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

I had a Latin teacher who sounds very similar to you and your husband. She would have us out on the lawn, marching and reacting to commands. I adored her, and as a result, the subject. I regret not taking classics further than GCSE.

Re the OP, it sounds exactly like the kind of interesting lesson that would have piqued my interest about the Victorians.

I took my (younger) kids to an industrial museum a few weeks ago and whilst I found it fascinating, they were bored - except when the demonstration of the machines talked about how the little children would be forced to do dangerous jobs.

This lesson sounds really interesting and exactly what would have made me engage with the future, less intriguing ones.

Oh and the Victorian photos - your child really got to teenage years without knowing about them?

My children were much younger. I think because my dad was a photographer and always engaged them in the history of photography etc, they were much younger, 7/8 maybe. It didn’t scare them, why would it? I find them quite beautiful tributes to loved ones.

You can't talk about the Industrial Revolution without talking about its effect on social history. Otherwise you are teaching as though history happens in discrete sections which doesn't make sense. Death photography (and some of those pictures won't even have been of dead children; people got very confused as to which pictures were which) is part of the whole social history of that era.

Your kids never played a video game where they kill each other or watched a film/tv show that might be slightly grisly? Not 18 certs etc but something a tad ‘risky’? Sheltered.

People have explained to you why the teacher may have made that decision, and you have rebuked all of them because you “know exactly what you’re talking about”. I think there are some valid reasons for the decision (engagement etc), but would be surprised if this was absolutely all that was mentioned on the topic at all as that doesn’t really delve into what the Industrial Revolution actually was.

I can see that if it’s a topic you’re passionate about that you might feel annoyed if you perceive that aspects of it have been ignored and glossed over. What I would say is that if this is a unit of work, this might not be all they cover on the IR. Also, you’re judging a lesson you weren’t in, and therefore you don’t actually know how in depth discussions prior to the photos were.

(Also - I never found that when I taught it in Year 5 that the kids were remotely as grabbed by it as they were by things focusing on what daily life was like for Victorian people, but maybe that’s just due to the fact it was at a primary level!).

Surely the most interesting part of history is it’s impact on people and how similar these seemly disconnected people really are to us?
I’m sure you’d hate some of my English lessons but I love a bit of how scandalous Byron was and it makes his poetry a bit more interesting too!

I saw some of these photos as an adult and they freaked me out. You couldn't tell if the child was dead or alive due to the propping up and open eyes. In my children's secondary the teacher would be in big trouble for having showed those pictures. It makes no sense at all because they are not studying "death photography during the victorian era".
Both of my sons would have reacted badly to this. Hell, I was profoundly troubled by these photos as an adult. I think the teacher wanted to shitstir and I would definitely talk to the teacher and ask for what purpose these photos were shown. Why are you afraid to speak up?

Lessons often go off on tangents when you’re having a good discussion with your class. It’s a sign of an engaged teacher and pupil.

I’d tell upper primary kids about the death photography but wouldn’t think twice about showing secondary kids.

You've decided that the most important thing about the Victorian era was the engineering, and become fixated pm the fact the teacher didn't show images of this - but it's important to remember here that other people are not you, and that some people find different things interesting/important. The majority of the children would find Victorian customs around death more interesting than engineering, I imagine, though of course that will not be true for all.

What I am very surprised by, is how you know exactly what happend in the lesson. Do you expect your child to come home and tell you exactly what each teacher says, what pictures they show etc?

If so, that's excessively controlling and you need to stop. Some counselling might help if you struggle to stop this on your own.

Good luck!

That's a bizarre thing to say. I'm from a culture where open coffins are the norm and it's not remotely disturbing. It's comforting for mourners to say goodbye to their loved one, not a wooden box. I kissed many a corpse as a child and I'm fine.

We read The Yellow Wallpaper and Macbeth in y9 and saw the painting of Myra Hindley done in children's handprints.

The dark/edgy stuff is what engages students

Some teachers like to shock as that is all they have. It's pathetic.

