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

I can’t watch the news. I get the brief from the week to get top 10 news bulletin of the day. I protected my kids from the news when small (tho newsround at school, the week junior at home — accessible but not shoved down their throats). We sometimes talk about news stories at dinner. Two of my DC definitely tend to anxiety- climate anxiety in particular - and I want home to be a safe place they can retreat to if they want. I do think they miss out not getting random R4 in the car, but my car radio is broken so …,

I grew up in the 80s and 90s. We watched newshound, then the 60o clock news every day. 6o clock news was dad's choice. As was the daily mirror. It was normal. It didn't make me anxious, but it did make me informed. The news today isn't any worse than thefamines in Africa, recession,child abductions, tory sleaze and umpteen foreign wars of my youth. But people seem less able to cope with it so bury their heads in the sand.

We've brought our kids up to watch/ listen to the news and we talk about it with them. I want curious, informed kids. Currently less successful with dc2, but we'll get there.

I thought the news was soooooo boring at 11 but that reversed by the time I was 16 and my form tutor said I was very well informed.

Let the kids be kids as long as thry can. I was only interested in my bike, games and books at 11.

I did similar interviews for a London day school. We didn't ask about their news consumption (although the school itself often discussed news stories in assemblies, tried hard to teach critical thinking, etc). I think it's possible they didn't understand the question if it was phrased as "follow the news".

Something else to bear in mind is the customer group for this kind of school is i) moneyed and ii) often dual national. Their priorities are different to the average. For example the school had both Russian and Ukrainian heritage DCs (paying customers) and was educating a couple of Ukrainian refugees. That was tricky.

When I was at primary I remember discussions of the Ethiopian famine and Pol Pot in Cambodia. These were presented in a context of "What we can do to help" and were c00learly very far away. It was not like Ethiopian and Cambodian DCs were arriving at the schools needing places.

I think parents have to be careful about news nowadays. There are so many stories about missing women and DC for one thing. I had to ask a Premier Inn to turn off the breakfast news last summer that was being played on a gigantic screen at full volume in the bar where breakfast was being served. The lead story was the murdered girl in Liverpool, the same age as my DD. I didn't want her rare weekend trip to see her beloved grandparents to be mainly questions about whether she would be murdered...

The majority of posters seem to have missed this:

Surely watching the news at 6 etc or online or even Newsround is basic preparation for life? (or school interview at least?)

So posting that you don't watch the news either, you get your news online, is missing the point. These kids aren't getting their news anywhere.

I do understand parents avoiding their kids watching the news, to be honest. I'd never have felt that way until recently, but Covid, followed by all the stuff that's happened recently, has been really worrying, even for adults. I stopped watching the news because I wasn't anyways in the frame of mind to hear and see upsetting stuff. But yes, I do get my news online, because I can choose when I'm in the right frame of mind to read, and I can choose whether or not to watch any video content and so on.

But yes, newsround is the answer for primary kids, and at 11, kids do need some awareness of what's happening in the world, and begin to have some opinions on it.

Same. We were all in the lounge the other week and the news came on. The headline story was about a serial rapist. I'm sorry but I don't want my 10 year old listening to the details of that.

My DD is 16 and actively avoids the news as she says it just worries her too much. What a world we live in for it to be that bad.

I agree with @HighRopes I think, this feels like a question that is likely to end up playing into a class-biased selection process. That a child is able to say something coherent about Ukraine or COP will probably tell you more about their parents' education level than anything else. If you're looking to select students from highly educated family backgrounds then you're on the right track I guess.

I tended to let mine discover news/politics in their own time. I think climate change got discussed in a fairly systemic way as part of their primary education, other things (general elections, US presidential elections, major disasters and conflicts) tended to be addressed in PHSE at secondary. I'm a total news and politics junkie so they would hear me talking about it sometimes at home but i get my news from Twitter - never watch the tv news unless it's something really major and real time (eg COVID press conferences in the early days). So it wasn't on in the background at home most of the time.

Both of mine have done very well in education and are reasonably well-informed young men who take an interest in events. More importantly they hold their own views, not mine.

That’s brilliant to hear!

I don’t watch the news, my son never has, we’re much happier for it.

We rarely sit and and watch the news tbh but I have the radio on whilst cooking and eating every evening. C4 news if we’re done with everything else by then. My Ds get their news online. Both are politically engaged.

