DS 7 has been asked to pretend he is in the battle fields and about to go into war and write a letter home to his family for homework

[Lemith]

This terms topic is ww1, but this piece of work really takes the

I don't want my ds to be thinking about what it is like to go into war. This topic is not suitable for someone so young, war is a terrible thing and the people that survived it were mentally and physically scarred for life.

Aibu?

My DD is 7 and very sensitive, I would be really pissed off if she was learning about WWI now- they do it in yr6 at our school, and imo even that's a bit early. They're children, let them have their innocence a while longer.

I think KS3 is the right time to teach these things.

I can still remember learning about men being called up to fight in WWII in primary - and fearing my Dad would be sent to war. Some time later, the Argentinian conflict started and I was terrified my Dad would be called up to fight. Traumatised, in fact. In all honesty, that fear is so deeply in me, I've never lost it - as I got older, it was my brother, now it's my sons (in the future, they're only 13 and 10 now).

There's a lot to be said for teaching these things at a time when children are old enough to understand them properly. Some children are resilient, some not so much.

6 and 7 year olds can be tricky though. I know a couple who have had issues with stuff they taught in year two and reacted rather badly.

how is your ds normally? if he is aware of other things beyond his years then have a quiet word with the teacher about him finding it difficult. most children though would not see more than a seven year olds perspective on these things and will cope ok.

Are you being serious? Of course YABU. I can't even be bothered to tell you why you're being unreasonable because you only have switch on a TV or read a newspaper to see what's going on in the world. What would you do if a Syrian refugee joined his class? Ask that they may not participate because your son will find out about war, conflict or the unjust treatment of innocent people? It's a letter. Please have some perspective.

It's a shame more children aren't taught this way, I wish there were more teachers like that around. How are children supposed to learn? I think it's been handled very well, just get over the fact that your little darling might learn that life isn't always safe and rosy!

I can't believe the OP's getting such a hard time! They're little for such a short time, it really does seem unnecessarily young. It's not the homework per se I have issue with, it's the age of the children.

Really, why on earth can't that wait til they're 9 or ten?

tidr - Children hear about war anyway. It isn't a concept you can keep them sheltered from.

Bit much for a 7 year old I think. Difficult to get them to comprehend war properly at that age without upsetting them- difficult to hit the ground where the consequences of war are impressed upon them without it being a bit traumatic. Better to cover that kind of thing when they are a bit older and can engage with it emotionally and intellectually better.

cleaty, there's a world of difference between knowing about war and being asked to imagine going over the top/your own likely imminent death/killing people for some political reason that at age seven almost certainly is not understood.

They are not being asked to imagine that. They will write about missing family and being cold.

Then what's the point? War: it's about being cold.

That's teaching them nothing.

War in the trenches =being cold/hot/hungry/drowning in mud. What's the point - 7yr olds don't have (in the main) the capacity to understand it. They're seven. They should be playing in mud, not learning about trench warfare, and trying to "empathise" with WWI soldiers away from home.

OP you should worry. Both my DC drowned on the role play Titanic at that age

OP Britain won the opium wars - they are why we leased/owned Hong Kong.

I don't think 7 is too young per se to learn about war in an appropriate manner, but it is too young to complete this kind of creative writing/empathy exercise with any real benefit, IMO. And there will be some sensitive 7yos it could potentially upset beyond any benefit. My younger child would have struggled - he has a very vivid imagination and finds any threat or danger in books/films etc very difficult.

Personally I think the real question is why on earth the primary school is "doing" WW1 when:

a) they will be covering it all again in detail at secondary school. Possibly more than once!
b) the curriculum has changed and schools are supposed to be focusing on other things with the young children. Like ancient civilizations and early history.

I don't know how much a 7yo can usefully get out of this exercise, and most 7yos are still getting up to speed on the basic mechanics of writing.

This is the kind of homework that I suspect will most likely end up being done primarily by the parents, except for a minority of high-performing children.

"New curriculum? It does seem like the same old stuff , only covering history where the Brits win."

Erm, do you have any actual source for that?

Ancient civilizations mostly have nothing to do with the British, and then when you get onto British history it is mostly a series of "Britain got invaded by XYZ." I'm not defending everything that Gove brought in, but frankly if anything was jingoistic, it was the old pre-Gove schemes of work with their incessant focus on covering the two world wars again and again (ie. wars that Britain WON) and on the evil Nazis. Oh, and the Tudors (oh, look, Good Queen Bess winning again!).

