"My parents dont let me watch the news": reflections on 11+ interviews I have carried out

[hannaretch]

Over the past few weeks I have been carrying out 11+ interviews with new applicants to our school -independent day school, outside of London, thought of as the most academic school in our town.

I generally talk to the children for 20 minutes about their studies, hobbies etc and ask them to talk about themselves. The aim is to get an idea of who they are and whether they will fit in with the school ethos. We tend to interview almost all applicants as we feel that a good interview will allow us to get a better view of the individual even those with marginal entrance exam results. They get information on the type of questions they are likely to get before the day to allow them to prepare. We also ask them to bring in an item which they then talk about.

One of the standard questions I and others ask is along the lines of do you follow the news? Talk about a current news story/ what do think about Ukraine/ climate change? type thing. Nothing too major but it allows us to get an idea of their awareness of the world. Most are able to answer with basic knowledge and some understanding of the issues and it often leads to good discussions.

I was shocked that two or three of the ones I have interviewed this year stated that they werent allowed to watch the news and had no opinions/ ideas about the issues. Surely watching the news at 6 etc or online or even Newsround is basic preparation for life? (or school interview at least?)

My kids don’t regularly watch the news but we listen occasionally when it comes on on the radio. We do however get The Week Junior and we do talk about what’s going on in the world at other times. I think a lot of footage can be quite graphic and to be honest they don’t need to see it to know about it.

What skills, knowledge or understanding do you believe they develop by watching the news? We talk a lot in our house about current affairs but we don't watch the TV news. Mostly because we see it as lacking in detail at best and biased at worse. I also think that watching TV news can foster a sense of hopelessness. There is very little a child of 9 can do to influence the world around them, so we look more at issues that directly impact them and they can do something about ..climate change strikes and environmental issues, school strikes etc. My nine year old does not need to watch a sensationalised timeline of the actions of a dog walker who vanished into thin air in a small village. It serves no purpose for her except to elicit fear.

This would make me question your school's ethos if you ask me, and leave me wondering if your school was the very best for my child rather than vice versa.
The fact that you seem surprised to learn that "the news" is not always something discussed or watched together at home, makes me almost feel this is a wind up.
I hope you have the skills to discern the kids that think for themselves from the ones that repeat mummy and daddy's views on the world.

Actually, asking a 10-year-old about the news is probably a really good decider. I would bet that most truly gifted (by that I mean not made to sit for hours doing extra English, Maths, etc etc until they're 'top of the class') are naturally drawn to current affairs. The children I've met who have that natural curiosity and are amazing at drawing connections and with exceptional general knowledge at a young age were generally all into news and current affairs.

At what age do you all expect to allow your children to watch the news and realise what life is like ? During WW2 were you Great grandparents hidden in a dungeon so that didn't find out what was happening , no they lived through it. You cannot hide the world from your children, one day they have to be grown ups and as we often read on here too many get to 18 and still can't wipe their own noses.

I was shocked that two or three of the ones I have interviewed this year stated that they werent allowed to watch the news and had no opinions/ ideas about the issues. Surely watching the news at 6 etc or online or even Newsround is basic preparation for life? (or school interview at least?

I imagine that interested localparents are by now well aware of what gets asked at the interviews, and some of them have indeed prepared their children well.

"Mum, I don't know nuffin about news and politics and I don't care"
"No problems, dear. Just tell the lady you're never allowed to watch the news"

I was forced to watch the news every night, no Happy Days for me. It is a good thing.

If I was conducting selective interviews for an over subscribed school I would not offer these children a place. Because either:

1. They are ridiculously over protected and the parents will be a nightmare.
2. The parents have little curiousity about the wider world and that will affect the acquisition of broader knowledge the child has.

I am also not surprised to see a few posters saying teachers should teach this, as if parents have no role at all.

I don't watch the news at 6, so why would my child? If I get the chance I listen to BBC news via the Alexa whilst cooking, but this notion of everyone being sat down for the 6 o'clock news is awfully outdated.

Don't most schools show Newsround, anyway?

I'm so glad the grammar schools around here don't do interviews. My child is bright and hard working but has ASD (classic Asperger's, as was) and chatting to strangers is a nightmare for him.

Also, if I were your employer, I really wouldn't be very happy with this judgey thread at all.

One of my children is in the same year as the children you are currently interviewing and we’ve had at least two incidents since the school year began where multiple children have become so distressed over a news story that parents have been contacted.

One story was a local news story of a teenage boy who was stabbed to death.

The other was to do with images of dead bodies in reporting over the war in Ukraine.

Both school incidences took place because one child had seen it on the news and then told the class what they’d seen.

Clearly, the old tv ‘watershed’ was a practical approach to this problem but we just don’t consume media in that way any more. We don’t even have an actual telly.

I’d like my child to have access to age appropriate versions of current events and we watched the sky kids show on Saturdays for a while but now it clashes with an extracurricular activity and we’ve gotten out of the habit.

