Kids and schools book choice of Mister Tom

[LiJo2015]

Ill keep this short as currently baby napped with 5 month old so typing one handed!

11 yo son currently readjng mister tom for school. Came down stairs yesterday and visibly shocked and a little shaken at the part about his abusive mums treatment of his new baby sibling.

No warning about this book came from the school. I have contacted the school to explain that although i wouldnt want storylines like this not to be covered but they can be distressing and would want the assurance that its being handled empathetically.

So

AINBU - if so, why

AIBU - if so, why

At 11, it was suitable for both of mine but obviously different children see things differently.

If you can, I would sit with him and watch the dramatisation with John Thaw. Beautifully made, and that particular episode is dealt with very sensitively.
Would then have a discussion with him, comparing life then and now. Turn it into a positive.

I'm not being funny but as a teacher i've got quite a bit going on right now, teaching a bubble of 20 and running an online classroom. It wouldn't occur to me to ask your permission to read a book which has been on the ks2 curriculum for a decade or more unless you were already flagged to me as being a parent of a vulnerable or SEND child or one with ebd issues. If you are at home with him, you are perfectly able to talk to him. Just as I do with my SEND child when he comes across something or is dwelling on something from school. I cannot, as a teacher, be responsible for 33 kids reactions to several paragraphs. That way madness lies and we will all end up reading anodyne shite so as not to upset anyone. Where is the line?

Shall I do a clinical handover before science because some lifecycle bits are a bit icky? Before histoey because some kids might not like what's in canopic jars? Before geography because floods and tornadoes are not very nice?

I'd never get any actual teaching done.

@phlebasconsidered

Sounds like a shitty attitude imo. Glad you don’t teach my children.

Yes that book has been in the curriculum for years, but I doubt in the previous years it was given out to kids to read at home with minimal teacher input.

I cannot, as a teacher, be responsible for 33 kids reactions to several paragraphs.

Well you should be.

@phlebasconsidered

Maybe you wouldnt think about it initially, but hopefully you would be able to adapt and think about the suitability of things like this being read at home alone, with minimal input. Surely this isnt so hard to inderstand? Surely you would bave experience and training of safeguarding issues, triggering etc?

@phlebasconsidered

'Shall I do a clinical handover before science because some lifecycle bits are a bit icky? Before histoey because some kids might not like what's in canopic jars? Before geography because floods and tornadoes are not very nice? '

I know you know the difference between abuse and above and why both would need to be handled differently. So we'll just leave this here shall we?

That way madness lies and we will all end up reading anodyne shite so as not to upset anyone. Where is the line?

Well, presumably at some point after anodyne shite and before tying up children to pipes with the corpse of their young sibling?

I do hope you encourage your students to look beyond straw man arguments in their critical thinking.

Booktrust recommend this book as an independent read for children aged 10+. Having read it at school at about that age, and as a teacher many times with my pupils, and having recommended it also to my own children at that age, I do think that a NT 10 year old should be able to read, understand and process that story independently.

It is great that you have supported your son op, but the fact that you felt the need to email the school your opinion was unnecessary imo. Do you really think that you told the teachers something that they hadn't thought of? They'd already considered it and reached a different conclusion to you, possibly because they have collectively known more 10yo children than you.

Yabu

I’ve previously noted on other threads that the most generous description of phlebasconsidered as a teacher would be “uncaring” and possibly “shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a child”, so I wouldn’t bother attempting to engage them.

@Justcallmecaptainobvious

Thanks for the heads up

It,s a fantastic story with a happy ending. The film is great too. I thiink it is a good way to introduce children to the idea that some children are abused, neglected and also the horros of war. My chhildren have done this book at school. (my son last lockdown.) My daughter did bou in striped pj, either in yr 7 or 8. They are traumatic but lifes not all unicrons and rainbows.

I think the school did warn parents of some of the issues in the book before the children started reading it.

