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AIBU?

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Original poster

DD being asked to design a torture method for homework??

398 replies

milkysmum · 29/03/2022 16:46

DD has been set her history homework for this week. She has to design a ' new Tudor Torture device'. Draw it, label it etc and explain why it would be more effective than previous know torture devices! AIBU that this is a bit unnecessary? They are year 8. Do they really need to be encouraged to think of new ways to torture people!?

OP posts:
ididntevennotice · 29/03/2022 17:05

@Hereward1332

Presumably it will be leading up to a discussion on why torture does not work and should be consigned to the past. Without knowing the context of the course, I would trust the teachr is not a bloodthirsty idiot.

Discussion is possible without design.

OP it's awful and I would be speaking to the head teacher of the school to see what their take was, I would absolutely take it further if I had to.

Porridgealert · 29/03/2022 17:05

This wouldn’t sit well with me . I think it’s de humanising … fun ways to kill people !

They're not looking to kill people. Just painful ways to get information. Maybe it's a reading comprehension test?

StillWeRise · 29/03/2022 17:05

really, really inappropriate !
1.Unless the school is in some very remote backwater it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a child in the class may have a parent who has survived torture

  1. It could still in any case be traumatising for a student
  2. Is this not counter to what we hope to learn from history? Surely we should be thinking that the Tudors were like us in many ways and would have suffered real pain when tortured. It's real, not some gruesome fiction.
GregBrawlsInDogJail · 29/03/2022 17:06

Unless your DD starts trying to build and test her design, I really wouldn't worry.

I write fiction. I have "done" truly horrible things to characters in my writing. Am I sociopathic, because I could imagine those things, and the suffering of people subjected to them?

I think it would make for a really interesting discussion with a teen. I'd love to discuss it with mine.

TheWildRumpyPumpus · 29/03/2022 17:06

Of course people are tortured now - ever heard of Guantanemo Bay?

Tell her to use her imagination. A rotating feather duster that just tickles the soles of the feet would be a worse fate than water-boarding for me…

StillWeRise · 29/03/2022 17:07

please don't trivialise torture like that

ClafoutisSurprise · 29/03/2022 17:08

Tasteless and of no educational value.

Reminds me of a school project I did aged about 12 (not in the UK), which was to design rules for an ideal society. Everyone got fixated with crime and punishment early on, and I was pretty much the only person in my class who didn’t think it was a great idea to kill or imprison for 20/30 years/life anyone found guilty of any crime, however minor and including adultery (which looking back as an adult seems especially weird). Some classmates thought the prisoners should be kept underground. All this was encouraged by our teacher!

Although arguably that did get you thinking about justice. Deciding torture devices doesn’t serve any useful purpose that I can see.

tkwal · 29/03/2022 17:10

How about encouraging her to design a non lethal , non harmful (in the longer term) method of torture ? Like...putting someone's feet in stocks and tickling them with a feather or designing a machine that would scrape nails down a blackboard ?. (I would spill the beans at the first touch of the feather)
Fwiw I remember reading about torture devices from various ages in primary school. I know the thought of torture isn't pleasant but it was a reality in most of Europe for centuries and still is in certain parts of the world. Please don't encourage youngsters to be snowflakes

Thewindwhispers · 29/03/2022 17:12

The teacher that set that homework is a creepy weirdo. I’d email the head cc the teacher and ask for an explanation of why they think this is an appropriate homework.

Coyoacan · 29/03/2022 17:15

How horrible. I have always hated the way so much effort and imagination was put into torturing people.

NETSRIK · 29/03/2022 17:15

It's really bad. It's sick. In what way is devising a new torture measure educational? I would be furious if my children had this set for their homework.

Thewindwhispers · 29/03/2022 17:15

@tkwal

How about encouraging her to design a non lethal , non harmful (in the longer term) method of torture ? Like...putting someone's feet in stocks and tickling them with a feather or designing a machine that would scrape nails down a blackboard ?. (I would spill the beans at the first touch of the feather) Fwiw I remember reading about torture devices from various ages in primary school. I know the thought of torture isn't pleasant but it was a reality in most of Europe for centuries and still is in certain parts of the world. Please don't encourage youngsters to be snowflakes
@tkwal it isn’t being a “snowflake” to not want preteens to sit around dwelling on methods of torture and trying to invent their own. That is simply disturbing and wrong. The fact that it is part of history doesn’t make this homework acceptable. Should we also ask preteens to think of ways to humiliate and murder jews? That’s part of history too.

I remember Jamie Bulger even if you don’t. I’d rather live in a world of “snowflakes” than a world of kids who think torture is fun.

WonderfulYou · 29/03/2022 17:16

I would design a torture machine that continuously gives homework, every time you finish one piece another one pops out.

