goes to secondary school in september and really needs to learn when to keep big trap shut!!

Can anyone tell me if sexist language and incidents also have to be reported to the LEA?

And if not, why not? Does anyone know?

That's such a hysterical over reaction. All this does is give these words and the old fashioned feelings behind them weight and power. It almost digs up the discontent and fear our generation felt around race issues and plonks it on our children.

The teacher should have had a quiet but serious word one on one.

Insanity. Hysteria. How depressing.

When dss was 14 he had an altercation with a black kid in school. The kid said that dss said something horribly racist, he told the teachers and it spread around the school like wildfire. Dss was terrified that he was going to be beaten to a pulp. the school suspended him.
Dss had not said anything of the sort, and indeed wouldn't, as he isn't racist. It took an older black kid who liked dss to get the younger kid to admit that he had fabricated the whole thing.
I was FURIOUS with the school who immediately believed the younger black kid and compounded it by suspending dss. This incident had a hugely negative affect on dss's school life and was handled dreadfully imo. The racist card is a very serious one indeed.

It will do your ds no harm to realise how serious it is to bandy around these words and their horrible connotations.

Carnemere that's what I mean about our generation giving the words too much power. How awful.

I heard my 8 year old son saying 'wanky' the other day, while playing in his bedroom. I asked him not to say it as it was rude. He was most perplexed as to what he had said that was wrong as he and his 5 year old brother were messing about rhyming while calling eachother 'stinky' which has moved on to 'stinky, winky, wanky, panty...'

I am sure bith my ds's have rhymed fuck before now. In fact at nursery I remember their key worker told me that rhyming words were always a bit didgy as some of the rhymes were unintentionally rude or inaproppraite.

Also my eldest ds got 'put in a book' stating he 'innapropriately toucher another boy'. I was horrified and asked for more information from the teacher and deputy head who had told me of the incident tat had to be marked down. Apparenly the boys (aged 6 at the time) were playing 'it' and being children tey had decided to 'it' body parts ie hand, knee, head, willy (!) ' my ds unforunatly 'it'ed' his friend rather hard on the willy and as therefore their game came to the attention of the teacher who considered it inappropraite and therefore my son now has this on record!!!

All incidents are recorded whether intentional or not. That way they can see if it has happened before. More than two 'unintentional' comments will start to look suspicious.

i have never understood how that word is racist. We call British 'brits' and australians
'aussies'. It is just a shortened form. You can shoot me now but just giving my opinion

I know, the stories I mentioned made me feel very sad. The children were 5 and 6 and were just using words to describe their classmates. It was nothing more than that. It all seemed very unfair. Racism should be dealt with properly but only when it really is racism.

ditto F&Z and dinny
lol geek 3 how unfortunate for ds

There certainly are times when people are waaay to quick to start using the 'racist' card. Particularly with young children who do rhyme words without knowing the meaning or connotations - DS is 3 and likes to make up nonsense words, unfortunately one of his nonsense words (elaborated from talking about the Night Garden) was to go from Pinky Ponk Ninky Nonk to Nig Nog. He has never heard those two sylables uttered with any abusive/racist meaning, he's just playing with words. I just said, no darling, Ninky Nonk but I have a bit of a low-level fear that he will say the other version in a public place and someone will take exception...

Why is referring to skin as chocolate-coloured a bad thing? Would reference to blonde hair or peaches and cream skin complexion be equally racist?

And here I was thinking chocolate is a nice thing.

Children certainly do rhyme words without thinking about it. My ds once came out with (reciting the stations along the line, which are Stowmarket, Diss and Norwich) "Pomarket, Piss and Porridge". OK, he was young enough (3 or 4) to have no idea about the meanings of the words, but even now he's 7 he often absentmindedly rhymes things into nonsense, and sometimes inadvertently ends up with something a little rude.

I still don't know if sexist incidents are considered as noteworthy as racist ones by our august education authorities? And if not, why not?

LittleBella any form of prejudice is treated equally.

lljkk - I agree. And it was said in a nice way. Both comments were. I should add that it was not me who reported it.

So does that mean that sexist incidents have to be reported to LEA's then, in the same way that racist ones are? And homophobic incidents? And sectarian religious ones?

And then what happens, does someone compile them all and do a report or something?

how preposterous. It robs the dignity from sufferers of genuine racial abuse. Ditto sexism, ageism etc.

And I agree with LittleBella - what happens to this mighty torrent of collected data? What's it for? Is it compiled into reports and then locked away in a vault somewhere, or what?

Don't know about 11 year olds, but my kids could certainly say things like this by accident - dd takes pleasure in making rhyming words - Mum, Tum, Yum, Bum, Cum etc etc etc

She also refers to 'XYZ who has the brown skin in my class'. Which she often follows with 'I wish I had brown skin Mummy'.

The OP's child would not have been reported to the LA in my school but the incident would have been logged and reported if there were further incidents. Sexist and homophobic incidents would be dealt with similarly depending on the nature of the incident. If it was a direct verbal "attack" it would be treated more strongly than the type of incident described.