to be upset with what my child is learning at school / WWYD?

[IteotYEARawki]

My older boy is 5 and in his 3rd term of school so far (year 1).

He has learned that Guy Fawkes was hung, drawn, quartered and then burned on a bonfire.

That hundreds of people had their heads chopped off with a guillotine.

And the latest - that Anne Franks hid from the SS behind a bookcase, that people were marched off to concentration camps and that thousands, including children, were killed by gassing. And that the children were told they were going to have a shower when they were taken to the gas chamber.

There has been a museum display on Anne Franks & her life in town which was advertised on the radio - DS1 overheard it and started telling us all that he'd learned about it at school. Apparently his teacher has visited a concentration camp and described it, including the rooms full of boxes of bones.

I don't deny that history needs to be taught and that the Holocaust is part of it. But this graphic detail, at 5?

We already had a chat with his teacher after the Guy Fawkes thing. I don't think I'm being precious in not wanting him exposed to this stuff so soon. It'll take about 3-4 months for him to process through it all and then we'll have inconsolable crying at night while the horror hits him.

AIBU? Should we talk to his teacher again, or chat with the principal?

OP I would be furious if my Y1 child was taught about the holocaust. At his school they are learning how to get on, listen to each other, that we are all different and all special, that sort of thing.

The time will come for him to learn what happens when we do not respect our common humanity, but that time is not yet. He doesn't even fully understand the finality of death properly yet.

They are welcome to teach him about Guy Fawkes' execution only if he can then explain to me why Guy Fawkes was trying to blow up the houses of parliament, including intelligent common on the religious and political divisions of the time. If he has no understanding of the context then it's just historical rubbernecking.

I doubt whether he was taught about it, it sounds to me like an assembly, which are for the whole school. I think they take what they want from it. I knew from a young age that Guy Fawkes was hung, drawn and quartered, I realised it was nasty but not the full horror until years later.

My DSs are in Reception and Year 2. I would be very upset if this topic was covered at school without me knowing about it first. I think 5 is way too young to be exposed to such horrific information. And I also turn off the news if my DSs are with me. I don't want them hearing about rape and murder and other such horrible topics. They are still way too little to have to think about such things.

I am not denying that it is incredibly important that children learn about the Holocaust. But not at age 5. I have just taken the elephant in the garden out of a set of books I've bought DS1 for Christmas because it touches on the subject and I don't think he's quite ready for it (he's the type to ask lots of questions).

DS1 has just done a little bit about the Titanic in year 2, but not to the extent that it caused great distress. It still made him feel "sad and angry"

It would have been in assembly-Nov 5th assembly would be an explanation of why we have fireworks. Similarly they would have had Holocaust Memorial Day and Bastille Day. I expect they had 1st World War talked about on 11th November-maybe he missed mentioning that. I expect many DCs have had similar but have failed to mention it because it hasn't made much impression-they pick up on when ready.

I asked him about Guy Fawkes this morning - why he was executed and why we remember it. His answer was "because he took bombs into the cellar, except he pretended they were firewood. Because he didn't like what the King was doing and all the priests hiding in secret. But killing a King is very against the law so when they caught him they killed him to stop people trying to do it again. There's a song about gunpowder treasoning plot to keep us remembering it. " so he's obviously talked more about it than just the hanging bit!

Wrt the Holocaust ... Having read the spread of opinions I think marching in baying for blood because my PFB 5 year old has learned that bad things happen is a little OTT. DH is still slightly about it all & is going to ask the teacher in what context the discussion came up, but nothing confrontational.

When I was 5 yrs November 5th was the big date and we didn't do Hallween, we certainly knew who Guy Fawkes was and what happened to him and why we were burning him on the bonfire.

Sorry Hallowe'en

I think you anbu. Five is way too young to learn this.
I'm not sure why a school in NZ is teaching about Guy Fawkes.

I would bet that he isn't learning it-he was sitting in a whole school assembly. If he is in NZ ,then the fact that it happened over 400 yrs ago and on the other side of the world should render it non frightening.

I didn't find it frightening at 5 yrs-just relieved that we didn't do that sort of thing any more!

People are still talking about assemblies- OP has clearly stated that they don't have whole school assemblies in her DS's school. Obviously NZ schools work differently from UK ones, but the details WERE discussed in a Y1 class.

I'm still of the opinion that the Holocaust should NOT be taught until at least age 7 or so, and certainly not discussed in so much detail.

hedwig - Guy Fawkes night is celebrated in NZ as it is here.

Completely iinappropriate, unfair on the children, and in the long run totally unproductive, as they just become desensitised. Downright ignorant. Many German families follow the policy of not teaching their childrn about the holocaust until their teens, as hearing it for the first time at that age has more impact, and they can truallly understand, otherwise it becomes a trivial bit of background that has always been there, and children grow up ACCEPTING IT.

