Why do sources A to F differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children? Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your studies.
Why do sources A to F differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children? Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your studies.
There are a number of reasons why sources shows different attitudes. These may be related to the author of the source, when it was produced, and the purpose that the source has.
Source A is a photograph of evacuees walking to a train station in London, ready to be evacuated. The author of the source is unknown. It was taken in September 1939, which is at the start of the war and when people were first evacuated out of the cities to the countryside, where they would be safer. It gives a positive attitude about the war .This photograph illustrates most of the children looking excited and happy as they are waving to the camera and smiling. Like in many cases, the children in the photograph probably didn't know exactly why they are being evacuated, and that is why they don't look upset. The children are not walking with their parents, some of them are on their own, probably because they have already been split up from their parents. Some children in the picture are accompanied by an adult who could be a parent or a minder. The picture displays that they are accompanied by what could be a teacher as she is leading them on and may be keeping them on the pavement; teachers were seen as a valuable asset and so were also evacuated to the countryside and accompanied the children. In the photograph the children are wearing tags and are carrying gas masks, which are necessities which they would require when being evacuated, and also some personal belongings. There is a man in the foreground of the photograph who is wearing a suit and tie and a hat. He may be an official from the government overseeing the evacuation process or he could be the head-teacher of the school in which the children are from.
The audience of the piece is unknown, as is the purpose. It could have been on a poster to show parents and the British Public that children were happy being evacuated, and to persuade them to sign up their kids for evacuation. It may also have been a photograph that a parent has taken of their child, so they have a picture of their son/daughter smiling and laughing to remember them by. It agrees with my own knowledge, as I know that children were excited about evacuation at first, it was an adventure for them; they didn't know what was going to happen. However it also disagrees with what I know, as many children were upset to be leaving their families, not knowing if they were going to see them again.
The source is reliable because it shows that children were cheerful towards evacuation. Because it is a photograph it is not as easy to misinterpret what is being illustrated. For example, stories can be misinterpreted because we have to imagine what is being said. However, being a photograph we can see exactly what is happening and so we know what occurred. It is unreliable as we don't know the author of the source or the context that it was put in. It may have been a staged photograph, and could have been taken by the Government as a means of propaganda for the war. The photo is not very detailed- it is a wide pan shot of the street, and therefore we cannot accurately see all of the people in the view. It is useful because it is a primary source from the time and was taken as the children were leaving, and so it shows us almost exactly what was happening at the time.
The source is useful because it gives an insight on what it may have been like for the children and what their attitudes towards evacuation were; such as what their feelings and emotions may have been. The source is furthermore useful because it supplies us with a view of what evacuation may have been like and how the evacuation process was conducted, and it shows us the sort of scene there may have been when children were being evacuated. It is not useful because we are unaware of many of the key details about the source, such as the author and the purpose of it. It only gives us a limited snapshot of what was happening, we cannot see the whole picture. For example, we cannot see who the man in suit in the foreground is standing with or talking to. Also, because we cannot see out of the camera angle, we cannot see what the scene is like anywhere else, whether there are also large amounts of children being evacuated nearby and if the street is crowded with people watching the evacuation, or whether the area is quiet and these are the only children being evacuated at that time.
Overall, the source shows that some children out of the many millions that were evacuated, are positive towards it. It is not very reliable, for the reasons mentioned above. It can be linked to source D, in that they are both visual representations and that in Source A, everyone looks happy and are smiling, and in the picture of the advertisement in source D, the two children are also smiling and look cheerful. Therefore, both of these sources are similar in this sense that they convey happiness. However, the sources are different in that the photograph of source ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Overall, the source shows that some children out of the many millions that were evacuated, are positive towards it. It is not very reliable, for the reasons mentioned above. It can be linked to source D, in that they are both visual representations and that in Source A, everyone looks happy and are smiling, and in the picture of the advertisement in source D, the two children are also smiling and look cheerful. Therefore, both of these sources are similar in this sense that they convey happiness. However, the sources are different in that the photograph of source A is an actual photograph of children being evacuated, whilst source D is an advertising campaign, which is not reality. The sources are also different in the sense that the purpose of the photograph of source A is to encourage the parents to evacuate their children, whilst the advertisement of source D is appealing for older people to receive the evacuated children.
