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?

Remember history is only national curriculum up to age 14. What age is good for starting discusssions about war? It will have to be gone over a few times from different angles for all DC to understand as well.

byo, that's a boy talking to his granny. Presumably she'd have been able to change tack if she'd have noticed him getting upset. That's not the same as a teacher talking to 30 kids.

All of you who are saying it teaches empathy, would you be as keen for your children to be asked to imagine and write about how it feels to be adults in other horrible situations? Being bereaved, losing your home, being terminally ill, being assaulted/abused. Or is 'going to war' somehow special?

I'm really torn. I do think it's a valid exercise and is great for empathy skills, writing as another person etc.

But if you have an incredibly anxious child it puts a different spin on it. My DD is seeing CAMHS for her anxiety issues, and it got really serious during 2014 (end of yr2 and start of yr3) when they focused a lot on war due to the centenary. She was honestly a nervous wreck, it was awful, no amount of reassurance worked. It's had a lasting impact as she still worries about it a lot (yr4).

That's not the school's fault of course though. The teaching of it was brilliant, it's just that my DD couldn't handle it. Avoiding learning about it isn't going to make her less empathetic, the problem is she takes on the weight of the world - too much empathy if anything.

If she had still been at the school when they had the WW dress up day I would have had to keep her home. It would've been too real. She would've really struggled with that homework as well. Doesn't mean it should be removed for most children though as it's a really good idea.

Presumably she'd have been able to change tack if she'd have noticed him getting upset. That's not the same as a teacher talking to 30 kids.

A teacher can gauge children's response and change tack/reframe if necessary, surely?

A teacher can gauge children's response and change tack/reframe if necessary, surely?

I don't know. Could/would they? Certainly DD's teacher doesn't know her very well, I'm not sure she'd notice if anything was amiss. (Not sure granny would either, tbh!) And she's got 29 other children there.

How upset would a kid have to be before teacher abandoned lesson plan?

You don't need to sanitise things to the point of it being trivialised. You just don't fill in the blanks with detail. So eg you wouldn't talk about heroes deaths and how pleasant it was in the trenches and how great and glorious it was to fight for your country. But you can skip things like maiming and agonising death in great detail. You don't lie, you just fill in details at a later age, same as anything we teach children.
I didn't tell dd 'hitler was a naughty man' but neither did I explain in graphic details about gas chambers and mass genocide, and whack schindlers list on. The details come along the way, and if anything a teacher will err on the side of caution because unlike a friend or relative they don't know exactly how far is appropriate for each individual child.

I remember doing something like that in primary school. It was certainly not meant to be about how many people you'd killed that day etc. It was about missing home/rubbish food/looking forward to seeing loved ones/imagining life in the trenches. Certainly nothing to complain to the school about.

I don't know, tldr, but I tend to believe that teachers are sensitive and observant about the children they teach.

I don't think you can teach empathy!

I trust ds' teacher to approach a subject sensitively but of course there will be a small minority of children who find it upsetting.

the list of things you ask about are all things that are happening to children. That makes it much more difficult to approach in a classroom setting. How do you ask a class to write a story about being bereaved when a few of the kids may have experienced it.

Would you object to them undertaking the same exercise but about the Vikings or crusaders?

I'd have found this homework fascinating when I was a child of that age. I had a grandmother who lived thorough WW1 and I used to relish her stories, which were mostly about the socialising they did when the men were home on leave, and her father's role as a fire warden. However there was one grim story about her friend receiving a bad-news telegram and breaking down, screaming - my grandmother hadn't forgotten the friend's reaction, 65 years on and was still a bit tearful about it when she told me. Even so, I wasn't badly affected. I just felt very sorry for the girl. That story taught me a lot.

byo, of course, you're right, those things are happening to children. But, practicalities aside, would you really be okay with the children being asked to imagine how adults in those situations feel. I think it's being asked to imagine themselves in a difficult adult situation I have the problem with. I think I'd have less of a problem with them having to imagine themselves as children going out to the Anderson shelter.

Re the Vikings/Crusaders. I'm not keen on it, but the adventurey bit of it would be okay, eve of battle not so much.

But I do feel less strongly because it's more distant.

That's where we differ - to me it is important to understand that be it 1000 years ago or 100 years ago these are people too. But that's another discussion!

I don't think this homework is asking them to put themselves into the mind of an adult but to consider how they would feel - so they are still in the mind of a child. I would imagine most kids might express how much they miss home, that they are scared or excited, sad at losing friends etc

Yabu we did this project when we were about 7, so 28 years ago. War exists for everyone look at the front page of your news paper!

only covering history where the Brits win
Oh yeah - we won WW1 all on our own of course...???

