The real home ed, of course, continues to happen between times and probably the best times of all are the car ed moments. They always have been.
Fran has been reading the Diary of Anne Frank; I think I read this at 14 but she is at a great age to read it, as she is almost exactly the age Anne was. She’s been incredibly moved by it and really stuck at it too, also looking up various bits of information and asking questions along the way.
In the car the other day, she suddenly choked up. “How could they do that to people? it just isn’t human.” How indeed? We talked for a long time about the death camps, the way people were treated, the nature of gas chambers and death marches, the concept of genocide as opposed to just racism, why the camps have been left as memorials. We discussed Schindler’s List, the feelings of the Germans as opposed to the Nazi’s, the difference in residual feelings in this country about that war now, as opposed to how it was when I was growing up, when it still didn’t seem that long ago.
This is big stuff when you are 12; it is even bigger stuff if you are 8 or 6 and listening in.
We talked lots about whether it is ‘racist’ to prefer to send you child to a predominantly English speaking school, for example and how complex the lines are when you start to draw them around wanting safety, protection or good opportunities against wanting to not be with people purely due to colour, race or religion. We discussed how people might begin with one mindset but fall into another, positively or negatively and how we have to guard against beginning to hate people for simply what they are, not who.
I’m reading The Hare with the Amber Eyes, which happens to be discussing who Jews were seen in Paris at the end of the 19th century so that was an interesting part of the discussion. We talked more about whether it is right or wrong to make money from Anne Frank’s house as a museum, or use pictures of piles of bodies, even anonymously, to remind people of that horror. We have to remember, but it is also true those are people, someone’s son or daughter. It’s a complex issue.
For the girls, the hardest thing was understanding that this happened again only recently in Europe, still happens. History is a great distancing agent for kids; they believe we get better and horrors from the past are because people were less aware then but of course, the truth is that bad people are just bad people.
The girls have been loving Dad’s Army recently – it was interesting to set Anne Frank clearly against that and see how they felt about the funny side of the home front (or that side made funny) alongside the brutality and the fact that we knew it was happening and did so little to stop it until we were threatened ourselves.
However hard, it was a fascinating conversation. Must hurry up and do that side of the war with them.
Other stuff going on – Fran blogged our day out at Wood Green Animal Shelter. (She’s her mother’s daughter when it comes to proof reading!)
Today we went to the Stockwood Discovery Centre, fairly briefly, but will definitely go back as it looked excellent.
We’ve done lots of gardening but that’s another blog.
We had another trip into Oundle and this time the girls and I browsed the bookshop there while Max shopped; it is lovely and we’ll be using it much more I think. Loved how much the girls enjoyed just settling into the arms of a bookshop and enjoying it. Fran wants to know about Huckleberry Finn. All I can remember is I fancied the boy who played him in the series 😆
Goodness I’m not homeschooling, but I’m so with you on those car ed moments! Mine are only 5 and 6 but we do seem to get the most cracking questions in the car.
One the other day was “what will happen to the World when every person on it has died?”
I used to feel bad that we didn’t live close enough to their school to walk, but actually that 15 minute car journey is when all the big questions get answered.
As an aside I’m also reading “The Hare with the Amber Eyes” and it’s the first book in a long time that has made me actually cry. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first but have persisted and in fact really enjoyed it.
It made me cry too.
Fran once went to pieces because she was worried the sun would go cold, we’d all die, come back as cows and not be able to play on DS’s. lol.
Hope Fran gets to know more about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer as well as much of the rest of the work of Mark Twain. He wrote a wonderful short story about frogs which was my own first exposure to Twain. I remember the book of Tom Sawyer in 1991, as part of visiting an uncle who turned me to antiquarian books.
Have just read Melville’s first book Tytee which is about the Marquesas Islands near Tahiti, and they went the same way as Tahiti eventually [1842], and also Richard Dana’s Two years before the mast.
As for what happens after the people have died, The world without us is a good non-fiction book explaining that. I have just read about how schooled children become informed readers of scientific non-fiction. The two key elements? Easy to read and enjoyable.
And whatever you do, do not read the magazines of the International Holocaust Review, even if they have Robert Faurisson in them talking about Elie Wiesel, one of the big witnesses of the Holocaust, and on whom a thousand indifferent papers have been written. That was my downfall last November. I did (a long time ago) read Irving on Dresden and Accident. Even now “revisionist” and “denier” go past me as distinctions. They seem like catcalling words.
Are you also watching Foyle’s War? Because that has really filled in much of the British side, with a kind compassionate senior citizen and a younger attractive woman, as well as the agony of the refugees.
As Anne Frank said, “I still believe people are really good at heart.”
As for the War in the Pacific…countries that lack 1) natural resources and 2) land have it HARD. Much of the world view which was inculcated was about big countries and little countries.
Bad things are bad things. And we see them through people’s eyes. And bad people can be resoundingly unoriginal, which hits me more than their evil does.
Hucklebery Finn: get an unexpurgated edition if you can.
Now talking in the car is something I can hardly participate in, depending on the acoustics.
Safety: that is a requirement. Protection: that is a need. And good opportunities: they are a want. And they are in smaller and smaller circles, some which intersect, some which don’t.
Some of my war knowledge came from the women working in the Land Army. How employment and industry was expanded.
“Only recently”: do you mean Bosnia? And Kosovo?
Adelaide, that comment made my head hurt!!!!!
And yes to Bosnia etc.