5 YR Old Put On “Hate Register”
It is pretty amazing how far people will go in attempt to correct social ills:
Heads will be forced to list children as young as five on school ‘hate registers’ over everyday playground insults.
Even minor incidents must be recorded as examples of serious bullying and details kept on a database until the pupil leaves secondary school.
Teachers are to be told that even if a primary school child uses homophobic or racist words without knowing their meaning, simply teaching them such words are hurtful and inappropriate is not enough.
I am not sure what to say to this idea — certainly there are issues, but isn’t part of being young the notion that you get punished for your action, and it doesn’t follow you throughout the rest of your secondary school? I thought youth was about ’second chances.’
A five year old who has a target on his back because he said something “homophobic” is a laughable idea.
As a secondary note: Education has been used conversely to liberate and to imprison people since the dawn of man. It is either a tool of the rich and privileged and ruling folk, or it is a tool of the good at heart genuinely attempting to make better people.
Confucius didn’t say “Yo dawg, I am putting you on the hate register because you say mean things to folk.”
Confucius said: “人不知而不慍 不亦君子乎.”
“To get mad at another person without knowing them is not the way of the noble.”
You shall know the intentions of an educator by the way they educate. You shall know the intentions of a school by the way they execute policy.
You can correct pupils with words and deeds or you can correct them through shaming them and branding them. It is obvious which is better.
The five year old will spend the rest of his school career on a hate register and the only lesson he takes from this is that saying what he heard from a parent or from a neighbor will get him punished; no lesson is learned. The only thing that is learned is a confounding fear of a system which bears grudges.