To object to childrens paintings of Hitler being displayed in school?

[coribells]

My DS is in year 6 . He will be studying WW 11 this year in History. Obviously a big part of that will be learning about the Nazis and Hitler.
Over the past couple of years ive noticed childrens work displayed in the entrance hall, and in the assembly hall. These have included quite a number of childrens paintings of Hitler and descriptions of his early life etc. My stomach turns whenever I see these displays, it almost looks like he is being glorified in some way.
I am of german descent and my kids father is Jewish. Am I being over sensitive. ? would be unreasonable to talk the teacher is about the manor in which they display pictures of Hitler?

Maybe they chose to paint him? Did other children paint pictures of other things to do with WWII?

And as for not displaying pictures of him in school, why shouldn't they? How on earth do you have a display about WWII and ignore anything to do with Hitler?

So schools should only look at the 'nice' bits of history then?

Hilter was a pretty big part of WW2 so of course he is going to be a major part of teachings related to WW2.

What is the learning?

I think I would ask about it.

And OP hasn´t said that this shouldn´t be covered-just why are portraits of Hitler necessary?

Utterly ridiculous to think children cannot learn about Hitler without painting his picture and then hanging them in a primary school.

But he is what WW2 was all about he was an evil man but you can't do WW2 without him and nazis ,

Did I miss 9 WWs that we're suddenly on 11?

I'm Jewish. I have no problem with children painting pictures of Hitler or learning about WWII at age 6 or any age.

it is a bit odd and potentially offensive

ds1's primary had paintings of hitler, but theya lso had paintings of Elizabeth 1, vikings, saxons, The plague (some very gory paintings) they seem to paint everything.

Hitler is offensive there is no getting away from it

the pictures are maybe displayed with today we learned about this man

I wouldn't want hitler portrait hanging in a school display, there are museums for that. To me it is inappropriate. It is important for WWII to be studied but why the paintings

If they are doing an art project on WW2 then it would be rather hard to tell the children that their work can't contain pictures of hitler. Could end up rather restrictive if anything that could be deemed offensive isn't allowed

Children can quite easily learn about WWII without painting pictures of Hitler. They could, for example, be painting pictures of planes, maps, trenches, tanks etc etc. By all means teach about the man, but no need to paint his picture! I think it's weird.

Yes, but what exactly is being learned by painting his picture that could not be delivered in a more imaginative way than 'paint his picture'.

If that is the 'depth' of the learning about Hitler in Year 6 it's pretty grim.

Of course children can learn about Hitler without painting his picture. Personally, I think the problem is that to some it is something that has impacted on their lives or on the lives of their relatives.

Say for example Henry VIII. Now nobody today is likely to be affected by him even if he was a tyrant. (Of course not on the same scale but he was the first I could think of). And in any case there are laws governing Nazi memorabilia and images of Naziism (Sp??) I think if somebody was offended by this then they would have a case for complaint to the LA.

Ok if children are learning about hitler/ nazis and the war and the Hitler pictures are offensive then what sort of pictures/paintings would not be offensive,

as somebody pointed out primary school projects are all linked so art work is included in the topic,

I remember painting pictures of Henry 8th, Tutenkahmun, Boudicca and Julius Ceaser at school to name but a few. All killed people. That's history we need to learn it.

As we don't know the ins and outs of the task the children were doing, simply that some of the pictures contained pictures of hitler then how can people say the children were leaning from it?

They could have been asked to design a propaganda poster a "walls have ears" type poster or a host of similar activities.

Painting his picture and hanging it in a school is a mirror of what happened in Nazi occupied countries in WW2 where children were brain washed by his image.

His image is a huge part of far right propaganda even now.

I can understand why you feel uncomfortable about this but I do think you'd be unreasonable to complain tbh.

Having the children paint Hitler is an interesting exercise I think. We normally would paint a portrait of someone we like, admire or consider beautiful. Hitler is regarded as none of these things (quite rightly) and I would interested to see how that come across through the artwork, in comparison to a 'normal' portrait.

I do however, think you'd be justified in asking more about the context of this exercise and what the school are actually trying to achieve by it as my perspective may be very wide of the mark and I think this kind of work absolutely needs to be set in a context for it work.

I don't think a UK school could be accused of brainwashing children into believing what he did was right ,

Bit extreme to complain to LA without even mentioning it to the school, no?

I didn't say that. I said that it was used in Nazi occupied countries in that way.

Its display in an English school just shows a massive amount of ignorance of the history of its use in a historical context.