Source B is an extract from an interview with a teacher in 1988 in which a teacher remembers being evacuated with children from her school. The extract explains how the children were very scared to leave, and there was hardly any talking, only a murmur because of how afraid they were. It also explains how the parents and children were split up from very early on, and the mothers of the children were not allowed to go with the evacuees, so some younger children would have been very upset; however mothers followed the groups to the stations. The extract also explains that teachers were evacuated with children and that the children and teachers did not know where they were going. The audience of the piece is very difficult to tell, but the interview could have been conducted for research, for a fictitious book or a text book, or for a video or a TV program investigating what it was like for people at home during the war. The audience doesn't really constrain the source however, it doesn't really affect the reliability or usefulness of it. It gives a very negative attitude to the evacuation process, by saying about the fear of the unknown, and the grief-stricken parents of evacuated children. It agrees with my knowledge of how children and teachers reacted to being uprooted from their families and the environment that they are used to.
This source is useful because it is a first hand account; the teacher was evacuated and so she knows what happened. This source is also useful because it gives us a better idea of what the atmosphere would have been like when the children had to leave their parents. It gives us a different aspect of evacuation in the sense that she was actually there, being evacuated with the children and this gives us a brief insight to what her ideas were at the time. It is, however, very unreliable, as the teacher has not said whether she is now reflecting on the war from her experience or whether she wasn't there at the time, and also she has not mentioned if she was a teacher at the time or not. You would think that she was a teacher at the time from her specific and explicit memory that could have been altered over the years, even though the interview took place in 1988, 50 years after the actual event. We are shown however that it has not been altered with time. She has a very accurate and precise memory of the events that occurred, she shows this when she says, "All you could hear was the feet of the children and a kind of murmur." Regardless of the fact that she has a good recollection of what happened, she is still only one teacher out of the thousands that were evacuated with their school children. I conclude that the source shows how children and parents alike held anxiety towards evacuation, and how it affected the nation as a whole. The source is similar to Source E in that both sources show views from both sides of evacuation. Source A is dissimilar to this source because the views of emotion shown are completely opposite.
Source C is an extract from a novel called "Carrie's War" which is about evacuees. It was written by Nina Bowden in 1973. The source was produced as children's literature, and was therefore aimed at entertaining the reader. It may also have been written to make money for the author and her publishing company. The audience would have been the world public, both children and adults (as young children may be read it by their parents, for example.) The source agrees with my own knowledge as I know that poor children were normally sent to stay with richer people, who often underestimated their situation. This is shown in the source when Miss Evans mistakes the children not having brought slippers with them as their being too poor to some. "Oh, I'm sorry, how silly of me, why should you have slippers?" She just thinks that because they had to be sent away from home that their family was too poor to keep them. This is also true to my knowledge, and perhaps the children being evacuated knew of this perception. It is true that there were indeed more poor children being sent away, but they were only poor in comparison to their host families. The poorest children that couldn't be evacuated inside Britain were put on boats and sent to safety overseas. The government weren't as concerned of the possibility that these children might not come back home, as at the end of the day, the richer families had more influence than the ones these children had come from, and reuniting them with their children would therefore be of higher priority than the reuniting the families that were poorer. The source gives a mixed attitude towards evacuation, it is both positive and negative. It's positive side is that the young girl Carrie has been evacuated along with her brother Nick, and also that it is quite a fun and light-hearted extract. This is recognisable at the end of the text where it says, 'Her brother Nick whispered "She thinks we're poor children, too poor to have slippers," and they giggled.' However, it is negative as it shows the children being labelled as "poor" by Miss Evans, and that they have been misconceived by their host. It was written as positive because this is probably how the children would have viewed it, as a big laugh and something fun. I think the negative aspect may have been received as throw-away comments by the children, but I think the writer meant for the point to be taken far more seriously, to put across the point that stereotypes are often hard to shake. Source C is reliable because the kind of event expressed in the text could easily have occurred. It may be unreliable because we don't know if the story is based on memories that Nina Bowden has of evacuation, or if it entirely fictitious. If it is from memories, then the actual experience may have been enhanced to keep the reader engaged, and the true happenings, along with some facts may have been lost under the mask of the new story. If, however, it is totally made up by the author, then we can assume that she had a substantial knowledge of events that happened during evacuation. The source has it's limitations though. It may, as previously mentioned, have been enhanced for the reader to add to the entertainment value. Also, it was written in 1973, a full twenty-eight years after the war ended. Therefore, if it was written based on memories, they might not be as vivid as they were after the events happened. They could also have been doctored and interfered with, so she doesn't remember exactly what happened in the first place. The source is useful as it has the accuracy to suggest that the author, was indeed an evacuee, but as we don't know this, one could also say that the process has been well researched, and the details are very acute.
