10 year olds learning about the holocaust etc

[restbetweentheelements]

Dc's yeargroup are 9/10
His teacher this year has told them in graphic detail about:

• gas chambers in german concentration camps
• terror in french revolution by showing painting of chopped off head with blood held up next to guillotine and details of what happened
• all about the charlie hebdo teacher terrorist attack in france
• murders in news how many women were killed by partners - they chatted about the news on fridays and dc said it was never about life affirming things (he said nice or interesting things)

DC has been affected by it, and he drew a picture of his teacher with a guillotine and children and he wrote "our teacher is killing us with terror" (he draws a lot, is quite expressive generally...) - i found the drawing screwed up in the bottom of his bag

YANBU - the teaching is not appropriate, the subject matter of treatment of Jews etc is ok in age appropriare way is okay but focusing on terror aspects is not
YABU - no problem with this

If YANBU, then WWYD
I remember learning about medieval torture methods when 10, at school. Is there some sort of theory about terror being useful for 10 year olds???

@I8toys

The news is worse. My youngest learnt about Anne Frank in year 6 and we visited her museum in Amsterdam. Both of my 2 now 15 and 17 have a profound love of history with so much more knowledge than I have. They particularly love ww1 and ww2 history and visiting historic sites. Travel restrictions have stopped our visit to dresden, leipzig, Nuremberg, Munich and Dachau. I love their enthusiasm and passion for the subject. Their great grandfather was a pow so to me it's important.

But the museum will state what age it is appropriate for. We have a Holocaust Museum near us too - it states 10 up - and it is appropriate for 10 up. My dc already knew about Anne Frank and the holocaust and the political setting before the class - the teacher commented to me about his knowledge - he has books on a variety of subjects and reads them regularly. He isn't being shielded at all. This is the point - he did not need to be told about the grim details - and the guidelines recommend that children in primary are not told the grim details.

I wish people would read the thread before commenting as this has been said several times.

We are part Jewish - it is important to us too!

Teaching horror and terror to children desensitises them. The goal should be to cultivate empathy.

To the poster who asked about the news, DC will watch some news but not all. Everything will be spoken about, but not the grim details. Covid changed things a bit because it wasn't possible to filter it at times - I htink it has affected all children.

I am going to bow out of the thread now - I wanted to know how most people saw this sort of thing and thank you to everyone who posted all their different opinions.

" I think you are missing the point here - the guidelines say that the grim details should not be taught at all - there have been at least 4 posts upthread which say this explicitly, quoting from the guidelines"

Yes I follow the guidelines. I am asking you to consider that the odd conversation that pushed those may have been an unplanned response to a question or comment from another child, as that has certainly been my experience.

I doubt her lesson plan was to terrorise kids about Charlie Hebdo. But that attack was covered on Newsround. It can be discussed appropriately with young children.

I don't agree with the details of what experiences may have entailed in the gas chamber. At times I have wanted to push this, usually in response to children sniggering or showing a breathtaking lack of empathy. Of course, I don't.

Perhaps you need to hone your list to things that you have a legitimate grievance about, if things unfolded as your son says, and avoid muddying the water with things that do appear oversensitive (portrait of French Revolution for example), and talk to the teacher.

The teacher started these classes around April, and they were on a particular day and DC would say on that morning "Oh God - more trauma today" (with dark humour). How would you feel if a work colleague came in every week with some new grim details to share thinking that everyone just needed to know in order to save the world from future terror?!
If something was seriously concerning me in April I'd have raised it with school then instead of subjecting my child to something that both them and I apparently consider highly traumatic for several months.

I don't really understand why a parent would leave such a serious concern several months only ro raise it on Mumsnet. It seems a bit of an odd response given the level of trauma it's apparently caused.

We learned about the holocaust in year 6 and read Anne franks diary (her dad appeared on blue Peter that year too which I remember vividly). We didn't learn that anyone other than Jews were executed though.

We learned about the Khmer Rouge which had recently happened in maybe year 5, definitely primary. Also learned about Vietnam agent orange etc

I admit I might not be typical but I took mine to Bergen Belsen at ages 9&11 - we don't sugarcoat history but we give them age appropriate information

I'm guessing he only has a couple more days in this class op, if he hasn't already finished. Hopefully you can help him process it all over the Summer holidays and he'll have a better experience at secondary in September.

My old class were very interested in WW2. I told them some bits about the Holocaust and about the amount of people who died but not about the method of deaths. They do a whole unit of work on WW2 in Year 6 and I think that covers it in slightly more detail but even then, I don’t think they go too far into it - rightly or wrongly.

Personally I feel like I wouldn’t really have these kinds of conversations on the fly. You can never ensure that every member of the class is leaving the conversation without being confused or worried and they’re so likely at that age to take it home and say “Miss X told us about…”

I’m perfectly happy to address difficult themes with my class and we recently read a novel written for adults in our English work which dealt with a lot of challenging topics. My team and I discussed how to approach them and then we discussed them as a class, and it was really interesting. If children deliberately ask me about real life events then I don’t pretend they’re not true (I was asked about school shootings once which was tricky) but I just think it’s a difficult one. I can think of several children in my old class who would have been very unsettled by this kind of thing. It’s not always appropriate in a class setting and it can easily be handled wrong.