I'm old but I remember a supply teacher in the 70's and he pulled a few like this and he had 'sad git' written all over him. This sort of thing was all he had to his personality and we learned nothing from him but the fact that the teacher he was temporarily replacing was actually good at their job.

I would let it go. I don't have an issue with kids knowing that death is part of life but I agree with you, if this is the best he can come up with regarding the incredible Victorians, he's a sad sack.

I bet they have seen worse and you don't know it.

I think we must have gone to the same school! Can’t be many Catholic convent grammars!

i had the abortion video too, year 9/10 I think. I was 13 ish.

And yes, it was a bonkers Catholic convent school. The nuns were doing rosary’s in the corner and praying while it was on.

We were also given little enamel feet badges to wear, the size of the feet of a 12 week foetus.

The worst thing was that one of the girls had actually had an abortion, due to being raped by a family member. The nuns made her sit right at the front and she sobbed the whole way through. Some of other kids (boys and girls, they had been forced to allow boys at the school a few years prior), were vile to her after wards and taunted her with the badges. The nuns and teachers did nothing to stop it, just let them carry on.

I was so upset for her that I told my father, who was livid and went to the school. The head teacher was a nun and told him that if he didn’t like it, to take me out of the school.

Fucking vile.

I went to a convent grammar school. We definitely had all the anti-abortion propaganda. We were even give these little feet pins for our lapels to signify our antiabortion stance at 11 years old!

We’ve all been glued to our televisions this week gawking at a dead pope in his open casket. It’s all around us, OP.

Yup. Some of my sixth formers came from the local RC school - it doesn't have the impact the school want it to have!

Sometimes class discussion takes you on a bit of a tangent, and for myself, if it's something that grabs the students' interest and has them engaged, I run with it for a bit before we get back on track - I would guess this is what happened here.

Side note, if anyone is interested in reading more about Victorian death culture, I really enjoyed Judith Flanders' book Rites of Passage - would recommend!

That’s genuinely shocking. Maybe the only shocking thing on the thread.

Many Roman Catholic secondaries do show films like this still. I escaped it as went to the girls grammar instead but my sister had to sit through it.

When I was that age we were shown Mississippi Burning in school for a racism discussion.
We were also shown the Scream anti-abortion film mentioned above. We were told that the group coming into show it would tell us if we were upset by it we could walk out, but they were telling us we couldn't.
The death photos of Victorian are not that shocking and an interesting side of Victoriana. I didn't find them upsetting at all. More tragic because it would be their only picture of the person often.

I remember learning about this at the same age as your DD. It sparked a years long fascination with the Victorians and history in general so YABU.

How long are they studying thr Industrial Revolution for? I’d expect at least half a term to a term and I’d expect them to cover the following:

• timelines
• primary and secondary sources
• the spinning Jenny (Hargreaves)
• water power
• Arkwright’s Cromford Mill
• Coal and Steam power
• Newcomen engine (Watts)
• changes in work patterns away from cottage industries into factories
• changes in child labour
• Urbanisation
• Disease outbreaks like cholera and the decline in life expectancy
• John Snow and the Broad Street Pump.
• Joseph Bazalgette and the design of London’s sewage system
• Other Industrial Revolution inventions, perhaps as individual research and presentation projects. This could include the camera, telephone, locomotive, car, plane…

The industrial revolution is a big topic, they'll study it for weeks. Isn't it on the gcse syllabus?
Quite obviously they'll also go on to cover the Spinning Jenny, and steam power and all that, I doubt the teacher just does victoriana death photographs and leaves it there.
Yr9 are a tough audience she was probably using the macabre to reel them in.

I suppose it draws attention to the way in which the culture of the time was so vastly different to our own, which is a key point of learning in history.

It entirely depends how it was approached. If it was 'eurgh, look at these dead children, weren't the victorians WEIRD?!' then that's obviously problematic.

If it's a mature and educational discussion about different ways in which we see/ deal with death as a culture, then that sounds like a very interesting thing to engage young people of that age in thinking and talking about.