to be incensed by dd1s questions about Emmeline Pankhurst, and to think i must be going wrong somewhere?!

[MrDobalina]

7 yo dd1 is doing homework on 'heros'. She has to interview me about my hero and write about it

I got very excited about imparting information about Emmeline Pankhurst and Suffrage

DD1 looking not so excited, in fact positively disinterested; kept saying she just needed short sentences to answer her questions

she asked when she was born-'1858 in Manchester' I replied

dd1- 'MANCHESTER? MANCHESTER?! do you know what mum?! if she was alive NOW, she could go to the X Factor auditions couldn't she?!?!'

WTF?????

Mrs Pankhurst made sure that your DD gets to make the completely inane choices she makes. She has the vote, well will when she is old enough, so can think about x Factor not hunger strikes

The xfactor involves voting doesn't it? Some kind of connection there

Blimey ... Pankhurst V Cowell [ boggle emoticon ] I know who I'd be rooting for ... Maybe she could shove him under a horse

Yy, tell her that if it weren't for Mrs Pankhurst only men would be able to vote on the x factor

Aww, bless.

It saddens me a bit that we were never taught about the Suffrage. Or Emmeline Pankhurst. A few of us stayed behind to talk to our history teacher about it, who was a lovely man, but it isn't in the curriculum.

i like your thinking ladies!!

i will impart that information to dd1, -when i have stopped being all disappointed in her--

ISNT it in the curriculum casa?!

that is an outrage!

caja not casa sorry

i told her about voting on the x factor-and the relevance of Ms Pankhurst...there was a momentary pause,and a glimmer of registration and connection

How can she not be interested? what is not exciting about setting fire to stuff and smashing stuff and getting arrested and going on hunger strike??

We talked about it when i was at school. Which was only a few years ago.

My DD has Emmeline in her name, so she'll never be able to forget

How does a 7yr old even know about X Factor?

Have you shown her any pictures? Try making it real. I know someone compared foie gras force-feeding and what they did to the Suffragettes to me when I was very young. I have never forgotten that or eaten foie gras again.

Me too, Nini but I didn't want to out myself.

I spent today debating whether the Suffragettes helped or hindered the women's suffrage movement with Year 9s.

Mrs Garrett-Fawcett won out over Mrs Pankhurst in the end according to 9Y1.

Emmeline Pankhurst is a rubbish hero, she only cared about middle class wealthy women like herself getting the vote and disowned her daughter for working with the 'lower classes' and having a child out of wedlock. Then there is the whole argument that the suffragettes probably delayed women getting the vote rather than speeding it up, and women wouldn't have got the vote when they did if the opportunity hadn't presented itself because they had to give all men the vote to avoid civil unrest post WW1, so the suffragettes didn't help at all.

What about some others:
Margaret Haig continued campaigning for equality until she died (don't forget women didn't get the vote on the same terms as men until 1928, and even then were still hugely disadvantaged in law), she didn't just give up like EP. She also ran a newspaper and a lots of businesses including a mining company in Wales at a time when it was completely unacceptable for women to do those jobs. And her autobiography is really funny, which wins her points for me.
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Whaig.htm

Or Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. Amazing woman, and her husband.
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wpethick.htm

Both much more interesting than Emmeline Pankhurst but largely forgotten from history.

O my

"I am constantly outraged that my dd's outstanding school, from which she has just got an A* for History didn't do any women's history at all. And it is an all girl's school, founded in 1881

Whoops, maybe I just did Terry! Who cares, it's a great name

i enjoy a bit of militancy whatsthecatdone!
Its Emmeline all the way for me

vj32, that was the substance of today's debate in class.

Yes, (temporarily hopefully) ex history teacher here, its my favourite topic!

Teresa Billington and the doorbell of number ten is a good story to engage the youngsters.