I think it's more important to empathise about recent events that are still applicable today. Not much chance of any child growing up and making Aztec sacrifices or Viking raids. World war or joining a neo nazi group is perfectly possible though, and it's only learning from past mistakes and horrors that will put people off. All the more important that we learn about things we can practically repeat even now, in order to avoid them.
I've met a few elderly people who to all intents and purposes agree with a lot of what the bnp say. And yet none would ever vote them in because they know all too well how quickly bnp type public image can escalate to full scale horror. Because they grew up hearing concentration camp horror stories, and the final resolution was in their lifetime. And that's people who in my view are easily swayed by dumb propoganda and a bit racist anyway.

All of you who are saying it teaches empathy, would you be as keen for your children to be asked to imagine and write about how it feels to be adults in other horrible situations? Being bereaved, losing your home, being terminally ill, being assaulted/abused. Or is 'going to war' somehow special?

I wouldn't have any trouble with my DCs being asked to imagine how it might feel being bereaved, losing your home, being terminally ill or assaulted/abused, so long as the description of the event is age appropriate - eg. I wouldn't want my 7 year old told about rape before he really knew much about sex, IYSWIM.

However, being asked to think about how other people might feel - I ask my DCs to do that all the time. So, no, going to war is not somehow "special".

I think it's a tougher problem than many commenters appreciate. Presumably the seven year olds are not being told in terms that many of the soldiers being sent over the top would be killed immediately, that others would have a slow lingering end in trench hospitals, that 9 million soldiers, many of them children, died overall, that the trench warfare and massive death toll had little effect on the outcome of the war and the millions of deaths were completely senseless... This would of course be age inappropriate. But if that's not what is being taught, then what's the point? Are they told that the soldiers were a bit cold and frightened but it was all for a good cause? I guess I'm saying that it's hard to imagine a age appropriate way of talking about war that is not also basically a lie. And frankly it's a lie that is likely to have damaging effects in the future: do we really want to teach our children that war is a bit scary but it's all ok really?

Leith I absolutely agree with your feelings about war and battlefields. But that's exactly why the exercise is a good one for children - I would imagine the 'letter home' idea is about getting them to explore feelings like being scared, home sick, sad etc. The more we teach our children that war should not be glorified in this way, the better I think. I learned about the war poets (admittedly when I was a bit older) which explored these issues and feelings in the same way.

Lemith I mean - damn autocorrect!

Really?
Should we just wrap our little snowflakes up and shield them till they're teenagers?
War happened! It's still happening!
If he lived elsewhere he could be living in it.
This isn't cruel, he's simply being asked to write his feelings.
I still remember reading and seeing pictures of war at that age!
I weren't scarred for life.I just remember feeling really sorry for the people and wondering where they were going to sleep.
I loved history ever since.
I'm more thankful everyday that i never went into teaching being on mumsnet.

You ARE!

Millions of children were and are still affected by war.
Yes it's a horrible thing but it is a fact of life.

Even for a 7 year old I think this is a good way of helping them to learn the sacrifices that have and are still being made to protect our freedom and our way of life.

Don't be so ungrateful and don't pass that on to your children either.
War is, was and always will be part of life (sadly) Children can see it on the TV news, newspapers, hear it on the radio. You can't wrap them up in cotton wool all the time!

Of course you would also insist that to play conkers that safety glasses, gloves, hard hat and Hi Viz clothing are worn.

We did this and we had to make the letter look old and it was in primary school. My dad helped me with it as he was very interested in all things military. I won a prize for it actually.
It's not done me any harm apart from I married into the military but that's probably because my dh looks super hot in his uniform

I agree with LittleLionMansMummy.

I don't see the point of exercises like this. They give no insight into the reasons why wars happen, why some people are willing to kill or be killed or the concept of a just war.

Most people would agree that WWII and the defeat of Nazism was a cause worth fighting for. Yet if you'd asked my dad his views on the eve of D-Day you'd have got a gloomy picture and certainly on the evening of the first day.

And he was 26 not seven.

He'd have probably agreed that it was a good thing, all in all. But I imagine that if consulted, he'd have asked to be excused. He hardly ever talked about it, and then only ever about the friends he'd made if they were still alive and the funny things they'd done together.

Asking someone of seven, who has no concept of war, to imagine it with no context apart from the understandable personal desire to avoid being hurt and killed is not just pointless but is misleading and actively harmful.

Therefore as a life lesson it's right up there with this