What age is this piece of writing appropriate for kids to read? Gothic/horror piece

[TheGreenWoman]

There's a debate going on, in a local parents FB page, about this piece of writing being offered to children in secondary school in an English lesson.

What age would you be happy for your child to read this?

poestories.com/read/blackcat?fbclid=IwAR21gYxZhroIrSYn13y7tVpA7oKroyGoJUOa5DisYEO_mx2a_WSrEMUQeqs

Animal cruelty really bothers young teens and is, in a strange way, often more upsetting to them than acts of murder etc. I wouldn't choose to read this with anybody younger than Y9.

It's interesting, though, what Gove'a curriculum reforms have brought into the KS3 curriculum!

How are these children ever going to cope with reading war poetry or things like Hunger Games?

When I was in school things like this weren't even discussed. It was just taught and we got on with it.

Parents are definitely the worst part about being a teacher these days. Their poor delicate little PFBs just can't cope with life, and I say that as someone with complex PTSD.

ProfessorMoody

The Hunger Games is far less graphic than hanging cats, isn't it? It's violence within a clearly fantastical, dystopian context. Kids cope better with that.

The HG is a disturbing concept but it doesn’t have the same amount of gratuitous and graphic violence and torture.

I get teaching must be a disturbing job but how about listening to parents who are saying ‘my eleven year old would be really upset by watching people burned at the stake / reading about tortured cats’ without getting all defensive.

It's being taught to year 8 kids at the school in question, isn't it? I think it's really difficult, because the age range is still really big, and the maturity range even bigger. My DD3 will be 12 years and 1 month old at this point in year 8, whereas another child will be 13 years old. My DD3 is particularly empathetic to animals (and struggles to connect with people) so would find that very difficult to read, but read Hunger Games with great gusto at the age of 10 and cried when she finished the series because she couldn't read them any more.

I've taught it to Y9 with no problems.

He's just beautiful MyCatIsBonkers

I’m sure there weren’t lougle but some children do feign being unconcerned in school but are actually quite upset.

The Hunger Games is far less graphic than hanging cats, isn't it? It's violence within a clearly fantastical, dystopian context. Kids cope better with that. I agree, my 12 year old read The Hunger Games trilogy at 10. It's different.

Ha! I get much more upset by the texts I teach than my students do. Last year me and my department voted not to teach ‘Half term break’ by Heaney any more because we were tired and didn’t think we could get through it without crying (we all have young children). Our students would have been fine.

In Year 9 we teach (depends on the class) Woman in Black, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet. All of those are bleak. This is the age group i’d go for- and only with the top sets because they’d struggle with the sentence structure.

How are these children ever going to cope with reading war poetry or things like Hunger Games? Mine has coped fine. Just can't do horror, it gives him nightmares.

I believe it is recommended for year eight.

Just as Hunger Games isn’t real, neither is this.

I think some of the descriptions of violence, and the death of developed characters who we care about, is far more upsetting than this short story.

It is all in the delivery of the content. The real world is upsetting, and I wouldn’t want to teach a non-fiction piece like this. But fiction is different.

Personally I think the graphic deaths of children are worse than a hanging cat, but perhaps that's me.

God forbid these children find out about how their meat is killed, the children who die in war-torn countries and animal cruelty.

I read it in year 8 or 9.
I loved it and it gave me a lifelong love of horror films and books. I finished it and immediately started Dracula which is now one of my favourite books.
Black Beauty on the other hand had me in floods of tears and I couldn't finish it. I refused to even attempt watership down.

12ish.

I thought that the cutting edge sarcasm as a teaching method died a death in the late 90s for teachers.

Learning where meat comes from has a clear purpose. HG is a young adult novel without vividly described graphic violence or disturbing torture.

It’s like bringing in Carrie as a class text and then sneerily declaring that if the kids are upset by it then they will be upset by the Holocaust. Yes, parts of history and English are always going to have violent and sometimes sexual overtones. So when teaching to a whole class, just bear in mind some might well be upset by it.

Would a short story about the torture and killing of a cat upset some children? I think there’s a fair chance of that, so choose something else. It’s really not that hard.

We have book of Poe tales and DH gave it to DD2 (11) a few months ago. She flicked through it and stopped reading this story as it was too graphic for her, but she read some of the others. I think Year 9 onwards to allow for a good discussion about it.

Immortal, if we taught like that, we'd never be able to teach anything.

Of course you would. You’re not telling me every text you teach in English is about torture and animal cruelty

I love the fact that the guy in the story kills his wife but everyone's banging on about the bloody cat

I teach Primary, and no, of course it isn't even at Secondary level but children are different. Some would get upset at this, some at WWII, some at the destruction of rainforest and some at Pythagoras' Theorum.

I think that current reality is far more horrifying than an old text that isn't really particularly graphic - climate change, plastic use, Trump and Brexit, yet we still teach these.

I m glad we don't use it. I get upset at animal cruelty and this made me feel sick.
The hunger games is fine. There s a heroine you like and are rooting for so you know she has to kill or be killed.
Carrie is pretty gross but wouldn't affect me much.
I would say keep this for year 10 upward and do discuss the content after reading.
It will upset some students.

I love the fact that the guy in the story kills his wife but everyone's banging on about the bloody cat

I didn't read beyond the cat getting its eye gouged out.

because that is how it is framed - the wife dying is passed on in one line. The cat is focused upon because of what it symbolises to the narrator as his decline into drink (mirroring Poe's own decline)

I wouldn't censor literature at all. If a child is interested enough to read it and understand it then I wouldn't stop them.

If the child doesn't understand it, either that it's too difficult to read or they don't understand the subject they'll probably put it down themselves.

My children have free range to any book in the house, with an exception made to anything graphically sexual, which are hidden away.