Headteacher removed word ‘sinister’ from Southport killer Axel Rudakubana’s education plan after mental health workers accused her of racially profiling ‘a black boy with a knife’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15221805/Headteacher-sinister-Southport-killer-Axel-Rudakubanas-racially-profiling.html?
by JB_UK
27 comments
Anyone carrying a knife should be considered problematic, sinister perfectly acceptable there
Some people really do get an actual thrill of moral superiority by accusing others of racism with little basis.
Sounds like those mental health workers should be held to account for failing to do their job properly.
Maybe prison time or large fines for those most closely linked to the perpetrator and shown to fail in their responsibility and preventing these kinds of attacks?
Seems like the only people talking about his race were the mental health workers, not the headteacher. So, will they be facing consequences? Failures of this level shouldn’t be acceptable.
> Axel Rudakubana was enrolled at The Acorns School, in Ormskirk, Lancashire, aged 13, after being expelled from mainstream education for taking a knife into classes.
> Headteacher Joanne Hodson told the public inquiry investigating his crimes that, from his first day, she realised the teenager was ‘very high risk’.
> In an email to all her staff, she said Rudakubana needed to be regularly searched for knives because he hadn’t displayed any emotion or ‘remorse’ and was ‘very high risk’.
> However later, Ms Hodson said, she agreed to remove the word ‘sinister’ and comments referring to Rudakubana as ‘cold and calculating’ from an education plan after mental health workers accused her of racially profiling ‘a black boy with a knife’.
> She said the criticism ‘shut her up’ and ‘closed her down professionally’.
> Ms Hodson described a ‘memorable’ first meeting when she asked Rudakubana why he had taken a knife into his previous comprehensive.
> ‘He looked me in the eyes and said ‘to use it’,’ she said. ‘This is the only time in my career that a pupil has said this to me or behaved in a manner so devoid of any remorse.’
Basically it seems like the guy had a very clear mental health disorder and should have probably have been in some kind of controlled institution but the impetus for action was blocked by the naivety of professionals, in being able to see the risk, in their general attitude towards control or incarceration, and in being able to judge the individual regardless of his racial background or identity group. The professionals who operated without those ideological blinkers were shut down for not operating within the accepted ideological structures.
That operates alongside the money saving ideology of the state, given how many of these institutions were shut down with no adequate replacement. It’s possible the adequate pathway to protect the public did not exist.
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How many other kids have brought knifes to school but it’s been ignored because it’s racial profiling
I read stupid things at work day in day out because people are morons, and yet this might be the stupidest thing I read today.
The moral superiority is completely detatched from reality.
Idk calling a child “sinister” doesn’t seem helpful. That doesn’t mean you can’t deal with them if you really feel they are concerning without basically calling him evil. I mean at that point they didn’t know he would do what he did and unfortunately many kids have been caught carrying knives without going on to do what he did.
How can they conflate a possibly criminal profile with a racial one? Sounds like the mental health workers are the possibly rascist ones. The HT recalls a chilling encounter with the student and the word “sinister” is what they concentrate on? How is this not the classic “making a bad situation worse?
> However later, Ms Hodson said, she agreed to remove the word ‘sinister’ and comments referring to Rudakubana as ‘cold and calculating’ from an education plan after mental health workers accused her of racially profiling ‘a black boy with a knife’.
Yikes. Every time something like this happens there’s always a long list of people who had a chance to make a difference but didn’t, or worse, prevented others from taking necessary steps to avert disaster.
I think we truly need to learn lessons from this. We talk about this child killer and the signs that he posed a danger to society, even in prison he’s proved he’s prone to violence
He should have been locked in a mental institution. He was both enabled and emboldened to do whatever he wanted.
The boy carried knives, that’s not profiling that’s fact and we can’t escape that
The troubling thought is that there may be many more cases like this. Even one case like this is infinitely too many.
It may not have been racist but it wasn’t very pedagogical either. I’m sure there were better ways of raising concerns
Do other people also get a momentary pang of joy when the source turns out to be what they thought it would be from the headline alone?
Typical quibbling from the Daily Mail over whatever petty minutia it thinks it can twist into evidence of Racism Against White People.
Teachers absolutely should not be labelling children “sinister” in schools, as a rule – this is entirely right and there are very good, evidence-based reasons for it (re: this kind of labelling creating behavioural problems *where none existed before -* this is *extremely* well-established, to the point where it’s a basic tenet to anyone who knows shit about teaching.
This is an exceptional situation. The act of violence this guy committed would not have been prevented by harsher language from his teachers. And teachers being harsher and more critical with black boys won’t stop crimes from being committed. (See above – the opposite tends to happen.)
This is standard Daily Mail ‘logic’: “We found one absolute fucking wrong-un in this particular group of Undesirables and therefore demand all of them be pre-emptively treated like absolute shit, every minute of every day. Clearly if we treat every single member of their group as an absolute fucking wrong’un in waiting, it’ll fix the problem. It’s genius!!!”
Only, it’s bollocks. He didn’t kill those kids because his school was too hippie fucking dippie, and it’s dismally fucking stupid to even suggest it.
Am I alone in thinking this is pretty insignificant, and had little impact on his education or life? Seems like since the whole Islamic extremist angle turned out to be bollocks they’re trying a different culture war narrative, and the commenters here have fallen for it hook line and sinker
It doesn’t matter if he’s pink with yellow spots, if he brings a knife to school he should remain in isolation.
seems like they’re baiting the hook with a red herring. designed for outrage and clicks.
i doubt the answer to “how did this horrific thing happen?” will be that someone wasn’t allowed to use a vague, subjective, unhelpful word in one of their emails.
distraction.
Take a step back from the Mail headline here, does it really matter either way if a word was altered in an education plan, I do kind of think labelling someone as “sinister” isn’t exactly a positive thing, even if it turned out he did what he did.
Having read the article, there’s no mention of the mental health workers accusation beyond the headline and opening paragraph. We get no details on it.
i would have caution that the Daily Mail is doing Daily Mail things here and that we’re not getting the full story.
I think we are looking with hindsight.
Boys brought knives into my school, and were excluded for it. It was because they were feeling afraid, or had some reason for arming themselves. Or they felt vulnerable and wished to feel tough. Hence why they got caught- they told classmates.
As a teacher, even with the most violent of pupils, there are certain words you don’t use. The suspect here was a 13 year old boy who hadn’t been a violent child prior. Such a shift at this time would be a cause for concern, and for mental health referrals. Words such as sinister don’t do much to actually highlight the real problems or go ways to solve them. They also just aren’t the objective, fact-finding terms required in an official report.
I have had to right À statement after being attacked by a pupil at À PRU. I had to simply stick to what I could see and experience, not how I felt about the child. I could say “they were angry” but not “they looked evil.”
Looking back, of course we see the multiple murderer as sinister. But back then, he was a 13 year old boy possibly going through something.
ANYONE with a knife is sinister. What is wrong with some people? Who are they trying to impress?
The bleeding hearts strike again. You would see these people working on the IMB at prisons. All of them white and middle class.
Teacher: “Why did you bring a knife in?”
Pupil “To use it”
Teacher: “Well that’s sinister and worrying”
Mental Health Workers: OI OI OI Racist!
Ok so an objecting to racial profiling was miss used and got in the way of public safety. Is this just a single example or part of a wide spread problem of bad priorities in social justice? Or is it not that bad.
Yes, he savagely massacred several innocent children, but at least we didn’t stereotype or say bad things about him, so, you know. Every cloud.
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