Teacher showing photos to kids of victorian dead children - slightly disturbing

[whyiwonderwhy]

I am finding this so disturbing I can't sleep! However I might be being oversensitive, who knows. It is the "but - WHY?" bit which is bothering me most.

The lesson was about the industrial revolution, and the subject of photography came up, 2 of the earliest photos were shown to the class (13-14yo) and then....I wish I could say the teacher showed photos of some of the extraordinary engineering inventions of the day, or of busy streets, or China, or something wonderful and extraordinary...but no, the teacher showed 10 photos of dead children and talked about how the Victorians would photograph dead children as though they were still alive, with the rest of the family, in a commemorative way. I have seen some in the past (I didn't learn about it at school however) and they are moving and tragic and disturbing. Nothing else, just these photos.

Just wondering...why? why would the teacher do this? Any ideas?

This teacher has form by the way. A lot of it. But this has for some reason blindsided me.

Not really. You could have had a chat to Keir Starmer , or equally likely the chief honcho at OFSTED. Someone “higher up” is hardly a reliable source, which as an historian you would understand.

If they are in horrible histories then that is why children will raise the topic - the children who read horrible histories will raise the subject in your classes.

horrible histories are not adored by everyone, by the way!

what do you want to know about my dc's feelings or opinions?

I’m going to bed now, but I just wanted to respond to this:

would you say showing a bunch of photographs of dead victorian children in the middle of a class on the industrial revolution is a "woke" sort of thing to do? Do you think that in the face of serious drops in education standards, rather than trying to persevere with traditional education and instead start teaching things like how victorians photographed the dead is "woke" because it opens up the minds to new and woke ways of seeing things?

“Woke” doesn’t have anything to do with it — as pp have pointed out, people have been interested in this topic for decades. It’s a real part of the past.

You seem to be suggesting that a focus on the individual ordinary person in the past is somehow “woke” or progressive? But equally I might argue that Victorian death photography is essentially sentimental and conservative as a form: it’s about the religious and cultural narratives of a very bourgeois Victorian idea of moral and religious life, and of the importance of the family and the individual.

One might well argue that a focus on interesting cultural history curios in the period, like death photography, is actually a very anti-woke kind of teaching, distracting the students from the class, labour and economic struggles of the Industrial Revolution by offering them sentimental mementoes and oddities to look at instead.

(After all, there is nothing more Marxist than studying the Industrial Revolution! More death photography means less classroom time for Das Kapital, surely…?)

This is the most boring and self absorbed post I’ve ever had the misfortune to read and get involved with. Why don’t you just shut it down now, you’re clearly not getting the responses you want and you’re simply trying too hard !

I will just come back to this briefly. You have mentioned how research into this area will inform politics, policy, war etc - therefore to some extent this could be seen in a lobbying type context. How this fits with decision making processes within universities, I am not sure. Is there influence? Historically that has been the accusation but there is very little evidence the public domain.

The other poster who I am confusing you with (you have indicated that you may have crossed paths before) has mentioned the "woke" element (I appreciate that the term "woke" is not always appreciated though) - what many people call "woke" is in fact associated with huge amounts of private funding, including funding going into the government and then going out of the government into various projects.

Funding streams can be quite complex. In a similar way to how derivatives can be quite complex, or almost incomprehensible!

And @Ruthietuthie I am so sorry about how things are playing out in the US. It’s a terrible time, and we can only hope that universities and academics can find ways to mitigate the effects of such a catastrophic collapse in the fundamental values of independence and truth in academic research. 💐

Why don't you go and pick on someone else?!

Amazing last post from @nyancatdays on what teaching this "more nuanced history" could involve, and why it matters. Yes to everything she said.
@whyiwonderwhy, I was reflecting on one of your early posts. In addition to wanting to be certain the "great men, great inventions" were still being taught, you also said that other important topics to you for this period would be, I quote, "changes in buying power, the wealthy whose wealth came from the fact that children women and men were working 12 hour days down mines etc, the rise of the middle classes." To me, this seems like you too would call for a more nuanced history that also including the history of working people? I think if we all got together over coffee, we would find that we agreed on a great many things. Teaching history in a nuanced and engaging way (which beginning with these photographs COULD be, as we have argued, not that it DEFINITELY WAS - I wasn't in the classroom either, maybe it was a shoddy lesson by a clueless teacher, but to declare it that outright because of the very topic, well, I don't think you can) doesn't mean that these important topics won't be taught. Just that they won't be the only things taught or the perhaps the starting point.