This book should not be read at home without any support and explanation provided throughout by a qualified teacher.

For goodness' sake. At 11 (and long before) I was choosing my own library books, buying books with my pocket money, and randomly selecting books from the well stocked bookshelves in my family home.

It's borderline nuts to say that children shouldn't pick up a (children's) book and read it without it being checked and supported by a qualified teacher!
99% of the books I read as a child had nothing to do with my school life. They were selected and read by me outside school hours.

I remember reading Goodnight Mr Tom at primary school in the early 90s - it is a shocking read but in a palatable way, I think. Isn't that the point of a story, to open our eyes to the world?

PS - when I was 7 I used to read my sister's teenage magazines - I remember staring wide eyed at "position of the week" and "sex confessions" - now THAT's inappropriate!

Oh God yes the idea of people have sex is much more shocking that a child locked in a dark cupboard with a dead baby. I'm glad people recognise that.

@saraclara yes, I was the same. I don't actually know what "support" from a qualified teacher would look like in this situation. The story is upsetting, the teacher can't change that. But I don't think people simply mean comfort. So... What is it? (I'm not making a dig really, it's a personality thing as I also don't understand it when wafted in my direction - if it's not practical accomodations, I can't picture it and instinctively squirm away. I like my own mental space.)

I asked my GS about this, he is a teenager but they read GMT in primary. He said they suddenly stopped and looking back he realises it was just before the cupboard incident. i wonder if the teacher made an assessment that a child/children were finding it too difficult or did she, a teacher who had been teaching that age group at that school for at least seven years (ie since GS had joined the school) suddenly go off the book and decide to abandon it?

If she did decide to leave that book because of a child/childrens reactions then the OP is on the right lines isn't she in that the teacher wouldn't know that if the child is reading at home alone.

@bourbonne

Well I had to watch something for PSHE with a class and new a girl in the classes dad had recently passed and I knew there was a scene where a parent passed, so I asked that student to go and get some photocopying for me ( which I had planned in advance with admin support) and she stayed there for 20 min.

There’s lots of ways to protect those kids which need it

Im actually glad this book exists as well because im sick to death of the bloody cosy view of the war thats presented in this country, especially when you consider what was going on in the east and stuff. It wasnt just Vera Lynne and Community Spirit.

PS - when I was 7 I used to read my sister's teenage magazines - I remember staring wide eyed at "position of the week" and "sex confessions" - now THAT's inappropriate!

I agree it was inappropriate. But how sad that you think it was so much more inappropriate than child abuse.

the bloody cosy view of the war

The parts of the book that should probably have been edited don't have much to do with the war.

It's borderline nuts to say that children shouldn't pick up a (children's) book and read it without it being checked and supported by a qualified teacher!

Not really. You'd need to know who was defining the term 'children's book' and if we trust them. Some children's books were written by some pretty disturbed individuals.

For goodness' sake. At 11 (and long before) I was choosing my own library books, buying books with my pocket money, and randomly selecting books from the well stocked bookshelves in my family home

I was too. My parents hadn’t got a clue what I was reading, let alone my teachers.

My DD read this at 10 and since read Back Home and Cuckoo in the Nest. These books are shocking and upsetting in parts and it's great that you were able to chat about the issues with your DS. I loved Magorian books as a child but still feel churned up at some of the scenes including Rusty's Dad's treatment of her little brother. My DD has coped fine with reading these with discussion.

I'm not sure how much advance earning schools should give really. They're covering WW2 so lots of it is inherantly upsetting, and they may feel that parents can anticipate that? Mine studied Letters from the Lighthouse and the abridged Diary of Anne Frank and it did lead to some worry and upset and discussions at home about the holocaust, persecution of the Jews and modern day refugees etc that we all found difficult. But they coped and I didn't feel the school did anything wrong.

There's no harm in mentioning your son struggled with the content to the teacher, but not with suggesting they did something wrong.