"My parents dont let me watch the news": reflections on 11+ interviews I have carried out

I didn't know about the horrible stuff going on in the world as a kid, because I was busy playing and being a kid. Why the hell would I want them worrying about the Ukraine rather than being on their swings.

Surely this is a false dichotomy, there is space for both. In fact I remember being on a roundabout in April 1986 aged 10 discussing our likely radiation dose from Chenobyl with my friends. Of course we all knew about radiation sickness because of the cold war and having read Z for Zachariah. Knowing about stuff and having an informed opinion isn't the same as being terrified. It is right to be anxious about some things, learning to deal with anxiety is a useful life skill.

The post by @Longtalljosie is spot on. How 'news' is gathered and offered up has changed hugely in a relatively short space of time. I would add that news is more separated from commentary these days and that can make the news flow seem more intense when, in reality, we live in times no better or worse than previously.

I also agree with @HighRopes that there may be ways in which the OP could refine the interview question phrasing and process to get a better sense of a student's awareness of the wider world, their own interests and other aspects.

Funnily enough, we never really got on with Junior Week but did get our children to read bits of The Week and use that as the basis for family discussion (and still do). As it happens, I also use MN threads, mostly on these education boards, as the basis for debate with my now teen DC. Not sure how that might have gone down as an answer in a school interview!

My DD (13) chooses not to watch the news. She loved watching newsround when she was younger, but during Covid hated all the constant talk of deaths and serious illness. She always asked for it to be turned off.
The news hasn't got much better since then. Wars, money worries for people, dog attacks, people going missing. She still asks for it to be turned over and, to be honest, I don't blame her!!
She's very intelligent and with discussions at school and bbc online news, whch she scrolls through and picks and chooses what she wants to read, she's very aware of what's going on in the world.

I listen to the radio most days... and the news usually is on during or after dinner.

We discuss current affairs and world news. I think it's important for children to grow up with an awareness of what's going on in the world.

When I was growing up my parents always watched the 6 o'clock news.

I'd rather that than watching you tubers talking endless crap about orbeez and Fortnite

I don't watch the news myself never mind my children. The reason for this is that is an unending list of misery and fear which is not good for my mental health. And no, it's not "real life", it's all the bad stuff in life. Once upon a time they used to at least have good news tagged into the end, but not anymore.

Also, like many, we're struggling financially, so we can no longer afford a TV licence, so couldn't watch the TV if we wanted to. I don't buy newspapers for a similar reason (cost and it's all "fear sells" and "look at these rich people").

I don't stop my kids looking up the news, but I don't encourage it. They've more than enough to worry about and I didn't know about the horrible stuff going on in the world as a kid, because I was busy playing and being a kid. Why the hell would I want them worrying about the Ukraine rather than being on their swings.

I also think comparisons to ww2 or children living in Ukraine are false.

In ww2 children didn't have graphic moving colour films beamed into their living room. They had black and white at the cinema newsreel, or the papers, or radio. It wasn't so in your face.
Children in war zones now have to live through stuff, but may well be getting traumatised by their experiences. We need to inform but not traumatise our children. They may need to know about the war, but not every gory detail.

I do talk with my DD about the strikes, the threat on female spaces, funding of health and education, voting etc.

I'd rather shelter my child from the horrors of the world where I can and happy to explain where needed.

She asked about the war in Ukraine a few days after it started, I'd intended to talk to her about it once I'd processed what was happening. I understood it was something g she should know but was trying to work out how to explain it all. Turns out they watch newshound at school. No warning to parents that they did this so we could be ready for questions but at least I no longer had to explain it all.

She now has a Ukrainian in her class so they don't show the news so they are not distressed.

We have huge numbers of depressed teens in this country. Self harming, eating disorders etc. My ds (14) chooses not to watch the news and I don't encourage him.

We talk about current affairs on the school run, I make sure he knows the basics, but I don't go into the gruesome and depressing detail of some of the news programmes. I'd rather my child (and he is still a child) is cheerful and happy. His GCSEs introduce him to enough of the world's realities.

He'll become more aware in the next year or two and that timing is as I'd expect it to be. There's no rush.

Back in the days when Newsround was on BBC1, you could stick the TV on for your primary aged kids and know that for say 90mins there would be a variety of child suitable programmes, including the news.
Now everything is on specialised channels I think it is harder to access by default.
Additionally how many adults say they get their news from Facebook etc so even parents don't actually 'watch the news'?

That said, having been sheltering DD for 3 years from news, i probably need to actively start changing that now.

I think another big thing is that not many families I know ever watch terrestrial TV. I sometimes tune ours in, but it very quickly loses the channels again, so everything we watch is on apps.

You have to really want to watch the news now, rather than it just coming on before or after you watch something else.

My child could watch the news but I don't actively encourage it.
There is a huge negativity bias in news reporting which is not reflective of real life.
I've noticed anxiety is some kids because of this.
We talk about some topics at the dinner table and encourage discussion but I don't put the news on!

I haven't regularly watched the news in about 15 years, so my DC haven't either. There is very little content left in TV news, everything is sensationalised, even on the 'main' channels.

We do have Radio 4 on throughout the day, so there is the Today Programme and PM on in the background. We do talk about big news stories. The DC sometimes watch Newsround at school too.

TBH, I am a bit judgmental of parents that let their DC watch irresponsible news programmes. It has led to some panic amongst the kids at school times when they have got the wrong end of the stick about something.

