Honestly? I don’t mind this at all. At 12, it would have encouraged me to engage with the topic, read into what was used at the time and think laterally about how to improve on those methods. It would have inspired me to do more reading around the Tudors and then come to my own conclusions about their society (which would have been along the lines of ‘cool but man, were they messed up).
As a note, I am not, in any way, into hurting people. I watch the ground as I walk to avoid stepping on ants. Causing pain actually makes me feel a bit ill.
But the theoretical exercise would have been different and engaging enough to get me learning more about the Tudors and the society in which they lived. I mean - learning about Middle Age sieges was AWESOME because I got to learn all about trebuchets, and drenching soldiers in boiling pitch as they tried to scale the walls, or lobbing dead cows into the city walls to spread disease and kill the townsfolk. That shit is INTERESTING when you’re twelve. Learning dry dates and treaties and royal lines, so much less so.
But then…I grew up with a Tom and Jerry that did their best to kill each other rather than being best buds. With fairy tales and fables full of darkness, death and gore, and people died horribly for making poor choices rather than treating each other with love and respect while singing a merry song. And that was considered entertainment for four year olds. If you are at least 35, you will have grown up with the same. Did it screw you up? Probably not.
If my mum would have moaned at my school for using similar techniques as Looney Tunes cartoons to get me to engage with the work, I would now, as an adult, consider her mad.
I’m so weirded out by how much we are sanitising kids’ experiences now, because I think it’ll really harm their ability to handle all of the shite on the web and in real life when they do explore it fully. There’s a lot of dark stuff out there…we need to trust them, or they’ll never be able to handle it.