No. Just, No.

Back in the dim days when plesiosaurs swam the seas and MTV played music videos, they had promo spots for different things, some of them by comedian Denis Leary. In one of them, he argued against racism, saying something like, "Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list."

Apparently some of the folks in London could do with a refresher rant from Mr. Leary, as a racism reporting act in England has required teachers to report "racial incidents or racial abuse" from children as young as 3. Although I suppose it's possible for the racism gland or whatever to become active between the ages of two and three, I am inclined more towards the idea that three-year-olds often use words the meaning of which they do not know. Some of those words, which they hear someone say someplace because they are little tape recorders with feet, might be racial epithets that the big people shouldn't say whether there are three-year-olds present or not, but which hardly merit hanging a scarlet "R" on a preschooler who repeats them without understanding them.

My parents are probably not, by today's standards, very enlightened racially, although compared with the generation that preceded them, they do represent progress. But racial epithets of any kind, especially the so-called "N-word," earned the same kind of attention that the usual suspect four-letter words earned, and it was not pleasant. We were not labeled racists nor required to attend diversity training, but we learned that racial labels were not to be uttered by folks who wanted to behave properly. In time, I believe, we came to understand reasons not to use those words that had nothing to do with the taste of soap or the effect of swift contact of parental palms to the seat of knowledge. And except for a brief time as a teen when I was trying out which boundaries I wanted to transgress, I have not been a user of those words. I, like everyone else, will make a mistake and sometimes prejudge someone according to racial or ethnic stereotypes, but I always try to correct myself when I've done it and not repeat the mistake.

Maybe my folks picked one of the right ways to bring up kids so they harbor as little racism as possible and maybe they didn't. I don't doubt that some other ways probably produced people who do better on this than I do. But I feel certain that any system that requires teachers to report racist language uttered by three-year-olds to local authorities can safely be called one of the wrong ways to do so.