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

If she's doing social history then mortuary photography is an interesting introduction into the Victorian view of death. Quite pertinent to the Industrial Revolution, and the Victorian period when the infant mortality rate in all families was high - and this is the case well into the twentieth century. My mother had a brother who died of TB and a cousin who died at 6, I had a cousin die in infancy and my mother-in-law kept the mortuary picture of her older brother, dead a 4 from pneumonia, in her bedroom and this is the 2010s because he died c. 1928. A good reminder of how vaccination and regulated water supplies (and cheaper food including cheap white bread) have increased child health and longevity and so very pertinent to the study of the Industrial Revolution - one good invention was sewers. Daresay she will explain how a bessemer converter works at some point, too.

OP won't be back now I wager

She's had her ego boosted by those who agreed and enjoyed her little anti-teacher rant

She won't come and answer how she knows exactly what happened in the lesson (which was no doubt much more than these photos but the photos are what her DC remembers) or what other "questionable" things the teacher has done

She also changed her story from being "disturbed" by the photos to disagreeing with the lesson content, presumably when most posters pointed out that the photos weren't particularly disturbing or inappropriate for the age

I disagree with the OP but have enjoyed this thread, I've found it really interesting. I feel like I've learnt a lot, especially about Victorian post-mortem photography (and misconceptions about it), something I've always found fascinating. Useful to hear about ways of telling a story in a way that genuinely engages young people too!

Okay so, I cross posted with your apology.

It’s a hard one to understand, it’s okay. When my own MIL found out, she was horrified and was really nasty about it. But it helped me, just to do one normal thing that people take for granted, and I am sure that some parents of older babies would find taking them for a walk one last time would be somewhat healing too, while others wouldn’t contemplate it. We all grieve differently, and unless you have had a still birth or have lost a child, you (thankfully) don’t have to go to these places in your mind.

@Friendlynortherner nineteenth century death photography definitely exists - and in America at the time, too - even though a lot of the images that are claimed on the internet to be postmortem photography aren’t actually of dead people. But it does exist, usually where it’s obvious that the person/child is deceased. In America it was more usual to photograph a deceased child in the coffin, rather than posed on a couch as if sleeping.

There is also an analogous tradition of the deathbed portrait, often completed post mortem, or even the death mask, dating back before the advent of photography (for example in Van Dyck’s portrait of Venetia, Lady Digby).

I said I was sorry. I thought this was all made up and I found it macabre. I am really sorry for having misunderstood and hurt people's feelings.

I'd have been fascinated by something like that at that age!
13/14 is a really hard age group to interest, and if your teenager had enough thoughts about it to mention it when they got home, I'd say it worked!!

I really wish there was a ‘react’ button to show how objectionable you find a remark!😢

I'm so sorry for your loss. I thought the person was shitstirring tbh. I have never heard about such a thing and I didn't think that it had happened. For a stillborn baby I can understand. I'm so sorry.

Don’t think it’s a big deal. They are old enough to see these pictures. Social history is often more interesting and thought provoking. They will probably remember it more than a picture of a bridge.

Fucks sake. My hospital suggested I take my stillborn baby for a walk in one of the prams they had, for that purpose, around the hospital grounds.

I can see how they would do this with toddlers too.

This I do not believe. Where did she go, to Aldi?

Yes, we do.

The teachers follow a curriculum. They don't choose what to show/ teach

Is it more disturbing to show school students photographs of dead Victorian children , photos that their parents have chosen to have taken and have displayed with love as a memorial to their child ( often it would be one of very few photos they ever had taken of their child), or more disturbing to show them photographs taken in Nazi death camps of people who have been deliberately imprisoned ,abused and starved? Asking for a friend.

"It really isn't a good idea to try to engage children with gruesome stuff."

But those photos aren't gruesome.

Yes, and those death photos usually just look like sleeping children. I'm presuming they're not covered in blood and gore. I don't see the problem.

I would find photos of people much more interesting than photos of objects.

I think you are over-reacting. It’s on Horrible Histories. Kids are fascinating by guts and gore.

I think this is fine, as long as the teacher says what is about to appear before it does.

Are you a teacher?

Wait till they teach them about the Holocaust. Or any of the more modern genocides.

You’re being ridiculous.

This is interesting, thanks!

Sometimes a lesson goes in a different way than you planned because of a question from a pupil that the class show interest in. As a teacher, you respond in the moment because you do have the background knowledge to explain the answer. The lesson you originally planned gets shifted into the next slot.

I would imagine a pupil asked about a photograph of the dead Pope and the teacher linked it to the period of time they were studying. This is the ‘art’ of teaching. It’s not just lecturing from the front.

I remember feeling traumatised when a teacher taught us about pitch capping, during the suppression of the Irish rebellion in 1798.

Barbaric times.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius I agree it is inappropriate.