The brainlessness of an English Tutor. Fuming

@viques you don't think fictional stories are a good way of portraying historical events to children?

We’re never going to know what the book was, are we?

I don't know why you are all shocked it was deleted. There was no need for that level of detail and I still feel like I need to rinse my brain in soap half an hour after reading it. Just totally unnecessary thing to drop it a thread. You could have easily made your point without being so grimly graphic

We need the book title to know if you're being a ninny or not

Another one wanting to know what the book is!

Maybe your daughter has conveyed a small part of the teacher's really lovely conversation with her, allaying her anxiety and calming her response to this book, and she has ended with the summary, "It's just words." And it may have been said extremely kindly because she may have given the teacher the impression - rightly or wrongly - that she was disappointed in herself for leaving a book unread. So she's tried to minimise it because all books, really, are words in a different order to convey emotion. She just wasn't ready for that particular emotion at this particular time in her life.

You are being extremely unreasonable. Kids never give the true and full account. Maybe because it's ceased to matter to them and here you are....

Learning to cope with feeling uncomfortable is one of the key reasons to read. We all need to feel uncomfortable with the way of the world at some point. Age 12 is the ‘put your head above the parapet and look around you’ stage for the large majority of children.

I wrote a reply with an example from a book, but it got deleted, so apparently it was too bad to even say on the internet in a forum of adults, let alone in a book where children might read it.

So the short version is, yes books have age ratings.

Suggest you read the book along with her and discuss & support her through the uncomfortable parts. Open dialogue.

This is parenting, supporting your child with learning how to cope in this big unpredictable world.

Poor daughter. Poor teachers. No wonder teachers are leaving in droves.

Perhaps she had read that the Centre For Holocaust Education has warned [PDF] that this book "could potentially do more harm than good"?

I think the way you've referred to the teacher on the back of a second hand handmedown conversation is horrid.

More reasonably, I can well see how a teacher might say this in a well meaning sense and for this to be misinterpreted/taken out of context. Literature can be powerful and inhabit our thoughts and dreams. Sometimes you need someone to tell you “it’s just words”, to remind you that fiction might be frighteningly thought provoking, but it is still fiction… especially when you’re 12.

Wish my parents had intevened when I had to read Shakespeare. Bloody man wasn't happy to just use existing words, he even made up his own to confuse me even more.😅

You can say cunt.
What is it then?

(Fuck Boris, I want Nigel)

My money is on either “To Kill a Mockingbird “ or “”Of Mice and Men”.
The first one is meant to make you uncomfortable. The second is a great story with a very problematic repetition of the N word. I have never known a teacher actually read that word aloud but it’s there many times. Most preface reading it with a discussion of the word and why it was fine a hundred years ago but absolutely unacceptable now.
could also be a Heartstopper book if OP has certain views, I suppose.

Absolute tosh 👍🏻

Next.

Also would like to know what the book is.
I think it's important to read books from different periods in time, even if they make us uncomfortable. You don't have to agree with the views in the book; there is education in looking at how the world has moved forward or changed. Your reaction is over the top.

Need to know the book and the context. Were the class told to select a book each from the libabry etc? as it doesn't sound like a book the whole class are reading if she can simply choose another? FYI books do have age ratings. My oldest dc, when 6, came off the school library bus with a manga style comic that staff let her pick ( her thinking it was a comic book) and stamped for her. It stated 14+ on the cover but no staff noticed. It was quite inappropriate and I was surpised it was considered acceptable as a school library book at all, even for 14+.

Too many variables. Was it a book DD picked up in the library of her own will, decided to do a report on it and then decided it was too intense or was it a set text by the teacher?

Also... Was it said as "it's just words 🙄" or "it's just words Mary, please don't get swept up in it but if it is too distressing then..." because there's a huge difference between the two.

Either way I wouldn't email the tutor to tell her she's a cunt, I'd maybe get down to the reasons why DD is uncomfortable and go from there.

I have seen "14+" and/or "Warning: Mature Content" on the back of some YA novels.

I am not "that Mom"

Hate to break it to ya …

Thank you, I was just about to make the same point.

It's probably Of Mice and Men

It has a few words considered offensive these days

It's still taught in schools but DC can get offended by some words used

Obviously they know those words were used back then but are now never used due to being highly offensive

Well nobody, but I would prefer that when my child is taught history they are not presented with a fictional and inaccurate representation of something so terrible as death camps and told it is history.

It’s only words