Why do sources A to F differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children?

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Alexandra Mente 10V

Why do sources A to F differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children?

        There are many reasons why attitudes in sources A to F are different.  As all the sources are different authors, it is inevitable that the attitudes will be different as thousands of people were affected by evacuation and no two experiences could be exactly the same.  Also, they are not all the same types of sources and the sources do not all have the same motives and would want to show certain attitudes.  Also, the dates of the sources vary which could make each source more reliable or unreliable than the others.

        Source A is a photograph showing evacuees walking down to the station in London in September 1939.  Its view of evacuation is that children who were evacuated looked forward to it and it was an enjoyable experience.  I think it has this view because the government wanted to promote evacuation by showing an image of smiling happy children on their way to being evacuated to counter the real concerns that parents had about evacuation.  This source is reliable because the photo was taken at the time of evacuation.  However, this source may not be reliable if there is government influence in it because they might have staged the photo to capture the view that they wanted.  The children might have been told to wave by their teachers.  The fact that all of the children are smiling and waving towards the camera contradicts my own knowledge as I know that many children were unhappy at being evacuated.  However I also know that some children did look forward to evacuation as they saw it as an adventure or a holiday as most children living in the cities had not been on a holiday before.

Source A’s attitude towards evacuation appears to differ from Source B’s attitude.  Although both the sources are describing the evacuees walking to the train station, source B has a more negative view.  Also source B gives us a better idea of what the atmosphere would have been like when the children left their parents than source A as it is an insider’s view whereas source A is just a photograph.  Source B is an extract of an interview with a teacher who was evacuated with children from her school.  Source A shows that the children were happy as they were being evacuated whereas the teacher being interviewed in source B describes the journey as being a bad experience for both the children and the parents.

This source is reliable because the teacher interviewed was there with the children as they were walked to the station.  Also the teacher says that they ‘hadn’t the slightest idea’ where they were going.  This is reliable as from my own knowledge I know that although, arguably, ‘Operation Pied Piper’ was very well organised; certain aspects of the evacuation process were neglected, such as telling parents where their children were being evacuated to or making an effort to match evacuees to suitable parents.  However, I don’t think this source is reliable because the interview was held 49 years after evacuation took place so the teacher might have forgotten some of the detail of what happened on that day.  The source is also unreliable because it is only an extract of the interview.  The teacher might have said later in the interview how the children enjoyed evacuation once they had got to their destination.  Also, we don’t know what questions the interviewer had asked the teacher.  At this point in the interview the teacher could have been answering a loaded question, for example, ‘what were the worst parts of evacuation?’  The teacher would then have had to give negative points against evacuation.  The interviewer might have wanted a negative opinion for a reason of their own.  For example, they might already have negative views of evacuation.

Also, we cannot tell the particular point of the war the teacher was describing.  It is possible that by the time of the second evacuation, the children and parents had become more fearful of the war and that the children’s excitement had vanished further into the war as the bombs started dropping.

From my own knowledge of evacuation, I know that many children and parents didn’t enjoy being separated from each other.  However, not all children hated evacuation and many were excited to be going away from home as they saw it as a holiday.  The teacher might have been exaggerating how bad evacuation was to add effect and to make her view of evacuation seem more interesting.

Overall, I don’t think this source is a reliable representation of attitudes because we are not viewing the whole interview so cannot tell what the overall opinion of the interview is.  Also, the extract of the interview that is in the source might be a loaded question and therefore makes the source unreliable.

This source is similar to source C as both the authors of the sources experienced evacuation first hand.  This makes them slightly more reliable than the other sources.  However, source B is different from source C as source C is fictional and source B is not fictional.  Source B and C also have different attitudes to evacuation.  Source B shows a very negative view whereas source C shows a more positive view.  I think that the attitudes in these two sources differ because the author of source C is trying to show mainly positive aspects of evacuation because she is writing a book for children but the author of source B is giving a more realistic and believable view of evacuation.  However, both these sources are only extracts so it is impossible to know what other views were shown in the rest of the interview and the rest of the book.

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        Source C is an extract from a novel about evacuees by Nina Bowden in 1973.  The novel is called Carrie’s War and was written for children.  In the extract the character of the foster mum assumed that the evacuees were too poor to afford slippers.  The children laughed about this afterwards.  One attitude of this source is that there was often a lot of confusion between evacuees and foster parents which is arguably one of the failures of evacuation.  From my own knowledge I know that there was sometimes confusion and lack of communication.  Many country families were unaware of ...

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