It doesn’t have to be gory it can be humorous and silly but many children will enjoy the gory aspect like they enjoy talking about the war and guns or exploding things. They don’t really comprehend the real life torture bit.

OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow · 29/03/2022 17:17

Think about it creatively-instead of the really horrible physical tortures they had could she come up with funny ones? Having to listen to really bad Elizabethan poetry, cleaning the garde-robe, telling Henry viii how good his singing is, being court jester and having to make Queen Mary laugh?
That saying some kids are going to really relish this.

SolasAnla · 29/03/2022 17:17

A more efficient or effective way to beat, burn, break bones, pull joints apart, cut off body parts, rape, starve, strangle, disembowel.

Seriously; cant see any problem. Much more useful than learning dates nobody ever need to use in real life.

Confused
VickyEadieofThigh · 29/03/2022 17:19

@NETSRIK

It's really bad. It's sick. In what way is devising a new torture measure educational? I would be furious if my children had this set for their homework.
Retired headteacher (secondary) here; also former history teacher.

I think it's dreadful. I'd speak to any member of staff who set that as an exercise because it's inappropriate to ask children to imagine new methods of torture.

beattieedny · 29/03/2022 17:21

I am a teacher and would be appalled by this too. There is of course a place for teaching about this issue, but not like this. If a colleague set this, I'd have a strong word.

ididntevennotice · 29/03/2022 17:22

@tkwal

How about encouraging her to design a non lethal , non harmful (in the longer term) method of torture ? Like...putting someone's feet in stocks and tickling them with a feather or designing a machine that would scrape nails down a blackboard ?. (I would spill the beans at the first touch of the feather) Fwiw I remember reading about torture devices from various ages in primary school. I know the thought of torture isn't pleasant but it was a reality in most of Europe for centuries and still is in certain parts of the world. Please don't encourage youngsters to be snowflakes
Reading about torture devices and being edict is not the same as designing them. Nobody is being a snowflake for suggesting children shouldn't be actively thinking of ways to torture people. What on earth is wrong with you to say such a thing Hmm
Quincunx · 29/03/2022 17:23

I think it's disgusting, totally unnecessary and would be sending a letter to the school. My daughter would decide for herself whether she wanted to do it but there'd no input from me and not a subject I'd allow as a dinner table topic.

History teaching in schools was dire 30 years ago, looks like it's even worse now. Why are they focusing on this rubbish, when most teens can't tell you basic historical facts about their own country?

ClafoutisSurprise · 29/03/2022 17:26

@Coyoacan

How horrible. I have always hated the way so much effort and imagination was put into torturing people.
Yes. Funnily enough, I’ve come to this thread after just finishing a novel about the Holocaust. One of the characters in the book is a designer whose inventiveness is reappropriated by the Nazis, a clear comment on how something good is perverted. Humans are creative enough when it comes to dreaming up new and more efficient ways to torture and kill, no need to encourage it.

Also a bit surprised at the posters suggesting tickling machines and similar. The lesson is about torture - nothing lighthearted about it.

Afterallsbeensaidanddone · 29/03/2022 17:26

For once I hope the DM picks up this thread. There needs to be a wider discussion about how we bring up children to be moral, kind human beings in a world where human trafficking, violence and rape abound. Encouraging and validating how to theoretically torture in a new, creative way seems like poor safeguarding of our children and the adults they'll become.

Thesefeetaremadeforwalking · 29/03/2022 17:27

This is the most bizarre thing I have heard for a long time. Shock

A letter to the head is called for.

SolasAnla · 29/03/2022 17:28

@Porridgealert

This wouldn’t sit well with me . I think it’s de humanising … fun ways to kill people !

They're not looking to kill people. Just painful ways to get information. Maybe it's a reading comprehension test?

The term hung, drawn and quartered is features torture as a punishment alongside the killing. Ditto burning at the stake.

The whole idea was intended to cause mortal pain to help save the souls of the witnesses. While the victims were dammed to eternal condemnation as they had no body for the resurrection day.

BlueOverYellow · 29/03/2022 17:29

It's no different than the outcry over a homework assignment (that went viral) asking that students write a letter to an editor defending slavery.

Slavery is wrong. Completely inappropriate assignment. What should have been asked is what kinds of arguments were used by people who defended slavery, and why were they wrong.

Not much different here: torture is wrong. Students should not be asked to design more ways to torture people for any historical period.

Itwasntmeright · 29/03/2022 17:29

It would have been fine if they’ve been asked to come up with a non-harmful, non-injurious method, but as it is some kids will really go to town on this and come up with some absolutely vile things, and they’ll love doing it. Not to mention the googling some kids will do.

If I’m honest, I think any teacher who sets this as homework needs their hard drive checking.