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

If I was conducting selective interviews for an over subscribed school I would not offer these children a place. Because either:

1. They are ridiculously over protected and the parents will be a nightmare.
2. The parents have little curiousity about the wider world and that will affect the acquisition of broader knowledge the child has.

I was forced to watch the news every night, no Happy Days for me. It is a good thing.

I was shocked that two or three of the ones I have interviewed this year stated that they werent allowed to watch the news and had no opinions/ ideas about the issues. Surely watching the news at 6 etc or online or even Newsround is basic preparation for life? (or school interview at least?

I imagine that interested localparents are by now well aware of what gets asked at the interviews, and some of them have indeed prepared their children well.

"Mum, I don't know nuffin about news and politics and I don't care"
"No problems, dear. Just tell the lady you're never allowed to watch the news"

At what age do you all expect to allow your children to watch the news and realise what life is like ? During WW2 were you Great grandparents hidden in a dungeon so that didn't find out what was happening , no they lived through it. You cannot hide the world from your children, one day they have to be grown ups and as we often read on here too many get to 18 and still can't wipe their own noses.

Actually, asking a 10-year-old about the news is probably a really good decider. I would bet that most truly gifted (by that I mean not made to sit for hours doing extra English, Maths, etc etc until they're 'top of the class') are naturally drawn to current affairs. The children I've met who have that natural curiosity and are amazing at drawing connections and with exceptional general knowledge at a young age were generally all into news and current affairs.

This would make me question your school's ethos if you ask me, and leave me wondering if your school was the very best for my child rather than vice versa.
The fact that you seem surprised to learn that "the news" is not always something discussed or watched together at home, makes me almost feel this is a wind up.
I hope you have the skills to discern the kids that think for themselves from the ones that repeat mummy and daddy's views on the world.

What skills, knowledge or understanding do you believe they develop by watching the news? We talk a lot in our house about current affairs but we don't watch the TV news. Mostly because we see it as lacking in detail at best and biased at worse. I also think that watching TV news can foster a sense of hopelessness. There is very little a child of 9 can do to influence the world around them, so we look more at issues that directly impact them and they can do something about ..climate change strikes and environmental issues, school strikes etc. My nine year old does not need to watch a sensationalised timeline of the actions of a dog walker who vanished into thin air in a small village. It serves no purpose for her except to elicit fear.

My kids don’t regularly watch the news but we listen occasionally when it comes on on the radio. We do however get The Week Junior and we do talk about what’s going on in the world at other times. I think a lot of footage can be quite graphic and to be honest they don’t need to see it to know about it.

11+ interviews that are asking a 10 year old how much of an adult they are seem completely worthless to me. What is the aim of the interview process after all? Is it really to select only children who are already living like mini-adults?

2 to 3 candidates is not that much out of total number. Not watching news is also not that much of an issue. But if one has to use every single awake moment to revision for exam, then future potential is limited.

Who knew OMAM was such a hot topic ? I think DS did it in yr 7 (SS grammar school) they "skipped" much yr7 content TBH. His text books in yr7 were all yr8 or yr9. In keeping with that he did his GCSE maths at the end of yr10 (with half the year) so he may experienced an accelerated KS3 curriculum. Dd was in yr8 at the first lockdown and she definitely covered it before then, it may have been 1st half of year 8.

It’s not my experience of selective schools in any case. I agree it’s an odd way to select.

The idea that dc need to answer this question to perform at highest level isn’t necessary, and can lead to selection not based on talent / academics. Which is why some schools are very careful about questions they use.

it isn’t about that if you don’t expose your children that you are somehow mollycoddling them. It is more that selective schools are looking for children who can perform at the highest level. The real world is a big part of that.
Again, you're conflating understanding about 'the real world' with having access to large amounts of news content that is designed for adult consumption.

They are not the same thing.

Children are not more academically able because their parents give them adult news content whilst patting themselves on the back for how great a parent they are.

The OP could have asked:
"Tell us about a topic or issue that interests you"
Or
"What do you think is a big issue in the world today?"
Or another similarly open ended questions that allows children to draw on their wider experiences and interests.

But they didn't. They focused on what do you think about something on the news/tell us your views on climate change/tell us your views of the Ukraine war. That says everything about the OP and that they're only looking for children in their image, not rounded children with a lot of academic potential.

