Should schools stop observing one-minute silences – for the sake of the children?

Some teachers have claimed these commemorations have an adverse affect on pupils. But is it right to try to insulate young people from tragedy?

Should schoolchildren observe a minute’s silence after a national tragedy? Is it too upsetting for them? Or perhaps it’s not upsetting enough, occurring with such regularity that they become inured to the cruelty of the world and assume it’s a regular thing to lose a loved one at a pop concert, or 80 neighbours in a fire? Teachers and experts – one from a grammar school in south-east England – have made the case against these memorials.

Everyone wants to insulate children from horror to a degree, and there would be the distasteful tang of the tragedy vulture around a head who held a minute’s silence for every untimely death that came to their attention. It would be bizarre for a school that was in the sightline of Grenfell Tower to not commemorate it formally. Three counties away, the kids might be unaware of the tragedy, and it might feel crass to draw them into it. Although you could argue that is what national solidarity is, marking events that aren’t necessarily on your doorstep.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2kNIn7r