Update! DH spoke to teacher this morning to see why / what conversation came up. Some of the other kids had been taken to the Anne Frank exhibition in the town museum where there were displays regarding the war, concentration camps, Nazi Germany and its ideals and of course the Anne Frank story. Personally I think they're still a bit young for it but that wasn't the opinion of many of the parents obviously.

They then discussed it among themselves in the classroom; I gather the teacher joined in to prevent misinformation / misremembering being talked about as fact and to steer the conversation to what she felt was a more appropriate level (but still within topic). Hence her talking about her experiences.

So glad we didn't go haring off to the principal but just had a general chat at dropoff time.

We do discuss war etc - we visited an aviation museum in the UK which was predominantly the development of aviation from war pressures.

Sorry-I just assumed that it was assembly. The discussion on the Holocaust seems very sensible on the part of the teacher if a lot of them had been to the exhibition and were talking about it.
As to Guy Fawkes-I don't think that at 5 yrs I would find it disturbing if something horrible had happened in NZ, so far away, and hundreds of years ago.

My main outrage on this thread is for a school that would take achild out of reception and put him in year 1- presumably because they had somehow screwed their numbers up. Receptions so important- why should this poor little boy miss out on most of it?

Seeker - the way school entry works here is that each child starts the day after their 5th birthday. So at the beginning of the year class sizes in R are fairly small.

DS1 started in term 2 (just after the Easter hols) and did that term in R. As more kids joined throughout the term, the class got to 20 kids with more expected throughout terms 3&4. They hived off the older children (who had started year R the previous year so were on their 3rd term anyway) to make a year 1 class for the remaining 2 terms this year.

He would have stayed in R except that academically he's already about year 2-3 ( not trying to stealth boast - emotionally he clearly isn't) so they thought he'd do better in the year 1 group. Socially he's much more settled with the older kids too. Next year I imagine he'll be in the year 1-2 mixed class (working at whatever level they deem appropriate).

Well, a genuine question here.

OP - no idea if your television works the same way as ours does. I assume you have commercials or advertisments mid-programme? Daytime TV includes childrens programmes. The TV controllers are particularly fond of stuffing adverts in those programmes accompanied by footage, of a diseased African baby, covered in flies with the request that you donate to Oxfam etc etc.

That, to me, is real. Unfortunately it has the effect that by the time a child hits school they are now pretty much desensitised.

I can also think of a few RL events that have been horrific in my childrens short life times - Nine Eleven, the London bombings spring immediately to mind.

I don't turn the TV off when that sort of stuff comes on. Thats life. Or death, depending on which way you look at it. Life is pretty grim. There is no point shielding children.

So I'm afraid, Guy Fawkes - kids love the gorey. Holocaust. Well, a lot of children died in those camps and it's damned right it should be remembered. By everyone.

Totally agree, troisgarcons, but where was the genuine question?

its was: do you have TV adverts !!!!

YANBU.

I'm amazed this is a teacher in her 50s. She should know better IMO. I was pretty [shocked] when ds did the Titanic in year 1 - totally unsuitable for that age IMO but in fact the focus was on what the ship was like and reasons why it sank, rather than James Cameronesque dwelling on the process of sinking and echoing screams etc. The primary history curriculum, though limited, seems about a million times better than what I learned, and it is entirely possible to study it in an age-appropriate way.

Trois - terrestrial tv here does have adverts. Up until a few months ago we didn't have the TV connected to any form of aerial though, so the kids watched movies or DVDs only so hadn't seen them.

A few months ago there was a lot of hoohaa about some game involving running around with odd balls so we got a freeview box to watch it on. We still don't really watch terrestrial tv because it's shite, but they do watch the kids slot at the weekends occasionally. So far the only ads during that are selling variations on a theme of plastic crap :)

Oh and I wasn't upset about him learning the facts - that war happens, people get killed and that children in other countries are starving are all things we should all be aware of.

It was the level of detail - actually it was that he knew children were told they were going to have a shower when they were put into the gas chambers that really got to me.

However, I know boys have a morbid and ghoulish fascination with the gory stuff so maybe it's my reaction that's the issue rather than his.

I think it's fine to learn about Guy Fawkes at this age - loads of young children watch Horrible Histories and love all the gory details. However, personally, I would say that they are a bit too young to learn about the holocaust in any sort of detail - partly because it might frighten them, but also because they are simply not mature enough to appreciate the enormity of what happened.

Unfortunately, kids can be freaked out by all sorts of things. When dd was 5, she was a very good reader and brought home a book about London aimed at much older children. There was a very detailed account of the Black Death, and she was incredibly upset about this. Sadly, you can't always protect them from everything.