Politically incorrect correctness

Grumpy has now got a new saying (sort of). He now reckons that after so many years of the in thing being politically correct it will soon become politically correct to be politically incorrect.

There are two stories in the news right now which have made me shake my head and wonder what the heck is going on in some parts of our country.

The first story concerns a young lad of nine. After apparently listening to stories in class about the second world war he was inspired to play soldiers, which most lads have done at some point in their childhood, running around pointing your fingers to pretend their guns, making banging sounds, falling over in the most over dramatic way possible when you were 'hit' and thinking up an excuse as to how quickly you could jump up again and lets not forget the arguements over that you had somebody and they argued you'd missed and they had jumped out of the way in the best slow motion action move possible as they were the good guy and the good guy always wins.

Eager to get going the lad pointed his 'gun' at a classmate and told another that they had to go and 'shoot the german army'. Now if he had pointed his 'gun' at a english classmate he probably would have been okay, but unfortunatly for this lad he pointed it at a classmate who happened to be Polish. The young lad quickly found himself in front of the deputy head who accused him of racism, was forced to make a public apology in front of the whole class and his mother was called to the school and informed that a permanant record of 'his misconduct' would be placed on file. Or in other words they've branded this nine year lad a racist for life.

Were his comments totally okay? No, but his mother said that they could have handled this quietly and explained things to the lad rather then over reacting and I had to agree. I think the whole situation can be summed up by the real eduction pressure group who said
"'It's a shame that teachers these days all too often fail to crack down on real problems like bullying but overreact to a child with a healthy imagination. Boys will be boys and what the teacher should have done was ask him not to play in the classroom, instead of sending him to the deputy head who then humiliated him in front of his class.'

The second story is far more worrying and seems to be causing a bit of a uproar. A school dinner lady found a seven year old girl being bullied by four boys. The girl had her hands tied and they were over her head with eight knots and the lads were whipping her legs with a skipping rope. What was The game the lads were playing? One paper asked if it was called Abu Ghraib?

The dinner lady rescued the girl and quite rightly took the four lads straight to the headmistresses office where their parents were called.

She later saw the girls parents and found out that they knew nothing about what had happened. All they recieved was a accident notification letter sent home saying that their daughter had been hurt by a skipping rope. She informed the girls parents of what had happened.

Unfortunatly this then lead to that old saying " No good deed goes unpunished" being proven once again as she was fired for " A breech in confidentality" and looks set to end up on a list of people unsuitable to work with children. Simply because she told the girls parents the truth. While I'm sure the four lads remain in school with no marks on their records.

A accident is when a child falls over, scrapes their knee or maybe gets in a fight. I don't and I'm sure most people wouldn't class a girl being tied up and whipped as 'a accident'.

The school response was to hide behind regulations and state that the girls parents were told of the incident according to school 'accident and first aid procedures'. But she said the procedures would be reviewed.

If you consider whipping to be a mere 'accident' I would say that need to be reviewed pretty damn quick!