Great Writer, But Lousy Timing…

In his speech entitled Set Our Children Free, to be broadcast on BBC One, Morpurgo, 67, will say that parents and teachers deserve more respect.

“If we are to make real progress in enriching the lives of children, and enhancing their education, we have to put the people who are responsible for their upbringing first – that is, parents and teachers,” he will say.

“How often I have come across a mother in book signing queue who tells me when I ask, what she does, that she is 'only a mother’. And how often do we hear that tired old jibe: 'If you can’t do it, teach it’? This, about what is surely one of the noblest professions.

One of the noblest professions, eh?

Maybe once. But not any more:

A schoolboy has been reprimanded for alleged racism after he called a white pupil named Brown a ‘chocolate brownie’.

Wha..?

Harrison had been called ‘sausage boy’ by a classmate making fun of his Austrian-derived surname, which is also an American word used for hot dog sausages.

The ten-year-old retorted: ‘Shut up, chocolate brownie’ only to be punished for making an apparent racist remark.

Oh, my good lord! These are the people Michael Morpurgo feels are deserving of respect?

Mother-of-two Clare Wiener has been told the incident is to be ‘noted’ in her son’s file and reported to the Lancashire school’s local education authority.

Idiots!

‘It's crazy. One boy taunted him by making his surname sound like a snack - and he responded by making the other boy's surname sound like a cake.

‘How can calling a white boy named Brown a chocolate brownie be racist?

‘Harrison was told the word brownie is a racist word. But it's the name of a cake you can buy in any coffee shop.’

And now this lady has blown the whistle on the insanity that reigns at schools staffed with these esteemed professionals? Is there a cringing apology forthcoming?

Well, what do you think?

Thorp Primary School’s Headmaster Stuart Bennett said it would be ‘inappropriate to comment about individual cases’.

So no, Michael, I don’t think I’ll be respecting these people.

Not until one of them stands up in front of all their fellow box-ticking, keep-their-head-down, go-along-to-get-along-and-don’t-make-waves colleagues, and says ‘This is wrong, and we are demeaning the profession we claim to be proud to belong to as long as we keep tolerating it!’

That teacher, I’ll respect.