Assistant Principal Calls 9-Year-Old Racial Slur To 'Teach Him A Lesson'

Parents outraged after learning that the assistant principal at Willard Elementary School in Sanford, Maine called their 9-year-old biracial child a racial slur

The Assistant Principal at an elementary school in Sanford, Maine called a 9-year-old boy the n-word, in what she claims was an attempt to teach him a lesson about bullying. The boy’s parents Jessica Gouin and Neil Jarett told ABC News affiliate WMTV that their son, who is biracial, came home from school and said that the assistant principal had called him the abhorrent racial slur.

The boy was sent to the assistant principal’s office for bullying another student, so the assistant principal claimed that she used the term to teach him a lesson and reportedly used the phrase, “If I called you n***** how would you feel?”

The boy’s father said that the assistant principal at Willard Elementary School tried to apologize for what she had done.

“She said yes I know I’m wrong I did call your son a n*****, and I wasn’t thinking about the consequences at the time or what it would do to your child,” the boy’s father recalled her saying.

The assistant principal failed to recognize that teaching someone a lesson never has to involve using a racial slur against a child. Lesson or not, an educator called a biracial child the n-word. Full stop. We also can’t imagine that any verbal bullying a fourth-grader might throw at his peer would be as racially loaded as the word the assistant principal hurled at the boy.

As for the consequences for the assistant principal, the Sanford Superintendent Matthew Nelson said that she is going to receive “additional training,” and claimed that she was only trying to show the boy that words can hurt.

“We’re trying to make an example and we failed in terms of being able to do that, but there was no malice intended,” Nelson told WMTV.

The internet thinks that “additional training” is a rather light sentence for the assistant principal’s offense.

The boy’s parents aren’t taking that explanation lightly. There are words that can hurt, and then there are racial slurs.

“There’s no way that would cross her mind if she wasn’t really looking at him that way,” the dad said. “They’re just going to brush off and keep it that way, and maybe a couple years down the line it’s going to be the same thing. It may not be my kid but someone else’s kid.”

The boy’s mother said that her son doesn’t want to go back to school now.

“He’s going to remember this for the rest of his life, ” she said. “His principal called him this at school.”