No BBC (cancelled the licence in CoL cutbacks!)

@NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom That is why parents need to talk to children about current events. Do you think children finding out about a boy being stabbed locally comes better from discussions with their parents, or from playground gossip?
And kids will talk about things like this. I am not going to over protect my children because some parents want their kids kept in a bubble.

@StaunchMomma Why is it the job of a school to show newsround? If they are it is because parents are failing. It is not the job of a school to teach kids about basic news stories.

I don’t disagree but even giving your child reassuring, age appropriate information (as I had) doesn’t prevent the upset caused by other children giving inappropriate details.

My kid is a childhood cancer survivor so not nearly as sheltered re: death as most 10 year olds.

The school year before there was a similar hoo-ha over Putin & nuclear weapons.

I once interviewed an overseas applicant for medicine, who basically said she wasn't allowed to go out anywhere by herself. Not because she was disabled, it was a cultural thing. Ever. I did wonder how she'd manage in UK.

I know that happens @NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom It has always happened with playground gossip. And when there is no scary news you get instead stories about local so called ghosts or murders. It obviously needs reacting to and dealing with by adults. But stopping kids watching the news or knowing about current affairs is not the solution.

I work in news and would not let my child watch news on television. My child is 6, but when older they’ll be encouraged to read the WSJ, FT and other reputable news sites.

I also don’t watch news on television.

I don’t let my 11 or 5 year old watch the news, the world is a horrific place and they doesn’t need to be exposed to a never ending round of doom, gloom, catastrophe and heartbreak.

My 13 year old occasionally watches it with me but again she’s a rather anxious teen and also doesn’t need exposed to constant negativity.

I personally took a break from watching the news for 2 years during covid because I couldn’t cope with the daily death toll and scaremongering that was going on. Not everyone has an excessive interest in seeing what’s going on in the world, that doesn’t make them any less intelligent or respectable, it just means they’re focusing on life closer to home - which we could all stand to do a bit more of.

I think it does mean you are less intelligent sorry. I think curiosity about the wider world is a feature of highly intelligent people.

We don't have a TV. My 10yo knows a little about current affairs because we discuss them sometimes but not a lot.

The news is an endless parade of negativity, sensationalised to a ridiculous degree in order to up viewing figures, and is supplied generally by outfits that are incredibly biased. And once you’ve spotted the biases it’s impossible to trust.

We discuss world events at home, but TV news is dross.

@AllOutofEverything It may mean I know less about the world events, but I can guarantee I’ve a lot more knowledge than you in other areas. Does that mean you’re less intelligent because you don’t have the same knowledge or does it mean we simply have diverging interests and we’re both bound to be more knowledgable in different areas of life?

Narrow-mindedness on others intellectual levels is not an attractive trait.

It is not about divergent interests. It is about curiosity about the wider world.

@AllOutofEverything and not everyone needs to be curious about the wider world to be intelligent, funny how you with your vast intellect and knowledge of the world don’t seem to be able to grasp that.

@AllOutofEverything

I think your two assumptions are misplaced and based in unexamined value judgements.

Overprotective and lacking in curiosity about the wider world are not attributes I would ascribe to the parents or the children.

There are many reasons not to watch the news. One is lack of a TV for family viewing. This is a deliberate choice for many families based on home layout and availability of other tech. Another reason is lack of time to sit down together as a family. Many parents work late, many families prioritise extra curricular activities in the evenings. Yet another reason is a strong interest in other stuff. The 'wider world' is wider than you seem to be saying it is. Narrowing it down to the content deemed newsworthy is a mistake.

'Overprotective' is a strange value judgement that is not based on a clear understanding of the idea of age appropriate exposure. There's a reason video games and media content are rated and why parents are strongly encouraged to only allow children access to appropriately rated material.

But you want them turning on the nightly news and exposing their children to rape, murder, torture, abduction of African schoolchildren, the bombing of civilian targets, the threat of nuclear war - and worse, all of that is followed immediately by sports, weather, perhaps some fluffy piece about a dog show. News as hodgepodge entertainment is a highly problematic development.

@mathanxiety This is not about watching the six o clock news. There is Newsround and lots of other ways to learn about current affairs.
And I do think adults who do not want to know what is happening in the wider world are lacking curiousity and that usually means they are less intelligent. It is not the childrens fault if their exposure to the wider world is lacking, it is the fault of the parents.

I also feel sorry for children when they do eventually learn the things that happen in the wider world. It must be a shock to suddenly move from being over protected to learning what the world is actually like.

Yes the term over protection is a value judgement. If an 11 year old knows nothing or very little about the wider world I think they have been over protected or lack intelligence.

And the wider world includes current affairs and many other subjects. Intelligent curious children and adults want to know about animals and plants, geology, history, astronomy, etc etc. That type of curiosity is a hallmark of intelligence.