Teacher showing photos to kids of victorian dead children - slightly disturbing

Love how you say because you have a degree you can teach day in day out. Good news is there are plenty of vacancies so you can go and plan your own lessons.

yet the one thing you won’t do is politely ask the teacher who would explain their reasoning and why they showed it.

there aren’t many photos of engines etc as photos were such a new technology. And also the photos haven’t survived.

the children see much more disturbing content on social media like the chub filter and Downs Syndrome filter on one of the social media channels.

Photography was one of the Victorian inventions, and death photography was very popular. But the photos are not scary, a bit spooky when you know it are dead people, but not scary.

Yes, i am aware of all this and one of my previous posts mentions images in coffins, ondeath-beds and biers - I haven't disputed this, and agree they exist and were a thing. I'd be a crap historian if I didn't know this. But that's different to most of the discourse around so-called 'death photography ' online, and up-thread, where people are claiming children and adults were posed as though alive and you can't tell in the pictures that they're dead. There's no contemporary evidence indicating this practice ever existed. And I stand by the fact that posture stands are too flimsy to take the weight of a dead body, and that such skilled photagraphers would have been advertising their skills.

Which begs the question, if you can't tell they're dead, what's the evidence that they're dead? Apart from some unknown saying so online?
There are groups for this on Facebook, claiming every sleeping baby is dead, and seeing signs of grief in the normal sombre expressions of most Victorian photography subjects.

Apart from online, the only places I've read about this practice are in modern novels. You don't find it mentioned in contemporary novels, with all their frequent depictions of death.
You also don't tend to find reputable historians lending credence to this theory....

When I was the same age, one of the teachers at our school had visited the Ganges, and took lots of photos. We were shown them in a school assembly on a big screen. People dump their dead in the Ganges river. We saw photos of bloated bodies, next to kids washing their faces and their parents washing clothing.

Totally agree with everything in this post.

Imagine being upset about this. 13-14 years are watching violent porn and all manner of violent stuff on the internet and you are concerned about dead Victorian children.

You’re bizarre.

The photos were completely out of context

You don't know the context, because you weren't in the lesson!

I know this Teacher and I know the kids

You just happen to know all the kids in your Year 9 child's History class do you? Catch yourself on, OP.

This thread is embarrassing to be honest. You're telling actual qualified Teachers on this thread that you know better than them but unless the Mother of all dripfeeds is coming and you are actually a secondary school History Teacher I'm afraid your confidence is misplaced.

You clearly just don't like your DC's History Teacher and are looking to find fault with her.

Nothing else?? Of course they are learning about other things too. Child mortality was a huge part of the industrial revolution. Kids worked and died

It’s fine. It’s also not up to you to tell the teacher how to teach.

Oof the arrogance here
Telling a teacher they don't know what they're on about because you'd merely studied the subject

Great teach them to be offended and stressed by real life
Well done

The arrogance in your post is quite something OP.

But these are the kinds of things students remember and a useful hook. It’s not your role to plan the teacher’s lesson and decide what is and isn’t relevant. I still have vivid memories of the ‘umbrella method’ of treating STIs in WW1 - but I also remember the causes of that war. So many schools now require bland PowerPoint teaching I’d be pleased if this was my child.

It's all part of the learning. I found it fascinating when I was at school too the Victorian photography I still have a bit of an obsession with. Yes you are being oversensitive. Your child isn't bothered so why are you ? Obviously it was all taught in context

I would have loved this at that age. Sounds like a teacher really trying to engage with teenagers.

And has, inadvertently through OP, sparked the interest of quite a few posters on mumsnet too it seems!

it’s also interesting how the Victorian fascination with death ventured into the fetishistic. Tuberculosis had a big influence on beauty ideals, with people purposefully making the effort to appear consumptive: being thin, delicate, and pale was seen as beautiful. This is also reflected in art and literature - Romanticism, the pre -Raphaelites, Keats, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley were all influenced by it. The ‘tortured artist’ myth dates back to this era. There’s also the religious aspect to it, with the ideas of suffering quietly and dying well.

You also have huge progress being made in sanitation and medicine at this time.

Victorian death photography really is a good introduction to a huge element of social history.

The photos were created to be seen by people of all ages and could be very interesting to young people today. I think it’s fine, and educational in several ways.

She did it because it’s interesting and engaging. I teach French and when we do a topic about Paris I show the kids pictures of the Catacombes. They love it.

We found a few of these in boxes of family photos after our parents died. It took us (siblings, aunts, uncles etc) a while to work out what they were. Yes, dead babies and children were dressed up and photographed for a memento "as if they were alive" at a time when photography was unusual and there wouldn't have been any family snaps to remember children by.

It seems a bit gruesome now but I think it is an extremely useful and relatable tool for children today to understand that cultural practices in the past (or elsewhere) are dependent on many details and shouldn't be judged too quickly.

You find it so disturbing that you can't sleep and yet you didn't even see it? You are going to have to be careful that you don't pass all this sort of stuff onto your child because they will end up with mental health issues.

On the back of this I talked to DD (13) to see if she knew about them and she didnt. Showed her some photos and she was interested, agreed that it was a bit macabre but wasnt at all creeped out or worried by it.

Even though I disagree with OP and think there's nothing wrong with teaching 13 -14 year olds like this (it's history, as I said, shouldn't just gloss over it or hide bits!) I must admit that I was thinking it was a bit grim to have photos of dead people.
Thinking about it more and reading posts on the thread though, as people have said there won't have been photos like we have nowadays, the only chance they may have got to get a pic was when their child was dead 🥲 💔
Truly fascinating really, I can see myself going down a Google rabbit hole later on the subject, the invention of the camera, the societal environments around it, the culture etc - which just mentions of boring buildings wouldn't have engaged me as much!
Well done that teacher 😁 Job done, getting people invested and interested lol

Exactly this. I loved history and had a lovely teacher. The Tudors were alive for me as was restoration English and later WW2. The Industrial Revolution however bored me to tears - there was so much focus on the big machinery, which is what OP repeatedly claims this teacher should be wowing a room full of early teens with. I’m sure there’s a few budding engineers who might appreciate it, but the holistic discussion of Victorian attitudes and industry around death on this thread has been utterly engaging and fascinating.

If we were more accepting of death as the Victorians were then there wouldn’t be so many issues with people struggling to get their minds around death when it inevitably happens to someone they love.

Victorian memento mori photography is beautiful. I have a life-long fascination of funerary rites and other things associated with death because I was fortunate enough not to be shielded as a child. I would perhaps consider what your own revulsion really means here.

100% this. It's a free for all when it comes to undermining teachers. Just open your mouth OP and have a conversation with the teacher - like a grown up.