To not want my daughter looking at image of concentration camps

[Coffeeessential]

My daughter has just started Yr 5, and is studying World War 2 this year. She was already having difficulty coping with the subject as she is so sensitive, but I saw nothing wrong with her being given the basic facts as long as there was not too much detail - She's only nine after all.
When she came home very quiet yesterday afternoon, she told me that the class had been looking at online images of 'Jews in concentration camps', and I am furious. While I understand that we cannot protect children from the world forever, surely nine is too young to even begin comprehending such terrible images?
I would appreciate other people's opinions, before I go crashing into the Headmaster's office!

It is too young IMO. In year 2 and 6 my children did WW2. In Year 2 it was all dig for victory and evacuation plus the blitz, in year 6 they learnt more and they learnt what Hitler did but they didn't go into the detail re the concentration camps; they learnt that he had a lot of people killed but didn't know how except that it was in a concentration camp. They saw pictures of the concentration camps as they are now.

No reason in the world for such a young child to be exposed to these images.

"Google it" is not exactly an appropriate teaching method, especially for such a subject. I just googled it myself and those are not images I would share with children that age. Did the teacher not think to try out the search terms herself first?

There are plenty of images in among them that could be used to effectively teach students, without sharing the particularly graphic ones. I don't think young children need to see carts with bodies piled up, or some that are even more graphic. Photos of those in the camp, children, even the living facilities are generally quite acceptable if vetted appropriately.

Children do need to learn. But it always needs to be done in an age appropriate way. When you've got 30 students in the class, you can't always avoid upsetting everyone. Some children are more sensitive than others, so you need to be able to balance their needs with the need to teach about a vital subject. It can be done. It's not always a perfect science. But telling students to go off and google images is never a good idea!

Slight tangent here, but has anyone read a book called (I think) "Chocolate Cake with Hitler"?

its a fictionalised account of the last day of the Goebbels children in the bunker at the very end of the war.

it's a horribly atmospheric, tragic story, and a very powerful read.

Wouldn't bother me at all even with my 4 year old. These pics need to be shown.

Slight hijack but I would ask you not to refer to the Holocaust as 'part of World War II' or similar.

The Holocaust is a separate event from WWII, which started before the war did. Although they are of course closely related, the Holocaust was in some ways much more horrific because of the systematic and cold-blooded way genocide was carried out. While many more people, indeed many more civilians died in WWII than in the Holocaust, there are some aspects of the Holocaust which make it completely different from any war or war crimes.

Holocaust deniers have tried to portray the victims of the Holocaust as victims of war, to relativise between the Holocaust and war crimes carried out by both sides in WWII, and to claim that the Holocaust was a detail of the world war. I think it is important to make the distinction to point out that the Holocaust was not something that 'just happens in wars'.

The transition from concentration camps to extermination camps started well after WW2 started ... around 1941.

Can't believe there are people saying that if there were 9 year olds in the camps then 9 year olds should learn about it in school! That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

What should 9 year olds be protected from then? Graphic live images of murders? Snuff movies? Images of torture? We all would draw a line somewhere I'm sure.

I think it's fine for a 9 year old to learn about the Holocaust but it needs to be done in an age-appropriate way. Children this age cannot process things the way an adult would and even I as an adult struggle to process some aspects of the Holocaust e.g. watching Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' and learning about the casual murder of babies and toddlers really disturbed me.

Kristallnacht was in 1938 Mimishimi, and the Wannsee conference was in 1942. Not sure what your point is.

McAvity good point.

My dd1 and I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam when she was 6 (we had 9 hours flight connection time). Her comment at the end was "that wasn't very nice" and then "but we should remember about Anne, shouldn't we, mummy?"

On holiday in France we visited the Normandy beaches.

2 years ago when she was in primary 7, age 11, the school asked for permission to let the class see "The Boy In Striped Pyjamas" in class. I said yes (and have just sent back the form for ds to see it this year, and will do the same for dd2 next year). It's a cert 12.

Dd1 found it very upsetting, but said she was so glad she had seen it, because of all the people who died. It hasn't caused any lasting damage, she now says it's a film everyone should see - once! (There was clear permission given for any pupil who had had enough to leave and do another activity).

I think that it is very important to keep the memories of this kind of thing alive. I realised recently that I'm 42, oldest dc is 13. There's a bigger age gap between me and dd1 than there is between me and 1945. Both her great-grandfathers who served in ww2 died before we had children. While it's not right to dwell on it I still think it's important that "At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we shall remember them".

Very good point avery
A 9 yo does not need to see something just because a 9 yo had suffered it. That is utter nonsense.

Also good points from midnight and mcavity I thought.

jellybeans really??

I don't think the problem is a child being too sensitive. I think the problem is that a 9 year old is too young to have the life experience/general knowledge to put some things in to context and then the message is meaningless.

If you do go in, you should ask about the ICT policy and which safe search tool they are using. There is a real e-safety issue if the children have unrestricted access to google or other non-child friendly search engines. At our school, there is one search engine at ks1 and a different one at ks2. The children are supervised whilst using them and teachers are still asked to check the results before using in class.