@LolaSmiles it isn’t about that if you don’t expose your children that you are somehow mollycoddling them. It is more that selective schools are looking for children who can perform at the highest level. The real world is a big part of that. For instance in RS my children started debating very difficult philosophical questions from day 1. (Way way harder than what I did 30 years ago). They bring in real world issues into these debates. The schools also have variations of Model UN/politics society/ debating club which they will be looking for some of the children to engage with. One of my children had to write an essay on decarbonisation when in early teens so it helped to have a bit of real world knowledge she had built up over the years from the news.

Some one suggested it given in yr7 because they had a pile of them in the cupboard from when it was dropped from the GCSE syllabus. I was saying that couldn't have been a consideration when I studied it in yr 7 in 1986.

I might have missed an earlier post about your school days, but you said your DCs studied it in year 7, and they're 18 and 16 now. That means that when they were in Year 7, OMAM was a GCSE text on the specifications, and one that was commonly studied by a lot of schools.

When OMAM was removed from GCSE, many schools did move it into Key Stage 3 because they already had the texts in the cupboard.

It's not commonly recommended as a text for 11 year olds. Even in schools today it's more common for OMAM to be used as a bridging text in Year 9 to prepare students for GCSE, not as a year 7 class reader.

Anyway there's a fairly obvious difference between a parent deciding what their personal approach to sharing content with their children is and making curriculum decisions for whole cohorts of 11 year olds.

LolaSmiles

Some one suggested it given in yr7 because they had a pile of them in the cupboard from when it was dropped from the GCSE syllabus. I was saying that couldn't have been a consideration when I studied it in yr 7 in 1986.

What's the GCSE specification in 1986 got to do with whether Of Mice and Men is an appropriate book for 11 year olds though?

There's a wealth of literature out there covering a range of themes and genres and sadly it doesn't always translate into a broad range of decent, appropriate English texts in Year 7-9. OMAM makes sense in Year 9. It doesn't for Year 7.

Fairislefandango
I think where the stronger responses come from is that some people seem to believe that if you don't stick the adult news on and expose your primary school age children to anything and everything that's going on then you're somehow mollycoddling them and responsible for young adults not knowing anything about the world. It's not surprising people would disagree with that.

To be honest I'm happy showing newsround and age appropriate children's news. I still think the interview question that the OP chose is a poor-quality interview question. They could gain much more insight on a child by asking them about a topic that interests them rather than what their views are on the Ukraine situation.

I am saying it hadn't changed in '86

I have protected my DCs from all scary news during covid and stopped watching news myself. Does it make me a bad mother? I don't think so.
We talk about Ukraine, Palestine and, to a lesser extend, climate change and I am sure that is quite enough for them. A 10yo does not need to sit and watch the news every evening.

I was 11 in 1986, I don't think the GSCE curriculum had changed yet !
It's changed several times since then!

OMAM was removed from GCSE almost 10 years ago

There's some text changes going through this year as well.

I'm always seeing people on here expressing outrage that 16yos or students or young trainees at their workplace (or whatever) don't know a whole bunch of really basic things about the world. Knowledge takes years and years and years to build up. Watching the news with parents from the second half of primary school onwards, and talking through bits of what you see, having words and concepts explained to you, is a good start. It's daft to "shield" children from current affairs until they are at some indeterminate point in their teens, and then immediately get angry and upset about them not suddenly and immediately developing wide-ranging knowledge of a whole bunch of things at that point.

If we're worried about kids' mental health, heavily restricting mobile phones and social media is what we should be doing. Not keeping them away from the news.

SilverGlitterBaubles
That's a very good point about social media. I'd like to think that parents who take the time to think about how they wan to keep their children informed about the world without sticking the adults news and/or arguing primary aged children should have access to almost anything because otherwise they're vulnerable/need toughening up/are wrapped in cotton wool/are being mollycoddled are probably parents who also take a sensible approach to technology as well.

Primary aged children with unlimited or almost unlimited access to social media and the internet in their pocket is a safeguarding nightmare waiting to happen.

Universal sufferage not suffering !

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Certificate_of_Secondary_Education#:~:text=GCSEs%20were%20introduced%20in%20September,A%2DLevels%20or%20university%20degrees.

I was 11 in 1986, I don't think the GSCE curriculum had changed yet ! False allegations of sexual assault are highly relevant in today's world. Discussions around consent cannot start too young IMO and it is important for young people to understand that universal suffering and inclusively is a relatively recent and precious thing- how can teaching that be wrong ?