I struggle with children and the news. They obviously need a level of understanding about what’s going on but I don’t watch the news and I find it too unpredictable to let them. Often the news will come on the car radio and all rape, exploitation, stabbings, murder and suicide. Obviously children need to know those things happen in the world but I don’t want daily exposure.

Appreciate this is the 11+ but I’ve got a 6 year old and a 10 year old. One minute we are singing in the car to the radio and 2 secs later it’s the news telling us about children being sexually abused. I turn it off. The kids don’t need to hear it and you never know what’s coming next

Since Covid, we have stopped watching the news in our house. The media have a lot to answer for regarding unnecessary scare mongering and bias in stories. We talk about current affairs around the dinner table and encourage debat instead.

I am shocked however, that an 11+ interviewer is being negatively swayed by children who are not watching the news. Given the mental health epidemic sweeping our society which is largely driven by the media, I think taking a step back and discussing events as a family, giving children the freedom to debate issues and come to their own conclusions is, in my opinion, far better than being able to parrot out a biased view of something dependent on what news outlet you watch.

I don't disagree, the images of the starving Ethiopian children I saw on the news age 10 are still razor sharp in my mind. Does the news really contain such alarming images before the watershed ? Most of the footage of Ukraine is ariel views of lines of tanks. Agree some of the images of the Italian hospitals at the start of Covid were alarming, but I think the average yr6 should be able to cope with that.

When dd was younger we used to get First News, at her request. She first read it at school.

We don't really watch the news on TV. We aren't always home/sat watching tv at that time. I tend to get my news online, as does dh - no news app, websites, etc.

I'm not a huge fan of tv news and would never watch it just before bed, etc, But will read news at other times.

'Lots of them are still alive' - yes like my parents.

I didn't say people didn't know about it, just it wasn't so graphic and in their face. Colour movies in the living room are more 'there' than just reading or hearing about the news. It's the visual aspect that has a big impact.

I stopped watching the news during covid. I realised that having that level of negatively in my life wasn't doing me or my family any good.
I was feeling angry with politics , brexit etc.

Now I largely ignore it and my life has improved enormously.

I now just dip in on social media

What is the school ethos?

I think these types of criteria’s are missing out on some fab kids. I remember my DSs teacher in year 6 told us he wasn’t “grammar school material” and advised us against him doing the 11+ and refused to include him in the little group he had singled out to prep for the 11+
We went for it anyway and he passed. He came out top of his year in his final year and went on to get a 1st in engineering at a top Uni and can talk about anything now to anyone.

Never watched the news with him at that age.

I don't watch the news around my son as he's only 4. Was listening to it on the radio, lots talk about sexual assault, rape, and an interview about how the police are dangerous. I turned off as he was listening intently at the back of the car. At the age of 11 I would like to think I'd definitely be letting him listen and use it as a talking point/learning opportunity.

Those would be my children the ! As someone who works very closely with children and young people with MH issues, my children won't be watching the news if I can help it or getting a phone until they're at university! There are other ways in discussing world events.

I think my kids might be more frightened of doing an interview than watching the news! I guess it's very good preparation for life. Is it a 1-1 interview? Are these kids generally quite confident?

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.

I think the children in WW2 knew exactly what was going on. Perhaps you should talk to those people, lots of them are still alive. My Uncle would was been 6 in '39 he knows a huge amount about the strategy of the Alllies and the politics of the time. I think they listened to the radio while at school.

I stopped watching TV news a few years ago, because it is so dumbed down & patronising. Radio 4 and decent newspapers are a much better way to get sensible content. But I agree that parents should be encouraging their kids to access it in some form, & discussing it at meals etc. If people think the news is "too frightening" then they've obviously fallen for some of the over -dramatic bulletins as mentioned above, & lost their ability to think critically!

This is a good way to put it too.

My kids in Primary school watched the news every morning - Newsround on iPlayer. 10 minutes, then the teacher would have a discussion about the issues.

Agree that many children are not consuming media or news in the way which we did growing up but getting your "news" from influencers is not a good thing in many cases.

I don’t really hold watching the news up as some kind of good. In fact it used many tactics which are probably bad for people - 24 hour cycles of attention grabbing, don’t turn off content

We do have the radio on and I choose what gets my attention . It is after all the attention economy and what you spend time looking at is making money from it.

I’d rather talk to dc about how to consume media without it dominating too much. Choose how to gain knowledge with things that inform rather than provoke.