to think Yr 1 school reading books shouldn't encourage playing at the local dump!

[luciemule]

DD (6) just bought home a reading book called The Dump (Oxford Reading Tree), where on the 2nd page it says "The Dump was a safe place to play and it had everything we wanted".

Am I being too sensitive but I thought parents were supposed to actively discourage their children from playing at dumps!!!

I think I'll give up trying to explain how the line of the Dump made me feel but thank to everyone for their thoughts - it was really more about shools playing it safe with their reading material, in a world that is usually so up on health and safety etc.

I don't think reading material is something that anyone should feel they have to 'play safe with', let alone schools. Heaven help us. Now, that is depressing

Pointy, I agree. My mum works in a primary school and the other yr we spent the majority of the 6 weeks holiday looking through books and throwing out certain ones....mind you I do know that most London schools did away with the oxford reading tree books.

Do you mean throwing out good ones or rubbish ones?

For various reasons, mainly the fact we'd moved abroad and didn't have many English language books in the house at the time, I read Jane Eyre when I was seven.

I bloody loved it, and wrote my MA thesis on it 16 years later.

Pointy, good books but because they may have had dad working and mum at home they are deemed politically incorrect and are not allowed in schools.

Having had probably 1000 children read that book during my career, I don't think any of them felt moved to get on the bus and go to the local dump in order to play.
You are being very over sensitive. Perhaps 6 months into your GTP you will revisit this issue and see if your feelings are still the same.
My suspicion is that you will, by then, be quite grateful for the ORT which despite all its failings, makes the management of children's reading in the average primary school, a little easier to manage. I expect you will also have had the chance to see that there are plenty of children reading books which are far older or with other supposedly "dubious" story lines and actually blossoming because all that really matters is that they are in fact reading.

Ooh, get you MI. Mr MI clearly has a lot to live up to!

I think children's fiction is exactly the right place to discuss dangerous things that they wouldn't necessarily be allowed to do IRL. Blimey, their lives are already so circumscribed these days now most parents don't allow children to play out. If we start censoring their reading matter there really will be nowhere left for them to explore.

I loved Stig of the Dump btw but can empathise with anyone who is fed up of the ORT reading scheme.

I am so glad the Inferiorettes' school appears not to stick to a reading scheme.

At least I think it doesn't. I am not what you'd call madly attentive to my children's academic prowess - tend to say 'oh yes we should read something shouldn't we' to DD2 while vaguely expecting her sister to read something at the same time. I do advocate this position, though, for the peace of mind it provides.

Edam, you read my thoughts.

I read Stig of the Dump when I was a child. In fact calling someone a Stig became a bit of an insult after that.

I don't think your BU as such but is there a 'moral' to the story such as someone gets hurt?

ah, unknown, I wonder what use I can make of my new psychic powers...

Well it rhymes with E.

pml.

If the book is Arthur, I rather assume that bastard is being used in the context of illegitimate, rather than as a swear word, in other words it is being used to elucidate the socio-familial relationship structure involved. So not necessarily a problem for year five IMO.

DD who was 6 at the time bought home a book that was about a Chinese boy that was so unhappy that he threw himself into a river (so he could drown) I was gob smacked and stopped DD reading it. Wrote a rather snotty to the point note about the book, DD teacher was amazed that no one else had picked it up as it had been in the box since the word dot! Also agreed with me that it was not reading material for a 6 yr old!

Have discovered (especially as I work in the school) no matter how hard they try to Water Shed every book, there always seems to be at least one that gets away! That is what happened with DD, Teachers had read the first story, seemed ok, bypassed the rest and thought ok! just goes to show no one is perfect!

Plus I trust the schools reading scheme!

Rosa, i don't see a problem with it, especially as it is a book he already owns and read 2 yrs ago. But it is amazing how many parents are up in arms over it.

The Dump doesn't really have a moral. I imagined that it would in that a child would get hurt etc, like you said.

Actually what happens is the land gets houses put on it and the builders then build another purpose built, with scaffolding to climb on , an old lorry to play in etc for the kids.

The kids say play parks are for toddlers and the whole feel of the book is more, I think, aimed at young teenagers.

Oh well, DD read it last night and we chatted about the dangers of playing on waste ground (as I had always planned to chat to her about it) and she said she understood.

when I was 6 I was reading the famous 5/the secret 7/various other enid blyton adventure stories.

When I was 7/8 I read the hobbit.

While I would have loved to have gone camping on my own in the holidays, catching criminals as i went, and wished I had a dog which went with me everywhere, and a ring that made me invisible, it just wasn't going to happen was it? because most of what's written in books is just fantacy, written about someone else, not the reader.

And I sincerely doubt whether children are that heavily influenced by what's written in their reading book which they will take to school next week and swap for something else.

My 5 year old just read a book where for no apparent reason kip and Chiffer and Bop and Flippy and Gran were all magicked to a castle where there were three witches, and gran went up behind one and threw her on the floor! I thought that was a little aggressive. And could encourage grandmothers to needlessly attack. It turned out that the witches were quite bad, so gran turned them all into frogs. I don't know what happened then, there's no way of knowing.

So, in conclusion, ORT books are mostly deranged.

Loving parents have much wanted baby. Baby is beautiful. Sadly loving mother dies. Dad remarries, get new wife who HATES little girl. Sends her to be killed in forest by henchman. Little girl saves herself by going to live with seven short men, returns when seduced by passing prince to see stepmother cruelly and painfully punished.

Loving couple want baby but can't have one. Eventually agree to hand over their first born to local witch who promises them a good infertility treatment. when baby comes, change mind, but have to go through with it anyway. Witch locks baby up in tower for 16 years. Girl grows hair v v long. Local lad climbs up hair, seduces her, and they outwit and kill the witch.

Two little kids have poor parents who can't keep them. Parents decide to lose kids in forest. Older one saves them first time, but fails second time. They fall into clutches of an evil cannibal woman with poor eyesight. Eventually manage to get away by pushing evil witch into big oven where she dies horribly.

None of these are suitable reading material for a 6 yr old.

Unless you have a peculiarly suggestible 6 yr old, stories like the one you describe are an excellent opportunity to discuss the rights and wrongs of certain things, imo.

lol boco

who thinks up stories? They must have... imaginations or something

I have fond memories of the book 'Stig of the Dump'.

It's from a bygone age

Don't really understand why you would worry about it