Children branded as bigots

[housesparrow]

Thousands of children, including those attending nursery school, were involved in racist or homophobic incidents over the past year, figures have disclosed.
Teachers logged more than 10,000 confrontations involving primary school students making racist insults or derogatory comments about homosexuals in 12 months.

A further 20,000 “hate crimes” were recorded against secondary school students such as using the phrases “white trash” or “gaylord” during playground squabbles.

And nursery school staff reported several dozen such bullying incidents involving young children despite most not understanding the meaning of what they were saying.

Experts said the government was attacking childhood. The government has previously said that any sort of bullying was "totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated".

(read more)




So who is right? I tend to agree that these terms are almost certainly used by kids who don't really understand them. And what about "fattist" bullying? Where does that get logged?

[riotgrrl]

I've been really involved in all this hate crime/racial incidents monitoring malarky as part of my job.

I think it's a big bomb that's going to explode over everyone's heads and shower us all with slime.

When you move beyond monitoring, preventing and punishing actual CRIME, and start monitoring, preventing and punishing INCIDENTS, you get nonsense. Nonsense.

Children call each other names and bully each other. Fact of life. Horrible. Up to us as adults to intervene and teach and model appropriate behaviour.

But when the state starts monitoring, and counting, and all of that . . . it just gets silly.

[Alpha Hooligan]

Labours "big brother" legacy...thousands of children, some of them pre-schoolers labelled as racists for the rest of their lives.

Fucking insane.


AH

[Weyland]

Jan 20, 2011 19:22:33 GMT Alpha Hooligan said:

Labours "big brother" legacy...thousands of children, some of them pre-schoolers labelled as racists for the rest of their lives.

Fucking insane.

AH

Agreed. Still, at least they can be sure of acceptance among traditional Tories, to whom racism is just business as usual. Or BNP/UKIP -- their natural coalition partners.

But I do agree.

[housesparrow]

The thought of children being "labelled " for using a word they don't understand is depressing; I hope that doesn't happen. Schools should focus on the bullying, irrespective of the word used.

Being picked on for being fat, or having eczema, or not being able to read is surely just as bad as being called "white trash"?

[bonbonlarue]

Labels for children are the new big thing though...think about it..without 'ADHD' lots of families wouldn't be able to afford foreign holidays and Subarus.....