Watch the moment Jacob Rees-Mogg is left staggered as a 12-year-old and his father speak to him on GB News about how he felt teachers were "bullying" him in a free speech row.Andrey, a Year 7 pupil, was called out in front of his Latin class after telling a joke taken from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.The Roald Dahl novel, which is a sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is available to pupils through the school library.Andrey repeated the joke, originally written by Dahl, in front of a number of classmates, saying: “Why is it difficult to make telephone calls in China? Because there are so many Wings and so many Wongs, you might Wing the Wong number.”
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00:00So it was an average Latin lesson and I was whispering to my friend and I said do you want to hear a joke and I exclaimed the joke and after class the teacher obviously heard me, I was held back and the head of classics came and they both badgered me and bullied me into thinking and saying do you know why the joke is racist?
00:24But I said that I don't know why the joke is racist but they kept on badgering and bullying me and made me a victim.
00:32And you had no intention of telling a racist, Jake you were just repeating something from a Raoul Dahl story.
00:37Yes, this one right here.
00:39So which one is that? Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator which I remember reading, not just reading to myself but reading to my children. It's a really good book, it's a gripping story and it was in the school library.
00:51It was in the school library and I think quite a lot of other people have drawn it so other people have read it.
00:58And it's a well read popular book. Do you think, did your school masters know where this book had come from, where the joke had come from?
01:06No, I don't think they knew but yeah I don't think they knew.
01:12And then what happened? So they had a go at you, they criticised you, they tried to persuade you this was a racist joke and then why did you get given the detention? Was that for telling the joke?
01:22That was for telling the joke and it was being racist which it wasn't. But I didn't attend the detention until they explained to me why the joke was racist. So in the end I didn't have to attend the lunch time detention.
01:37Because they never explained. OK, they didn't explain but it's actually quite hard to see why it is racist. It's a word play on Chinese names.
01:46In fact I'm not sure there are many people in China called Wing as it happens. I mean there may be but it seems a very odd, it's as if they were looking for trouble.
01:56Do you find at your school that people are looking for this type of disciplinary activity to really say that things that are ordinary conversation are racist, are they looking for equalities issues?
02:09Well, I could see that they kind of are but they're kind of not too. Other people, other dads in the school, also their sons have been bullied and badgered but they're just too scared to speak up and stand and fight against them.
02:26I don't know if they're trying to fight against them.
02:29I'm sorry. There may be no one more on social media. You're an old man that you have a bad person.
02:31I don't know if they want to.
02:32I think they don't have to say they're�� against them.
02:33I don't know that people are too scared of that they might be your own.
02:35But I don't know if they need to sit or lie to speak up against them.
02:36I don't know if it's too scared before they're known.
02:41So here's the stuff that you can see against them.
02:43So here's the thing.