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

I’m chiming in here without reading the thread
Yeah it shows 🙄

The victorians were fascinating but most Victorian post mortem photography is either fake or not actually post mortem at all.

The ones where the people are stood up and posed for example are not dead. They only took photos of people lying down

Both of my children came home mortified by Jesus being on the cross at 4. Maybe it’s how it’s taught but at secondary school they also dissect pigs hearts so I think they can handle it.

It may well be the Industrial Revolution that was the primary subject but there’s cross over with various interesting other nuggets of Victorian social history and it’s up to the teacher how they want to bring their lessons alive. 13-14 is the perfect age to get ‘blindsided’ by fascinating side subjects like this. I know I loved it when teachers went a little rogue during lessons. They’re professionals in a difficult job, just relax and trust they know what holds kids attentions.

Year 9 kids have seen a lot worse. I’m a teacher myself though and probably wouldn’t choose to do this unless it had real relevance to the lesson!

I'm 42. Our history textbooks included photos of KKK lynchings, and dead bodies piled up in concentration camps.

So the Victorian photos I would say are lower down on the disturbing scale. Plus tying it in with the industrial revolution: photos being new and expensive technology meant that the average Victorian family didn't have loads of pics like we do - this was often the only family photo they purchased. Presumably having a photo of their loved one helped them with the grieving process as they didn't have the distressing experience of forgetting their face.

I also think that we are perhaps too far removed from death in our society today (England/British) and that other cultures that see death as part of life may be healthier (e.g. wakes), so perhaps the Victorians weren't wrong.

Victorian death pictures are part of history and I find them fascinating rather than traumatic. My son when he was in year 8 last year was taught about FGM, he fainted in class as he doesn't do well with things that are graphic. He can play computer games that involve killing people because it's not real but the FGM is. He still won't talk about it.

At that age, our teachers chose content full of violence and sex whenever they could, because we were interested, so paid attention! Teens tend to be fascinated by life and death, sex and gore, and the whys of everything, throughout the ages.

You sound overly protective. Your 13-14 year old DC only has a handful of years left at home - are you getting them ready to be independent and off into the world at 18?

I’m chiming in here without reading the thread. Definitely complain to the teacher. It’s happening all over schools now where they will will push traumatic things onto kids. I noticed about 4 or 5 instances of inappropriate subject matter or inappropriate teacher sharing of their personal life before speaking up eventually, when a reading book for 14/15 year olds had a disturbing sexual assault in it - which confusingly was the one segment the teacher chose to read out in class despite her agreeing with me later that it was inappropriate.
This was across a variety of different teachers and 2 different schools so it’s definitely happening everywhere. Schools now are WEIRD. If it’s not them showing kids awful photos it’s them pushing the trans agenda or pretending they can’t do anything about your child being bullied into mental health issues

We did and a brain in a glass case.

@whyiwonderwhy i also studied this period of British history at school and degree level. i even come from the Black Country where it all began. But I think you’re unusual in finding the engineering side of it fascinating. Personally I found that dull af and concentrated on social history aspects. At school I would have loved to see these pictures as a way of engaging with the social history of the time.

We watched videos of people in concentration camps. There was severely underweight carrying the dead to mass graves. Would have been traumatising for the people in the video having to do it knowing that will soon be them. I wouldn't say it was traumatising for us heartbreaking yes but it happened it's part of history. I felt blessed we don't have to live through that when other countries still do.

We also had picked foetuses ( dating back to the Victorian age when my school was founded) on the shelves in the Science labs. No one was particularly shocked at the time!

This is the age group who will be going on to learn about the World Wars and the Holocaust before long... There will be (rightly) some incredibly upsetting photos shown then.

I do agree OP that it isn't what I'd think to discuss when covering the IR and Victorians so I'm intrigued as to how it was justified and framed to the kids. The incredible inventions and also the horrors of the period (the poverty, disease etc) would make more obvious sense if trying to convey a historical narrative and trying to stimulate debate. That said, different ways of thinking about death over time is an interesting topic in its own right and would have intrigued me as a kid, especially if linked to a wider thread about how treatment of the dead has differed across time and culture.

