When I was at primary school in the late 1980s, I can remember isolated news stories, such as the Lockerbie bombing, the Piper Alpha disaster and Hillsborough. At the time, these were huge tragedies that devastated communities. I remember discussions about these on the playground, but can't ever remember discussing them in class.
At secondary school, I was even less aware of the major news items of the day. My only memory is overhearing a conversation of two older boys in the cloakroom about the death of the former Labour leader, John Smith.
Back then, the world was a very different place. Of course, it changed forever on September 11th 2001. Now, not a day goes by without another news stories about western values being threatened by extremist ideologies.
In my Year 6 class, we talk about these issues. Often, the children will catch up with the day's events by watching Newsround, and we discuss the stories together. These help the children to understand religious and cultural differences, as well as enabling them to form opinions on the world around them. We talk about them, because it affects them. Many of them will be taking foreign holidays this year. It pains me to say it, but what happened in Tunisia could easily happen again. Yet we also talk about them to remind them that Islam is a peaceful religion, and that they have nothing to fear from their Muslim neighbours.
Needless to say, children are confused by this - that's the 10 and 11 year-olds in my class. I'm not sure what our school is doing to mark the silence, but I know that my class will treat it with great respect. As for those in other year groups...
I think of my own daughter in Year 1. Would I want her to take part in a minute's silence about a man with a gun murdering lots of people on their holidays? No.
We turn the radio off when she is in earshot of troubling news stories. Perhaps we are sheltering her. But at six years old, I don't think she's ready to know just how broken our world is.
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