to think Coram Boy is not a suitable book for year 7s

[vegetaria]

My 11 year old had night mares last night and is afraid to go to sleep tonight.

For anyone who doesn't know it is about a man who buys unwanted children in the UK in the 1700s, and sells them into slavery if they are above 5, or kills them by burying them alive if they are younger, and it describes several scenes of babies being buried alive and other harrowing events

Its the class book at the moment

Best post on the thread @blackbird77. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

'I can't think of a single work of great literature that wouldn't upset an over-sensitive outlier. There is variation in sensitivity in any human population. Why should the extremes of the bell curve be catered to at the expense of the majority?'

You're wrong @blackbird77 of course the school should cater for the more sensitive kids, those kids are often but not always also ND. What we don't care about kids mental health now? If they're traumatised by a book - well they just need to toughen up and get over it? Even at my secondary school back in the 90's when one girl couldn't cope with Equus - and she was 16/17 - she did a different book and the teacher was incredibly supportive of her and her MH. He was an outstanding teacher.

There's no expense to the majority as there are a million other amazing books that they could read instead.

Back in the 80's in Yr 6 we read Children of the Dust. It gave my nightmares for a long time and brought absolutely nothing to my life but a real fear of the possibility of a nuclear war. I'm with you OP, there's just no need for it.

@blackbird77 Fantastic post! Agree 100%

You're wrong @blackbird77 of course the school should cater for the more sensitive kids,

Yes, but not by withdrawing the book for everyone else.

OP's son seems highly sensitive. He is not the average child.

Brilliant post @blackbird77. Very well said!

@itsmyp4rty so in that case instead of getting a book banned for everyone, why can’t the onus be on the sensitive individual/parent to communicate with the teacher to remove themselves from the situation or work on another solo task? I said I don’t think teachers should have to not teach wonderful literature because a few will get upset, not that the teacher can’t find a way to give the student another task to work on whilst the rest of the class were getting on with the main text. Instead of complaining about the book, the OP could have just sent a polite email to the teacher saying “he’s going through a bit of upsetting family stuff right now, could he work outside the classroom on another task or read another lighter book of your choice in the meantime whilst you are studying that book”. This concession would cause no problem for a teacher as long as the child is well-behaved and won’t wonder off or be disruptive. The rest of the class doesn’t miss out, it’s no extra work for the teacher, and the student isn’t upset.

I generally think if you are an outlier of such a disproportionate extreme compared to the rest of your peer group or cohort, the onus is on you to politely communicate your discomfort and ask to work on an alternative rather than have nobody else at all enjoy the experience.

The atrocities of the Holocaust were horrific. There will be some children disproportionately affected by it when they learn it to the point that it consume them entirely. It would be criminal not to teach the rest of the class about these crimes. The affected student could ask politely to step outside the classroom if they were feeling upset or to work on something else, not ask for it not to be taught. I’m a Biology teacher. Once in a blue moon a student will get queasy when learning about the reproductive system. I send them to another classroom to complete textbook work, I don’t not teach the topic.

Also, I don’t think framing every negative emotion as a “mental health” issue is helpful. Feelings of disgust, anger, sadness, disturbance, shock uneasiness are all normal human emotions experienced by everyone. They are formative emotions. Pathologising every negative or unpleasant emotion as trauma or psychological distress is really unhealthy.

I think your use of hyperbole is unhelpful really.

So what's your solution then? That all children should be condemned to reading bland emotionless books that couldn't possibly upset anyone? You'd rule out the vast majority of literary work...

I was a very sensitive kid, my dd was also a very sensitive kid. We are both ND. I was freaked out as a teenager by learning about nuclear weapons...would it have been better for me not to learn about them? I was devastated as a young child to learn that we used to hang people in the UK, and later to learn about the holocaust. Should that history have been hidden from me? I felt physically sick at secondary school when we watched a video of someone dissecting a sheep's eye. Should we not have been taught that kind of biology?

We can't dumb down the curriculum to ensure that no child ever has an emotional reaction to anything. We would do a much better job if we taught our kids to manage their emotional reactions more effectively instead of trying to protect them from having emotional reactions in the first place.

So what's your solution then? That all children should be condemned to reading bland emotionless books that couldn't possibly upset anyone? You'd rule out the vast majority of literary work...

Or leave the decisions to reactionary parents who are happy to write of a teacher as young and inexperienced because "somebody else told her "And "probably only promoted because there was no one else for the job."

And those were the pleasant thing OP said about her.

The state of youth mental health is down to books like this apparently. OP couldn't sound more uninformed if she tried.

And you want parents like her to decide what books your child gets to study???