Sounds like the teacher knows how to grip their interest! They’re teenagers. Teaching a classroom of teenagers is HARD. I’d say that teacher successfully got them interested!

I don't think that focus on ordinary people is woke at all. I explained upthread what I thought was important in relation to teaching about the industrial revolution, and why the photos were not helpful or important in relation to that. There is only so much time to cover the subject, and showing significantly more photos of dead children than of anything else seemed to me to be downright weird and incomprehensible - as I said. I have since then read your posts and I realise that this is a subject which is likely being "pushed" forward, and I have sought to understand why that might be.

In relation to Marxism, you are right - when I was at university the professors who taught about the industrial revolution were all probably marxists! Talking of which, how do you think Stalin and the Soviet Union should be taught? Do you think there should only be focus on gulags, kulaks and purges, or do you think that it is important to teach about other aspects?

You have mentioned how research into this area will inform politics, policy, war etc - therefore to some extent this could be seen in a lobbying type context. How this fits with decision making processes within universities, I am not sure. Is there influence? Historically that has been the accusation but there is very little evidence the public domain.

Well, in that post I said death informs all those things, not research into death. The way cultures think about death is intrinsically part of war, politics, policy.

However, research into death does inform public policy (the kind of research @Ruthietuthie is talking about on mortality statistics influences health policy to help keep people alive, for example). Research on maternal and infant mortality in the past influences medicine, public policy, education systems, urban planning, law, etc. etc. - usually with the aim of saving lives!

Research into death in military history, law, social history and medicine informs public policy about all these things. And there are histories of all of them, too. But, if what you are essentially wanting to know is are academics promulgating some kind of covert political agenda, the answer is no. Academics (and universities) generally hate being told what to do or think, and most of us would deliberately do the opposite of anyone else’s political agenda. (As anyone who manages groups of academics will know 😆)

I studied history at uni before moving to a different area of study, and my degree definitely focused partly on the history of the working person - at the core, not as a "nuance". In relation to the great inventions, I am talking about advances in science - I didn't mention "great men" - the "great men" of the period were those who abused their privilege in order to make money at the expense of normal people - again this is basic traditional history which I was taught which is more important than a number of photos of dead children. In relation to the great inventions, they were stupendous, really incredible advances in a short period of time, and looking at who the engineers were, where they came from, is also fascinating in terms of social history.

I would be happy to have that coffee, but I think that we will be agreeing to differ. I think to summarise where I am coming from here is that well taught traditional history covers all of the nuances you can dream of already and this should be covered first, before diving into deep side interests.

Just out of interest, how do you know exactly how long was spent showing these photos and the context unless you were in the classroom? Are you taking what your child told you as gospel, as their interpretation of time and effort put into showing the photos as this may be different to other children in the class.

Are there any other lessons which have had topics/resources that you don't approve of?

What did your child think of the lesson, if they were talking about it to you it sounds like they were very engaged.

My very worst and most disturbing lesson was dissecting a small frog. That still haunts me.

I don’t think it’s a subject that is being pushed forward. I think it’s just a topic that the teacher finds interesting, and is hoping will pique the interest of some bored 14 year olds and get them to connect with the subject.

On the Soviet Union - well, my own school history on this was endless gulags and purges and learning the Five Year Plans by heart (for both GCSE and A-level. Woe, as the students say.) But actually I would have liked to learn more about what it was like to live in the USSR; what people’s houses looked like; what they ate; what children did at school, etc. The one kind of history does not have to negate the other. We can do both.

If you did your degree in the 90s, doesn’t this come down to there being a chance that the way things are taught has perhaps changed in the intervening 30 years?

You asked a poster who answered your question politely if she is sniffing glue. You were sarcastic numerous times and you fight with eveyone who does not agree with your opinion. But the glue part told me l I need to know, if this is the first thing you can come up with to an opinion given, that shows how you are. And that is rude.