A 9 year old at Belsen? What on earth were you thinking?

Pandemic = trauma and loss.Therefore curriculum should be adjusted accordingly.

@sadperson16

A 9 year old at Belsen? What on earth were you thinking?

Pandemic = trauma and loss.Therefore curriculum should be adjusted accordingly.

I was comparing that too. So many people claim kids have been "traumatised" by the pandemic, yet judging from this thread the large majority are happy to subject their primary school aged children to all the gory details of the biggest crime in history!

It turns my 63 year old stomach.I would never choose to visit such places,nor spend time thinking about the horrors of it

How on earth can a child process this stuff? I have a choice. A 9 year old with their parents has no choice,a child in a classroom has limited choice.

I teach year 5/6 and refuse to go into detail about the Holocaust because I think it will either traumatise or desensitise them. They can’t grasp concepts on this scale. We do talk about hitler and how he gained the support of ordinary people through propaganda etc. Usually some of the kids will then share what they know about the Holocaust or ask questions, and I facilitate a short discussion but tell them they really need to be older to find out more.

I think your son’s teacher has misjudged this one. Is he inexperienced? If so I’d have a friendly chat and explain the impact on your son.

“It turns my 63 year old stomach …”

Mine too, late 50s, which is precisely why it needs to be taught.

@sadperson16

It turns my 63 year old stomach.I would never choose to visit such places,nor spend time thinking about the horrors of it

How on earth can a child process this stuff? I have a choice. A 9 year old with their parents has no choice,a child in a classroom has limited choice.

Yes mine too, thank goodness. That is the reason it must be taught, to ensure it continues to horrify and remains sufficiently known to be abhorrent.

Well you will want to avoid the utter sh* on tik tok who - for some reason known only to their own sick little heads - are ‘dressing up’ as concentration camp victims (to look like the awful portrait photos that were taken as they arrived).

Yanbu. Some children are more sensitive than others. The children of less sensitive parents will never grasp the horror and trauma that this kind of ‘teaching’ causes sensitive children. My child has been given nightmares by school lessons many many times. One topic caused the whole class to have nightmares for a two weeks. There is something very wrong with English primary school topics.

Teaching children about horror that they can’t change at too young an age is psychologically harmful and sadistic.

This can be covered perfectly well at secondary school. It was taught at age 14 when I was at school.

Teaching children about horror that they can’t change at too young an age is psychologically harmful and sadistic.

I agree. Children need the emotional tools to process this kind of information and to put it in context. Very few primary school pupils will have that kind of emotional maturity.

Children will have different responses - it will go over some children's heads, some will be fixated by the gory details and some more sensitive ones will be traumatized. Many primary school children will be unable to respond appropriately to and understand the lessons which the teacher is trying to teach. The impact would be far greater if taught at an appropriate age.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

When DDs went to school in Germany (a British school) Yr5/6 had a school trip to a Concentration Camp.

History should be learnt about and from, not forgotten.

Jesus that's a lot to take in at a young age. I applaud the school though. It's the kind of thing you don't forget and kids their age would've been in the camps. That's the reality and they probably will never forgot what they learned there.

I've been to the Holocaust museum in Israel and despite it all it's a positive and elegant place (heartbreaking and sad obviously but so utterly dignified and such a powerful place).

Still unnecessary and potentially damaging at age 10/11. German schools tend to organise a trip to a concentration camp around the middle of secondary school (14 years).

A 9 year old at Belsen? What on earth were you thinking?

I was just a little older when I learned that my granddad had been part of the liberation of Bergen Belsen, complete with the horrors he witnessed there. The one thing that still cuts me to the core is that had they arrived a week earlier then Anne Frank may have survived. I have no problem talking to my 10yo ds about the evils of prejudice, ignorance and intolerance as a result.

How can history be inappropriate?! This is madness. History is SO important. It's not all nice - in fact - the most important things weren't at all nice. We still need to teach it to our kids.

Also, stop calling it 'terror' for dramatic effect. It's not terror. It's history.

Of course this subject needs to be taught. Just not to young children in great detail.

You can teach children about history in stages. They do not need to know graphic details at a very young age. You can tell them that millions of Jews, as well as disabled people and political dissenters were murdered in concentration camps without telling them exactly how. Ime just telling mine the scale of it, and using the word murder has been enough to get it through to them, without traumatising them. They are horrified enough to know that children were amongst those killed without knowing exactly how.

Similarly the slave trade.

There is no need to shy away from the basic facts of history, but there is also no need to gratuitously subject them to inappropriate detail.

And OP was talking about Charlie Hebdo as well, so the word terror was completely appropriate in that context.