Have him be a conscientious objector. Explain to him in basic terms that they were people who didn't believe in war....and that in the First WW they were often stretcher bearers or ambulance drivers.

just get over the fact that your little darling might learn that life isn't always safe and rosy!

yes indeed. the purpose of education is to make 7 year olds insecure and worried. Next lesson is the holocaust because all those middle class children need to get real - right?

it isn't about making children face the fact that life is nasty and brutal (besides the fact that many of the "little darlings" might know that from personal experience). It is about educating them in the real sense of the word - developing their understanding and knowledge in a way that moves them forward. A 7 year old cannot understand the complex issues around the first world war (can anyone say in one pithy sentence why the great war happend?) nor should she be able to empathise with the complex human emotions that were involved in trench warfare (the people who went through it had a bit of difficulty dealing with it too). Teaching it in depth at an appropriate age is far better than introducing WW1 "lite" to 7 year olds.

I have the same issue with books. So many times children are given books to read that are more appropriate for an older child. It isn't that they can't read them, it is that they will get so much more out of the book if they read it at the right age.

"My child will be traumatised by learning about WW1 at age 7"

Said no military wife ever.

*"My child will be traumatised by learning about WW1 at age 7"

Said no military wife ever.*

have you actually ever studied WW1 yourself? Do you know what happened apart from the broad brush strokes of war/trenches/ unpleasant/we won?

Do "military wives" tell their 7 year olds what really happens in Syria/Iraq/ Afghanistan? I doubt it. A true understanding of WW1 will involve just as awful ideas/concepts/realities.

these are seven year olds. They lack the capacity to understand the complex realities behind WW1 (so do most people actually) and they lack the emotional capacity to deal with the realities of how the war was fought. Their educational time would be far better spend learning events/concepts/ideas that in time, when they are mature enough, will allow them to properly understand the great war.

I will say this, in America our kids learn about violent history very early on.

We learn about the War of Independence around 6-7 years old, where we learned soldiers often lost limbs due to gangrene and that medical care was so horrible they had dirty rusty instruments to saw your leg off.

Then we learn about slavery and slave ships around 7-8, and we're asked questions like how would we feel if we had to stand naked in front of everyone (even a young child can understand that being naked in front of people is pretty embarrassing), and we are shown pictures of whipped slaves to see how horrible it is. That's incredibly horrific if you think about it as an adult. But we still had to write a in our composition notebook about what it would be like as a slave, none of us thought about it deeper than "It would really suck to get whipped and have to work for free, therefore slavery is bad". It transitions to the civil war, where we had to write a letter to President Lincoln as to why he should fight to free slaves and why slavery was bad.

Almost every part of American history is bloody and violent.

The point is, American kids don't get scarred for life because of violent history, neither will British kids. As long as you aren't showing pictures of mass graves to them, it's not going to give them nightmares. You can teach age appropriate lessons on history. You don't need to know the "true horrors" of war to understand that it's bad or even have a general knowledge of what happened.

Concepts like death and war are so far removed from kids that it really isn't going to sink in any further than "that's sad/bad". It doesn't need to. All you need to know about WWI at that age is that secret treaties are stupid, and a bunch of countries fought each other because of it.

I think it's a very valid piece of work. It will not only teach them a very important piece of history about why the western world is shaped the way it is today, but also it will also teach them empathy for those young kids who were soldiers before they were barely out of puberty, and teach them some empathy for what is going on in other parts of the world today.

If all children (especially boys) were taught think about the ramifications of war more often perhaps we'd have fewer godawful, pointless wicked wars in this world.

Actually I am very well versed in the atrocities of WW1 and WW2, not that that has any bearing on my answer.

The teacher is not asking them to write about the gritty reality. They are being asked to empathise with soldiers based on limited, age appropriate information that their teacher has supplied. In the same way as they will have learnt age appropriately about the Romans, the Egyptians or the human body.

The point of my 'said no wife ever' post, which you missed in spectacular fashion, is that when Daddy or Mummy (or the child's best friend's Daddy or Mummy) are deployed there's no avoiding where they've gone and why-even though you avoid the finer, more gruesome details of the ongoing conflict wherever possible.

YABU. This is happening in classrooms everywhere in the UK. Both DSs did something similar and they are all grown up and not traumatised.

7 year olds (in general) have wonderful imaginations and can gain a lot from exercises like this. Empathy is important and the sooner they are introduced to it the better.

I think it's a great approach.

Of course, you don't have to write about your feelings. Or you could, at the outset of the war, go along the 'all the lads say it'll be all over by Christmas' approach. He could tell his family abiut his training, where they think they'll be going, what weapons they have, what else they expect etc, and the difference between life in the forces and life at home (which he could also describe in a "thinking of you" way. Also, he could describe the horses, the supply lines etc.

If he's read/watched HH, he could also include fears of lice and creative uses of urine.

WW1 has been on the primary syllabus for ages, so I think OP is on a road to no-where in getting it removed.

I like ComposHatComesBack's approach.

Though would agree about that being unsuitable for primary school!

But the VD outbreaks (over 415,000 hospital) are an untold story of WW1. And as treatment wasn't terribly effective before antibiotics, it must have had quite an impact back home too.