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Original poster

GCSE year trip to auschwitz - any experience?

31 replies

cymruoddicatref · 18/05/2011 08:49

My daughter (first year GCSE) is being encouraged to take part in this trip next year. She and her friends are reluctant to go. I have not offered a view yet. I am a bit cross that it is put forward as supporting the history curriculum, so that I am going to worry as a parent that her studies will be compromised if she does not go, although it is not necessarily a place I would want her to visit as a young teenager - at least not in a school party. Has anyone else had experience of one of these trips - or turned one down? Has it made a difference to GCSE study either way? Are there any teachers with first hand experience?

OP posts:
GypsyMoth · 18/05/2011 14:58

my DD did get upset,she told me she cried looking at a few displays.

the trip was quite expensive,but i reasoned this was a very interesting place to visit,but never,ever a place i could take all of my children on a day trip,as i would other museums. so the chance to go for her,would not come up again (unless she took herself in adulthooits fuelled her interest,and she often refers to it when seeing or discussing war related things.

she was upset by it though,and she's not an overly sensitive girl.

Original poster
cymruoddicatref · 18/05/2011 13:59

I think the reason why I am just a bit cross (not desperately cross) about the link to the curriculum is that it makes me feel as if I ought to lean on her to go, even if she doesn't particularly want to, whereas I would prefer to give her a completely free rein. Interesting responses thankyou - she loves history too, and has read a few novels around the Holocaust, at least one of which made her quite upset - I can understand her reluctance. I am not sure that I would like to visit somewhere like that in a large group. If her peers decide to go, then I expect she will too, but I am a bit uncomfortable with it as a "school trip" destination. Wish we had the Berlin add-on - now that would be interesting.

OP posts:
mattellie · 18/05/2011 10:59

ILT, that?s interesting. DS (Y10) is doing the same trip this half term ? Berlin including Auschwitz. He also loves history, will definitely do it for A level and is already talking of studying it at university. Did your DD get a lot out of it?

OP, my feeling is that like a lot of school trips it falls into the category of not being essential for their studies but may add something a little bit extra ? ?supporting the curriculum? sounds about right to me. Not quite sure why that makes you cross?

GypsyMoth · 18/05/2011 09:28

my DD went in her gcse year. she is crazy about history though,and it was incorporated with a trip to Berlin. she was glad she went,and has gone on to study history A level

i had quite a long thread going here somewhere,got some very good advice too

Wordwork · 18/05/2011 09:25

One of my sons went there with DH, aged about 12. It was informative for him and not traumatising, but of course it depends on the individual child's personality -- and it will feel a bit different going with a school group rather than a parent.

I've been myself and I also found it informative rather than harrowing. IMO the place conjures the horror of those events far less grimly than first-person accounts in books -- Primo Levi and so on.

I do feel slightly that the museum suffers a little from the conversion of a horrific set of events into 'history tourism'; it is hard to preserve the dignity of commemoration when there are coachloads of holiday makers and school trips.

Whatever you decide, I would find it hard to believe that your DD's grasp of the GCSE subject would suffer from not attending. And perhaps many of the museum's learning resources are available on a website if you wanted to make sure that all the relevant information was available to her.

The value of 'being there' I think is to pay respects and to get a sense of immediacy/reality about the Holocaust; and I'm not sure it does achieve that very well, becuae of the inevitable shift into being a tourist destination.

Yellowstone · 18/05/2011 09:05

I'm a parent rather than a teacher but I organised our school's Auschwitz trip, though it was for Y13. I have been to Auschwitz twice myself now and my eldest four came with me on the first occasion: the youngest of those, a boy, was then 13 (I had left it up to them to decide if they wanted to come, they had the option of staying behind in Kracow). Children under 12 are not supposed to be allowed in to the museum and I was pretty shocked that there were some very young children there, much younger than 12. It is very harrowing, that's for sure.