Figure 1.-- These British children did a class project on the World War II evacuations. We note this is a popular class project in Britain. This looks to be a private prep school. |
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World War II evacuation recreations are a popular project for school `children in Britain. The children can reserch the topic. There are a lot of books on the subjects, both history and personal experiences. here are also quite a few of fictional accounts written for children. British children also have actual participants they can interview. Some of their grand parents may have actully been evacuated during the War. Some may be invited to speak to the class. The children can prepare reports and posters. And then they can dress up like evacuees and give a presentation on the subject. This is always a fun time for primary school children who love to dress up in costumes. One interesting observation is the contradt between Britain and Germany. Large numbers of German children were also evacuated. Yest to our knowledge there is nothing similar to thesecevacuation recreations in Germany.
World War II evacuation recreations are a popular project for school `children in Britain. The children can reserch the topic. There are a lot of books on the subjects, both history and personal experiences. here are also quite a few of fictional accounts written for children. British children also have actual participants they can interview. Some of their grand parents may have actully been evacuated during the War. Some may be invited to speak to the class. The children can prepare reports and posters. And then they can dress up like evacuees and give a presentation on the subject. This is always a fun time for primary school children who love to dress up in costumes.
The school here doing a World War II evacuation is a private preparatory school (figure 1). In actuality, few prep school boys were evavcuated during World War II Some located along the Channel were moved, but in thesev instances generally the whole school was moved. The boys were not sent to live with families. Most of the boys involved with ythe evacuation were working-class boys and middle-classcboys that wwre attending state schools.
These recreations are done by all kinds of primary schools throughout Britain. Here we see a private preparatory school putting on a World war II evacuation Figure 1). We notice similar recreations at state primary schools. These recreations involve a range of activities. The costuming is generally left up to the children and their mothers. Here there is a great range as to how seriously the children perdue the project. Of course they usually do not have access to real period dress. Thus they have to mke do with garments that arecavailable to them. We do not know to what extent the teachers discuss with the children what kind of clothes school children wore during World war II. One ironical development is that private school children today wear uniforms that are more similar to what the evacuees that the clothes worn by state school children. Yet most of the evacuees were children attending state schools.
One interesting question is what the teachers do with the projects. Besides the fun aspects of the project, we wonder to what extent the teachers get the children to discuss some of the issues involved. Granted the children are primary school age, but still they are old enough to discuss some of these issues. Do they know why the Germans were bombing Britain? Do they know what would have happened in the Btritish had cabed into Hitler? Do they know about British and American planes bombing Germany? Do they know German children were evcuated? (Here we imagine that few German children know about the German evacuations.) A class discussion can lead into discussions of the ethics of war itself. We do not know if teachers persue this and if so if threy persue it beyond the simplistic conclusion that war is evil. We would be intetrested to know if any HBC readers remmber what their teachers did with these recreations. Another interesting question is how children are affected by war. These recreations are popular because the children are recreating the experiences of people their own age? Do the teachers discuss the broader topic of how children were affected by World war II as well as war in general.
One interesting observation is the contradt between Britain and Germany. Large numbers of German children were also evacuated. Yest to our knowledge there is nothing similar to thesecevacuation recreations in Germany.
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