The 1996 movie based on Roald Dahl’s classic book, Matilda, was a favourite in our home. We first showed it to them when my children were about 5 or 6 years old.
Back then, my children were young enough to be mesmerized by Matilda’s mischievousness, brilliance and, of course, her powers.
They were so young then, just starting school themselves. Because of their vivid imaginations, we were careful to contextualize some of the scenes in the movie.
I laugh now thinking of having to explain the impossibility of some of what we saw.
For example, when Mrs. Trunchbull humiliated little Bruce into eating an enormous cake as punishment. We assured our children this could never happen in real life.
In one scene, the vile principal snarled children and then swung a little girl by her pigtails. Mrs. Trunchbull was so needless hateful that the kids needed some reassurance that teachers would never be that mean.
I’ll be honest, I thought that my kids might be most worried about the Chokey.
In the movie, the chokey is a very small closet. A tiny room not large enough to sit down in. Children were sentenced to the Chokey as punishment. The chokey’s interior walls were filled with rusty, jagged spikes. Once the door of the Chokey slammed shut, these spikes threatened to impale any captive silly enough to slump.
I needn’t have worried, it turned out that seeing Matilda locked in the chokey was the least concerning to them. Even their imaginative little minds seemed to dismiss the Chokey as an absolute impossibility.
Who would lock a child in a closet? They shook their little heads and laughed.
No educator could possibly believe that a Chokey would be ok.
We might have been too quick to dismiss the idea of a Chokey out-of-hand. It turns the TDSB is working to prove my children wrong.
TDSB teachers accused of anti-Black racism and locking child in a closet
If we are to believe the latest allegations out of the Toronto District School board (and make no mistake, I do believe them) it seems teachers at an elementary school resorted to the use of a modern-day Chokey.
Disturbing allegations are currently facing three Toronto educators. These folks are currently on ‘home assignment’ and under investigation after a mother alleges that her six-year-old Black child was called disruptive and locked in a small, closet-sized room for 30 minutes as punishment.
It’s missing the spikes and rust, but like, tf?
I don’t know who needs to hear this but: the Chokey has no place in our schools! We should not lock young children in tiny rooms as punishment. They don’t learn anything, it’s not safe.
Just No.
My blood boils and my heart is sick to think of a 6-year-old spending any time locked in this room.
I don’t know who needs to hear this but, the ‘Chokey’ has no place in our schools.
Principal disputes the child’s story.
To be “fair”, the school’s principal disputes the claim. Of course they do
According to news reports, the school leader says that the desk was pulled out of the room. They also say the child wasn’t locked in.
Listen. I don’t know what happened. And as a parent, advocate and thinking person, I have too many questions about this to even know where to start.
But, I know this much is true –
The fact that you have to clarify whether a 6-year-old child was locked in a tiny room versus isolated just outside of it, is a problem.
I fail to understand what kind of “disruptive” act led this 6-year-old to the principal’s office in the first place. Because if the child was that disruptive – how could they be left alone, unsupervised for any length of time?
Anti-Black racism is routinely dismissed until it reaches a boiling point
While reports indicate that other parents at the school support a full investigation, many suggest anti-Black racism can’t be at play because the teacher is racialized.
But this dismisses the fact that even before this latest incident, this child was so traumatized by run-ins at the school his parents felt they had to tape-record his treatment.
Parents of Black children, an advocacy group helping to ensure justice for this family, reports that in those recordings the child can be heard being called “stupid” by an educator. The child, the only Black boy in his class was also made to sit in a graffiti covered desk in isolation in their classroom.
While this allegation is under investigation, what we cannot do is deny the experience of this family. This type of treatment seems to disproportionately target Black children and is rooted in pervasive anti-Black racism.
Too often the microaggressions that plague our children’s experience at school are dismissed and taken too lightly. I have been there, experienced the gaslighting, been told I’m “making it about race”. I admit my lived experience makes me bias towards belief, but this trauma response this tells me all I need to know. – I know what it is to not be heard by a system that doesn’t want to hear.
Let’s be real. If schools didn’t keep treating our children as disposable, it wouldn’t be so easy to believe something like this is entirely possible. Taken within the context of countless incidents of normalized anti-black racism within our schools, this incident is entirely possible.
We have elementary teachers out here exploring the N-word pronunciation.
Educators calling the police on 4-year-old Black kindergartners.
Incidences of high school teachers wearing blackface.
Teachers taping children to their desks and leaving them isolated.
Parent alleges ongoing anti-Black racism in school
I have yet to get a firm sense that schools are held to account. I’ll go a step further, educators are getting away with harming racialized children far too often. If I treated a colleague at work (or anywhere…), the way Black children are treated in schools I’d be fired. Or charged. Or both. Educators who treat children like this should no longer be educators.
At its heart, this incident is another case of Black parents’ long struggle to have their voices heard. We continue to beg to have incidents of anti-Black racism taken seriously in our schools.
Reaching this boiling point is what happens when microaggressions, bias and second-degree racism within the school is ignored and allowed to fester. When there is no accountability and no one within the school is willing or able to challenge bad actors.
Black parents’ work to have our children’s experiences validated within the system is endless. Educators across this province fail to take complaints seriously and therefore fail to protect racialized students from harm.
Thankfully we have organizations like Parents of Black Children to help drive accountability, but I truly hate that we need them. Had this parent’s concerns been taken seriously at any point, perhaps we could have avoided reaching such a crisis.
My naïve hope is that we see more accountability and more good teachers are empowered to step up. Just one educator listening to this parent or child’s concerns could have helped to avoid some of this family’s suffering.
The province, unions and educators need to treat anti-Black racism in schools as the crisis it is
Parents of Black children continue their advocacy work and are lobbying the government for a Provincial strategy. They are demanding the government legislatively combat the anti-Black racism that is a public health crisis in our schools. Teacher unions need to actively support this fight. Defending teachers who commit racist acts makes unions complicit in anti-Black racism.
Hearing what this family has experienced is why I stay in solidarity with Black parents who are navigating the most at their schools. I stand with parents forced into advocacy and those working to make this system a better, equitable space for our children.
I will keep watch on the story of this modern-day Chokey and wait to see the outcomes of the investigation and POBC’s advocacy.
In Solidarity.
