Professionals have slammed teachers who have been reporting children as young as five for being racist, saying that making children frightened to ask questions is unhealthy.
The comments come after parent Hayley White was summoned to her seven-year-old son’s primary school and told that her some Elliott had been at the centre of an ‘incident’ with another pupil, the Daily Mail reports.
She was told that the situation was so serious she would have to sign an official form admitting he was racist; something Ms White refused to do.
The reason for this demand was because her son had asked a four-year-old pupil during break time if he was “brown because he was from Africa”.
“When I arrived at the school and asked Elliott what had happened, he became extremely upset,” said Ms White, a 32-year-old NHS worker.
She said her son was distressed about the reaction from staff, saying to his mother: “I was just asking a question. I didn’t mean it to be nasty”.
The row over the question escalated when the black child told his mother about the question when he returned home from school, who then informed the school hoping they could “have a quiet word with Elliott”.
Elliott’s mother was given a copy of the school rules to read with particular focus on its ‘zero-tolerance’ policy on racism.
“I was told I would have to sign a form acknowledging my son had made a racist remark, which would be submitted to the local education authority for further investigation,” she said.
“I refused to sign it, and I told the teacher that in no way did I agree the comment was racist. My son is inquisitive. He always likes to ask questions, but that doesn’t make him a racist.”
One social worker told Breitbart London: “It is healthy for children to be inquisitive and to ask questions.”
Asked if they agreed with the school’s decision to brand the child a racist, they said that best practice was “quite to the contrary”.
“We should be encouraging to question why, where and how,” she said “then you are giving them skills and help them develop their understanding of the world and to respect others and the differences people have.”
“To expect children never to ask questions is setting a precedent for later life of never to question and to never veer from the path of the consensus, which is dangerous.”
The comments were echoed by local Labour MP Karl Turner who said it appeared “the matter has been taken out of all proportion, and common sense seems to have gone completely out of the window.”
The singling out of children as ‘racist’ or ‘prejudiced’ for making comments which the politically-correct brigade rule as unacceptable can have serious consequences for young children, with the record staying on their school report and the child being branded as a bigot for the whole of their school career for asking a simple question.
Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education said labelling children in this way was “grossly unfair” and “created a climate of fear” amongst children, because “the child does not understand what they have said.”
“The politically correct agenda dominates over the interests of children — if the label carries on through the rest of their school career, it can be very dangerous,” he added.