McAvity that's an interesting point about the separateness of the Holocaust and World War II. I can see that if Holocaust deniers say the deaths should be seen as a some sort of almost coincidental side-effect of Germany being at war, it is important to say - no of course it wasn't. On the other hand there's an inter-relationship. Once war was declared the chances of people emigrating had vanished. The possibilities of people from outside observing Germany's increasingly discriminatory policies - and of people inside letting the world know diminished. The truth of what happened only came to public knowledge with the Allies liberated the camps. Also - though I would have to read this up - my understanding from a book on the Wannsee Conference was that the decision to make the shift from concentration/forced labour camps towards genocide was directly linked to the scarcity of resources in Germany as the war continued.

There is a fine balancing act between teaching the Holocaust as a one-off so horrendous it deserves special treatment, without losing its context as an event in a society and a time, and drawing parallels with other more recent genocides.

Giving it special status as The Worst Horror Ever is really only justifiable on the grounds of scale. There was nothing special about Germany that made it happen; just all the right circumstances coming together, just as the right circumstances came together in Rwanda.

The further we get in time from the events themselves, the easier it becomes to look at the international picture and say "yes but look at Sweden's policies on euthanising/sterilising the disabled in the same period" or "look at how marginalised all gypsies were all over Europe at the time" and to look at the economic demographics, or the precise political structure that allowed a minority party to create a dictatorship, and so on and so on.

But to say today "actually, this could have happened in GB/SE/FR too, with only a few different circumstances" is hugely politically sensitive because what those who were alive at the time (or their children) hear is "you were all nearly Nazis too".

We can look at the Peninsular Wars with a cool head because two centuries separate us. We're only just questioning the true motives and problems of WW1 (which started roughly halfway between Waterloo and today) but there still exists a great deal of personal sentiment even though nearly everyone alive then has now died. I would argue it won't be until our children are the teachers and decision makers that we can truly look at the 1940s with any kind of emotional disinterest.

I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that we should look at the Holocaust with "emotional disinterest". Yes, we need to be able to study it in a calm and measured way, taking into account its context, etc, but I never want anyone to feel anything but horror and revulsion for it. Or any other atrocity perpetrated on a group purely because of who they are, be it slavery of Africans, the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Killing Fields, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc. We must never be disinterested.

Being disinterested doesn't mean not recognising that it was awful, it just means looking at all of it without getting stuck on "this was awful and I would never do that". Because I believe that's the default position in the UK and isn't ultimately helpful.

Op - have you talked to the teacher about it? I'm very interested to know whether they were randomly googling and if so why. Sounds really crummy as a teaching tool. Please come back and update!

I think its important that they see it. My ds will be studying this next year and I fully expect him to be upset, possibly slightly traumatised by the images he sees. I would be very worried if he could look at images like that and not be very upset. I pray that the horror of those images, and the feelings he has about them will stay with him for the rest of his life, because it should never ever be allowed to happen again, and only by keeping the memory of the atrocity alive can we stop it from happening again.

Wee-I think ds will be watching TBITSP this year at school but I will watch it with him beforehand at home so we can discuss it and possibly have a little cry.

I'm of the mind that if people managed to endure such atrocities, then who are we to say we are too sensitive too learn about them?

The schools job is to let parents know curriculum content so parents can talk to their children about anything distressing, provide appropriate 'talk down' time during the lesson and always keep it contextual. Making provision for children to feel they can 'do something' about what they have learned about helps psychologically too maybe via doing something to benefit a linked charity.

What concerns me more are children who go home to parents who don't provide a space for them to talk about such things. The OP@s daughter will have that safe space.

I'm of the mind that if people managed to endure such atrocities, then who are we to say we are too sensitive too learn about them? Learn yes, view horrific images at a young age no. Children get raped during civil wars, you wouldn't want your child to see footage of a child getting raped, so in the same way it's completely unnecessary for a child of nine to have free reign googling images of corpses.

Wouldn't bother me at all even with my 4 year old. These pics need to be shown. Your four year old had no where near the emotional maturity to process those images. That is one of the craziest things I've ever heard on MN!

^ this.
What kellyelly said.

I disgree too Mignonette

It seems to be setting the bar rather low. Shouldn't we be trying to give the impression that atrocities are exceptionally awful, rather than a commonplace aspect of life?
We do try to shield our children from the exceptionally awful, it's not a standard thing that children should suffer this, or even witness.

When they are a bit more mature they should of course learn and bear witness. In a respectful way that grasps the context and the lead in rather than just a helpless horror at the macabre.

But ... I don't know... does it give people an awfully bleak view of the world to know from very young that this has happened, often and may do again? Does it colour their view of people before they can properly contextualise it? Does it actually drill into kids taht this is wrong wrong wrong and by learning we will prevent it happening again, or has that become a bit of a truism? It's not racism is a thing of the past. Tribalism still thrives (I know of course there are other factors involved in that.) Hard to measure, I suppos