Ah

It's quite obvious now

This teacher is a progressive teacher who teachs things you perceive as "woke"

The person "high up" you spoke to was a lobbyist against whatever agenda was being pushed who then presumably also tried to bully the school to fire this teacher but you were both unsuccessful because the teacher was following the school's own anti-discrimination policies

You can't say more because you know that you'll be labelled a racist/transphobe/homophobe/whatever and it's a risk to you yourself to be outed as such

You have now tried to therefore latch on to a different reason to get them fired - criticising their teaching standards

And you feel you are an authority on how history is taught because you studied history 30 years ago and refuse to believe that styles change (which they have and happened whilst I was at school like 15 years ago)

There is nothing unusual about being interested in sciences AND humanities. I am myself. Three of my current Year 13 English Lit students ate holding medical offers including one from Cambridge. Being interested in the world around you is normal. And it is a total fallacy that these areas do not overlap in anyway.
Woke, or caring for people who aren’t like you and being aware of structural issues, isn’t a problem either. Jesus (as written in the Gospels) is pretty woke.

I also did a degree and post-grad in the 90s and it’s your experience that seems odd to me quite frankly.

My point is 10 and 11 year olds have raised the topic and their peers were not horrified I'm sure 13/14 year olds can cope. I think the Holocaust is also part of the KS3 curriculum, so it seems in line with content deemed appropriate.

Of course Horrible Histories aren't adored by everyone, I never claimed they were, but there is a reason they chose that theme to appeal to kids.

I also made clear I know nothing about your child's feelings as you have made it entirely about your opinion. You haven't actually said if your daughter was upset. You also alluded to how well you know the whole class yet haven't mentioned any of these kids actually being upset. So if none of the kids were upset I don't understand what your complaint is.

Also noticed you have made comments about traditional education, there is no traditional education it comes from the National Curriculum. There is a nationwide wide initiative to diversify the curriculum and represent a different history rather than simply the white British narrative.

Just been catching up and I can't see but -

did we ever find out who she spoke to 'higher up'??

I'm really invested, as at this point, she may have a direct line to God, and as an RS teacher, it would be incredibly useful to have those kind of contacts!

No she's been evasive about that

Now she's busy interrogating posters about their credentials and where their funding comes from...

Because you think it’s ok to “pick” on everyone that disagrees with your narrow minded narrative. Did you immediately turn off your television when the news had pictures of the pope in his coffin? Millions of people tried to file past his coffin to pay their respects, not one of them was reported as traumatised! But I expect you had sleepless nights about it! I don’t understand why you don’t give up on this now, you’re very much in the minority and no one is going to change their minds because of your convoluted nonsense. I’m now going to bow out if this boring conversation.

Does anyone know if the op has a degree in history? And possibly what decade she got this in? I think this would really help me with my replies on this thread.

This from the OP:

You seem to have a wide area of academic interest - from medical to humanities - this will seem confusing to anyone with a traditional academic background.

If I am not misinterpreting the context, as I have merely skimmed these last few pages of tiresome and pointless dissention, you have me extremely confused. Correct me should I be wrong.

"Anyone with a traditional academic backgound"...can you explain your definition, OP?There seem to be so many people these days obsessed with their own self-importance of simply having a degree, and being an "academic"...IME, as a woman who graduated in the early 70s, a degree or two is simply the springboard to a life of autodidacticism. My degrees in Latin , French Literature and Archaeology/Anthropology opened the door to an amazing life, travelling, reading, gathering up learning like a trawler on the seafloor. While working FT and raising 3 kids as a solo parent, I picked up Uni papers at 3rd year degree level in Greek Art and Architecture, Japanese, Roman History, and at year 1 level, Spanish and Italian.I also worked as a field archaeologist in school holidays. In my retirement, I'm now into writing my 5th book, in the process of which I have learned all about the American Revolution, the wool industry of Yorkshire, the cholera epidemics, lead mining in Cornwall, emigration in the 19th century. My brother, a hightly qualified oncologist, taught himself German, became an absolute expert in Naval battles of WWI, and the battles of the Western Front, in addition to obtaining his pilot's licence, building his own computers, climbing Mt Kilmanjaro, and to Base Camp at Everest. He could talk about absolutely any subject with a deep knowledge and understanding.

So, OP, what as a "traditional academic background'? The narrow focus on one area of study? Or the key to the door of a wonderful, intellectually rich life?