Ah - THAT’S who you are! The infamous Mrs Schofield. I suspected as much:

I'm sure I'm just echoing pp's here but surely school/ education is the ideal place to be practising human emotional responses? Literature can be upsetting, distressing, uplifting- people enjoy reading different styles to one another or even on different days or settings - it's not a book I would choose as a holiday read for example as I would want something more light hearted. I would like my dc to read a wide variety of literature and would be unimpressed if they had had to stop a book half way through at school due to a parent complaint, if you do not want your dc to read it then they should be removed from the class to read something else.
I've never rolled my eyes so much at your over the top response to a book that's been around for decades, how will children learn about the emotional side of history if they can't read historical fiction.

It win the Whitbread Children’s Book Award. So not only do you know better than the English department concerned, you know better than the committee of a literary award too?

A teacher and qualified in psychology and trauma. Or just claiming to know stuff?

I am getting the impression that the OP is not particularly well read. I do look forward to hearing her squeaks when her child has to read Shakespeare. Just for starters.... King Lear (high body count, people wandering through a storm raving mad, guy gets his eyes put out onstage). Hamlet (high body count; young woman probably commits suicide by drowning; crazed young man stabs really annoying older man through a tapestry; young man obsesses about his mother's sexuality). Othello: evil Iago poisons the noble Othello's imagination, maddens him with jealousy and encourages him to ill his virtuous wife. Macbeth (high body count includes a mother and very young children put to the sword on stage). Romeo and Juliet (teen suicide; teens killing each other with edged weapons). Of course all those works are far far more than casualty lists.

I’m more and more convinced that this is a troll

I am surprised that this thread is still here

I am getting the impression that the OP is not particularly well read.

God, I got that impression with her first post! Only an absolute non-reader would have responded like this.

And of course kids adore it. I have yet to take a group along to see Macbeth and NOT have them all RIVETED by the murder of Macduff's little boy.

I teach history and the more gory the better. Anything about hanging, drawing and quartering (been doing the gunpowder plot) has them riveted

Hmm, feels like a waste of money.

@ManateeFair the author of Goodnight Mr Tom said she never intended it to be a book for younger readers but was aiming for 14/15 yr olds.

Many posters are engaging in their own hyperbole criticising @vegetaria for her supposed hyperbole in expressing their outrage that a parent might have an (informed) opinion on a set reading text for their child. God forbid parents should have an opinion or a say in their children’s education. There ought to be a place for reasoned discussion.

I also am curious at the luck of having these amazing teachers that everyone else has experienced in their DC’s education as experts in every SEN and trauma going with all their incredible modelling. The vast majority of teachers I’ve come across for my DC were ordinary humans with ordinary failings.

God forbid parents should have an opinion or a say in their children’s education. There ought to be a place for reasoned discussion.

Totally.

But getting the book withdrawn for the entire class?

Nope . Not appropriate. That is a lot more than just " an opinion."

Absolutely slating the teacher via gossip and supposition. Nope . Not reasoned discussion.

Seems like OP is just one of these 'ordinary
humans with ordinary failings' just like everyone else. Because she comes across as massively intolerant and uninformed.

@DrBlackbird

@sunglassesonthetable the OP does not explicitly state that she is or was trying to get the book withdrawn for the entire class. Your interpretation of her comments might be that was her intent, but she does not say this.

She does say that she is going to complain about the inappropriateness of the book for her child. Perhaps to question the book as appropriate content for 11 year olds full stop. I’d take that as part of a reasoned debate, wouldn’t you?

Neither does the OP provide clear evidence that she is ‘slating the teacher via gossip and supposition’. The most we can take away from her posts is that she spoke to one other parent passing on the message. Again, that is your interpretation of events. Maybe she was ringing up all the parents slating the teacher personally, but maybe she wasn’t. Perhaps she was simply calling other parents to ask if their child was upset, did they have concerns.

To you, the OP comes across as massively intolerant and uniformed. To me, @vegetaria comes across as a parent concerned about an inappropriate text for their 11 year old child.

Unfortunately, teachers, like us all, have human failings, including not necessarily understanding the harmful impact of the content that an adult believes, with all good intentions, to be appropriate for children. Two examples:

This research on the unintended, but nevertheless actual, damage from showing films about CSE in schools which were meant to educate children about consent, but led to greater harm.

This research on the ‘Scared Straight’ programme in the US that was meant to deter offending but actually led to higher re/offending rates in juveniles.

One of my kids had nightmares about The Black Death and volcanoes after getting freaked out at school. Those are eminently reasonable topics for schools even if some kids like mine have nightmares.

Your child was "silently crying" (flowery and over descriptive)
And you were on here arguing with randoms?
Seems you care more about winning an argument and being vile to online stranger than you do about your little cherub