Kids will learn about and see so much worse in their history lessons.

It's the first (possibly second) week of the term. So probably started with social/ cultural aspects of the period before moving onto the scientific/ economic/ political changes. Re-assess at half term, and if all they've learned about is dead babies, then there would be a concern.

Have you heard of the Horrible Histories books? Teachers probably use this stuff to engage kids with the topic in general. I didn’t know about this aspect of Victorian history until I read it on here and it’s really interesting!

Dumbdog - 25-ish years ago, a senior boarding school? Or 20-ish years ago, a prep school?

When I was at school we saw photos of people with radiation burns after Hiroshima etc

I also remember those horrific public information films from the 80s which were on TV and terrified the life out of me and I had nightmares about them for months afterwards - does anyone else remember them? they were nightmarish

Think you’re being quite precious. We learnt about the holocaust at 15/16 and some of those photos are truly harrowing

I can see how this would be highly triggering to children who had lost a sibling or parent or other close family member. There should have been a letter home to give a heads up so that it could have been discussed ahead of the lesson or the option to miss it. To be confronted with the images of dead children or parents would have been horrific to any child who had been through that trauma and the teacher would likely have had no idea as it can happen at any age and though nowadays should possibly be included in paperwork (you’d think) it isn’t stamped to the child’s forehead. At this age thankfully many children haven’t experienced that yet but it does happen and the teacher should not have assumed everyone in the class would have been ok with this. There’s also the matter of sick and dying family members who again may not be on the teacher’s radar - you’d hope and expect they would but in secondary school there are. A lot of pupils with multiple teachers so as it would be difficult to be up to date across the board, surely teachers should be wise to err on the side of caution on sensitive subjects. Children can’t be sheltered from the world, it’s true, but there’s a difference between talking about a sensitive topic that could potentially be damaging to a child’s MH and showing them bloody photographs with no prior warning and presumably discussing them during and afterwards. Poor kids.

At that age however, I think showing them pictures of dead bodies in any circumstance would be inappropriate - whether that be soldiers, Holocaust victims, drug addicts or those involved in accidents without speaking to parents/carers first to ensure it doesn’t do the child more harm than good. Having a blanket assumption that these kids would be in the minority and therefore not worth bothering about is pretty shitty and the opposite of a policy which was a government initiative and neon-lit in all schools when I was a student and then teaching - that ‘EVERY CHILD MATTERS’.

This thread shows how far we are removed from death in the UK. Especially when that death is of a baby or child.

Photographs are still taken of little ones after death, including very beautifully and sensitively taken family photographs. They are sadly sometimes the only photographs the family will have of their baby/child not obscured by the wires and tubes that were trying to keep them alive.

I’m delighted for each and everyone of you who has been given the good fortune not to have to grieve for a child. But maybe just think about how much more painful grief would be if you had nothing to remember their precious little faces by. Those pictures you consider weirdly disturbing, tell the tale of someone’s deepest love and deepest pain, captured in a moment. If only they could have had more!

Please try to get a grip on your reaction before your children become aware of it. If they grow up to be bereaved parents (like many of us are) They will need to freedom to grieve without judgement.

How do you know the subject was the Industrial Revolution? Perhaps it was one of a series of lessons and the teacher wanted to show the differing attitudes to children in Victorian times. I bet it got the class's attention. It won’t have done them any harm.

Oh dear, you’d have been furious at my DD teacher. She let them watch “The others” in class once. Many dead Victorian photos featured.
I wasn’t mad, I was her age when I watched it…. And loved it.

So were the kids upset and traumatised by it, or fascinated and engaged by it? I think it matters as the teacher has either misjudged the class and upset them and needs told, or has got them interested talking about history.

I show worse things as an English teacher and ask students how they feel about the pictures I show them (it links in to a poem that criticises the public about what goes on in other countries and war etc) and they’re very desensitised to it all.

You are seriously over-reacting.
Personally, I'd have no issues with it at all if they were my kids.