To have complained to school for showing Schindler's List to yr 9's

[jjazz]

Just that really. Dont know which parts they showed but DD was awake at 11.15 last night -upset as the scenes were still in her head. She is sensitive but not over emotional imo. she was 13 at end of August so is a 'young' year nine although the film is a 15 so none of the group would have been that age.

Yes children should understand but in the right way!

So what is the right way if it isn't in a history lesson?

i think the way my school approached this was by factual coverage and they also showed a film version of Anne Franks diary - one that covered only until they were found.

Yabu - when I read the op I thought it said 9 yr olds in which case yanbu but 13 year olds are old enough (yes I know it's a 15!)

YABU - I read Anne Franks diary when I was about 10, my Mum gave it to me, told me to read it and then talk to her if I wanted. What I remember is that I knew already about camps and the war, I'm not sure where from but the actual story wasn't a shock to me then.

I have a 7 year old and her primary school class is covering WWII next term, they are doing a whole evacuee experience thing (I think another poster mentioned the same thing pages ago) but she knows about wars and the world wars. She saw a poppy and asked what they were for etc, so we talked about it.

Whilst I was discussing this thread, this morning, with my daughter, she said that the most horrifying thing she remembers seeing in a history lesson,and the one that stays with her, is the famous picture of a naked little girl running and crying along a road in Vietnam. She said she found that really upsetting. Saving Private Ryan excerpts were "shocking,but not upsetting".She thinks that seeing extracts from films really helps to illustrate the past.

When I was at school doing 'O' levels we were shown the BBC version of Macbeth with Roger Rees and Judi Dench in. I remember it well, because it was very scary,(brilliant acting!),yet with a minimal set... and I can still recall some of the scenes to this day.I thought it was quite shocking at the time,yet we were studying this in depth for English Lit.
I don't think it would have occurred to my mother to be outraged.

By the way...our LKS2 have just done WW2, and the whole evacuation experience....it was brilliant! Then we finished off the topic with a VE day celebration!

i found Private Ryan totally shocking and i was an adult!

my feeling on this is that knowing about things factually doesn't have the same emotional shock. the emotional impact isn't an essential for learning.

My mother grew up alongside survivors from the camps and she finds it very strange that anyone would children to glimpse the reality of it, given how fucked up that was. best to know the history 'lest we be destined to repeat it' without scaring the pants of kids (or titillating those who revel in horror stories)

Anne Franks diary as a film was totally not as shocking or visceral as films showing the camps. nor was the book.

I saw Schindler's List in year 9. The teacher skipped some bits. I can't remember what exactly but I am guessing the sex bits.

I think the BBFC should do a 12 rated version for schools so that you know that the correct bits are being skipped. In all likelihood I think your DD was probably shown something that it is not unreasonable for 13 year olds to watch.

The Anne Frank Film with Ben Kingsley spends extensive time in the camps and is pretty harrowing

I'm sure that I saw footage of the liberation of Belsen on John Craven's Newsround in the 80s. I couldn't have been more than 10. There were piles of corpses being shoved into a mass grave. Sometimes I think I must be misremembering because it was such harrowing material for children's TV. It had a huge effect n me.

My gran was a St Johns Ambulance woman who helped the liberation. I don't think she ever spoke of it. Certainly not to us.

I think that Newsround clip was swift If i saw the same thing. I don't think i identified what i was looking at correctly - if you like, the fact wasn't shocking because it didn't look real, whereas films like The Pianist look real, (even though they aren't) and are more shocking.

i was at school a good few years before that film was made...

It's usual practice to ask parental permission to show an age above the class film. So in my old school there would usually be about 4 or 5 kids out of 300 who didn't see it. Out of those usually 2 were only not watching it because their parents forgot to return the form. The film was a key component of the year 9 history curriculum which spends about a term on the events leading up to WW2 and the holocaust.

I do understand your concern and i wonder about what I'm going to do with my youngest who is a sensitve soul and the youngest in the year but there is a reality here, it happened and many children were killed and its horrible but it is imperative that these things never happen again.

"i don't really get why they need to see an feature film when real footage exists "

Would real footage be less shocking/upsetting??

Haven't read the whole thread, and someone has probably already said this.but.... There is a schools version of this film. Are you sure she didn't see this version?

I read the Diary of Anne Frank when I was 10, it is obviously totally different from watching SL. ( also the diary ends when they are found by the gestapo, and actually speculating about what her feelings must have been in those hrs, or while she was on the train etc became part of me).
Had SL already been made, I would have begged my parents to let me watch it by then. I wanted to know, and I wanted to explore my feelings about it.

Real footage is even more upsetting than SL.

They wouldn't have shown the whole film though, it goes on for hours, it would be a suitably abridged version for educational purposes. Therefore the 15 certificate doesn't apply.

My 12-year old son has seen the film, he watched it with me a couple of months ago, after expressing an interest to see it. I told him that if, at any time he wanted me to turn it off, then I would do. However, he sat through the whole film, and yes it did shock and upset him, but no more than what he'd already read/seen about the Holocaust.

I'm glad it shocked and upset him, I'd be more concerned if it hadn't.

Well after all this I asked my 10 yr old when they were going to watch TBITSP and he said they had seen it weeks ago. He seemed ok about it.

Agree that movies are shot to maximise emotions etc. the viewer is being manipulated so can understand if some parents are uneasy about youngish children seeing this kind of media. no one is saying that they shouldn't learn or know about the Holocaust, just about the manner it is done and at what age.

The actual footage is more shocking in the sense that you get an idea of the scale of the horror but the bodies are almost naked and stripped of individuality, and as Edgar Allen Pond says, it almost looks unreal. A film can tell the story of a person who was murdered in the holocaust and of that singular tragedy and it can have more emotional resonance. Six million of those singular tragedies is almost beyond comprehension.

The most moving part of Schindler's List, I thought, was the end credits, when they showed black and white photos of each of the workers, then suddenly, in colour, the same people today. The sudden transformation from archive-style to current was a powerful reminder that these were and are real people, not just characters in a film.

Year 9 is too young. It affected my whole education - before we watched it, I loved History and wanted to take English, history and Geology at A level, to become an archaeologist. After that video haunted me for months on end, I gave up history entirely as I couldn't deal with more detailed examining of the holocaust at that age. I took geography, which I hated, and my whole life path changed.

Don't show something that traumatic to 13 year olds. 15 is plenty young enough.

edam I agree, that bit makes me cry without fail. IMO it was the most powerful part of the film, and it's a really powerful film anyway!