This doesn’t surprise me as it’s something I hear partners talking about. My children see the news. I feel that they need to know a bit about what’s going on in the world. Other children will talk about things like the war in Ukraine at school and I would prefer them to encounter it at home first.

What upsets me most about this post is the idea that an 11 has to pass an interview to be accepted into a school...

I am well aware that's fairly normal in the independent sector, but it doesn't make it Ok....

My gosh. I grew up watching the 6 o'clock news with dinner. Ok it was on a tiny black and white telly but we still watched.

I remember seeing the Berlin Wall fall and I would have been about 6 at the time.

A lot of stuff went over my head. I remember going to look up the word rape in the dictionary when I was early teens after hearing it on the news.

My kids watch the news and they are 6 and 4. Often during dinner, usually when there is something big happening in the world. Mostly they ignore it. Sometimes they ask questions.

The problem might be your question ‘the news’ if asked them something more like ‘what’s an important issue in the world’ or ‘what things that are happening in the world at the moment are you interested in’ you might have a better response.

There's lots of research around HOW we consume information these days and how it affects our brains.

24/7 news coverage, smartphones with news alerts and pop ups, ticker tape repetition, digital radio coverage etc, all combines to assault our brains with information.

Growing up, the news was only in at set points of the day and you had to buy a newspaper and read it in real time to get any detailed information. This slowed down the consumption and volume of information.

Our brains were not designed to deal with the number of sources of information it is assaulted by nowadays and it has an impact on mood, functioning and perception. Of course it does!

Surely if your child was going to an interview and you’d been told there might be a news question you’d prepare them by discussing a news topic - they don’t have to watch / listen to the news to do that. Most schools have firstnews or the week junior too.

I think your selection process is old fashioned and a bit biased towards a certain type of family. Old fashioned, because maybe over a decade ago watching the news together as a family was a decent proxy for a family where curiosity and knowledge of the world was valued. Biased, because you are missing the child with a passion for something (gymnastics, football, painting whatever) who basically doesn’t watch TV due to focusing on that (just look at the hours a week in the gym needed for elite stream gymnasts).

My experience of the London 11+ process was that questions about the news rarely came up. Most schools now use pictures, graphs or other stimuli to prompt discussion - with the usual intro question about hobbies.

What year/age is this?

I agree people have such strange ideas. Friends of mine were not phased on discovering their 13 year olds had watched squid games (having not watched it themselves) but didn’t want their 15 year olds going to the fair or small local city alone with friends. I just ummed along thinking my 13 yo had already gone into town with a group of friends and I’d be horrified, having watched squid games myself had she watched it without my knowledge.

I listened to the radio news as a child, because my Dad was a newsreader!

One thing that is really important is for children to hear how language is used to describe what is going on in the world. It teaches clarity of expression, vocabulary, how to get a point across. If you do not watch, read or listen to the news then you are missing out in that crucial part of your education. Unfortunately young people now spend more time listening to Your Tubers waffling on, and it shows.

Wow.

Honestly, this is your take away from interviewing 10/11 year olds? Who, incidentally, are not displaying their innate personality to you in these interviews but presenting you with their parents' work essentially. The idea that they "fit" or don't with the school ethos is awful. At 10! Selection on this basis is surely nonsense and just a 'baked in' privilege thing. Yuck.

3 our of ? are kept from watching the news? Presumably similar numbers are vegetarian or go to church or watch no TV.

There's no way I'd let mine watch the news in general, and I turn the radio down too. Every single news bulletin has headlines involving sexual violence, Andrew Tate trafficking women etc that they do not need to know about at 10 to be a well rounded person in the future!

I agree with someone else who said a lot depends on the age of siblings. My 6 yr old is very anxious and didn't sleep for ages when he misunderstood Ukraine for UK and overheard all the talk of war. Therefore his older siblings are more shielded than those without younger siblings probably.

Mine watch Newsround at school, read The Week Jnr and we talk a lot about current events. We do watch important things together, like the S35 Bill being debated in parliament and discuss them.. but I'm not sure mine would actually define that as "the news" as they're not presented with current affairs in that way. If you asked them, "what do you think about the s35 arguments?" They could debate the issues with you though.

I absolutely bet my dinner there's things that would come up from talking to 10 yr olds that would bother me a lot more than them being protected from the news though. Like the fact barely of them genuinely read for pleasure, and so many of them take selfies like sexualised posers and aspire to be "famous")

(My parents were v protective of me as a younger child and I remember people levelling these arguments. However they were age appropriate and allowed me to grow up in my teens. I've gone on to do a job in which I deal with the fall out of some of the worst of human behaviour, so being kept from it at 10 is not a terrible thing in my view. It gave me longer in my safe childhood bubble and maybe gave me something that enabled me to do the jobs I have as an adult.)

Sorry, but this just makes me think❄

I would do this too m! This and maybe radio 4.

I wouldn’t want my 10yo to watch the news. Firstly the tv in our house isn’t on that much and secondly think there’s some things they don’t need to see. Talking and reading a about difficult topics is very different to seeing a moving imagine of it.

There have been interesting studies about how watching the news invokes our fight or flight response

I was reading a research study the other day that did a randomised control trial with people either watching news or not watching news and they found an increase in watching news caused an increase in depressive symptoms.