Overall, Source C is wholly a work of fiction, and therefore the content has limits regarding its reliability. It is similar to source F as it is fictitious, and in a story format to provide entertainment. It has been made up and adapted for general intake. It is different to Source B as it consists entirely of text, no images.
Source D is an advertisement featuring a plea from the Secretary of State calling for more people in Scotland to offer their homes to house children that had been evacuated. It was issued by the government but written by the Secretary Of State, who was appointed by the government to organise the code of conduct for the evacuation process. The advert was distributed in 1940 for members of the public to see, particularly those who were potential host families for evacuees. It was a gamble for the Government, as they were desperate for places to house the children that needed to be evacuated but had nowhere to go. The purpose of the source was to persuade people in Scotland to enlist and look after children for the period of their evacuation. We assume that the author was educated and knowledgeable about what he was writing the source for, but he may also have known information that could possibly conflict what he is showing on the posters. This means that the source could be biased. It agrees with my own knowledge because I know that there was a decline in the number of people that wanted to offer their houses to evacuees but a rise in the number of people needing to be evacuated. Germany were invading France so the government were worried that Britain would be the next country to be invaded. Therefore they were under increasing amounts of pressure to find more host families for children to be evacuated to. This was called Operation Pied Piper.
The source is reliable because it shows that the morale of the country is so low and this is reiterated by the fact that the posters have to be issued in the first place. The posters are a form of propaganda (which can be both a positive or negative thing) but in this case it is a positive thing and the posters are using information positively in order to influence the audience, which is the people who are potentially going to be interested in hosting evacuated children, and also the current host families. However the source is reliable as it doesn't show the attitudes of the children to be evacuated, and so it is biased. Furthermore, everything issued by the government was censored so it became suitable for public viewing, and this also affects its reliability. It is a useful source as it is an example, as previously mentioned, of the influential propaganda at the time.
Overall, the source is biased as it is government propaganda, and is constrained by the fact that the purpose of the source was to influence the public. Source D is similar to Source A because of its use of pictures and visual images to show a positive attitude towards evacuation. It is different to Source E as Source E states that no more host families were needed, and this source us appealing for more volunteers. They are different as they are published by different people with different opinions, one is more personal and the other on a more public level.
Source E is an interview in 1940 with a man who is the father of a seven year old child. He has extremely negative views on evacuation, and this originates from the way he believes children are treated when they reach their host families. He thinks that if he sends his son away, he will be treated badly. The interview was recorded in May 1940 for a Mass Observation Survey, during the "Phoney War" period. Due to the fact that it is a survey I assume that the source would be widely accessible, and therefore the audience would be the public. It could have been published in a newspaper or on television, but wherever it was published there would have been a degree of editing would affect its ability to be useful and reliable. The source is only a view of one person and it is not very accurate as it has been cropped to fit the source, the information given about the source says that it is "an extract", which means that some of it hasn't been included in the source. There are many limitations to the source, such as that it is only one person's view of evacuation, and that this man lives in Southend and wants to keep his child in an area that e knows that the boy will have family and friends if something was to happen to the father. My overall conclusion of the source is that the source is quite reliable, but because it is a survey you cant be sure on the tonality of the way that the questions are put across, and also the kind of attitude that comes across is that he doesn't want his child to be safe, but in hindsight you can say that the father may not have realised that the area of the country that he lives in was to be bombed; the interview took place before the blitz started. The source is similar to Source F as they both give reasons why children should remain where they are instead of being evacuated, and is different to Source D as they have opposite attitudes to evacuation because of the experiences and background that the people have come from.
Source F is an extract from a film called "Hope And Glory", directed by John Boorman and produced in 1987. As it was a film made by a British director we can assume that the intended audience was automatically the British public, but the film became popular and was therefore viewed by the world public. It portrays a very negative attitude to evacuation of children, based on his personal experiences of the process. The source is not very reliable as it has many limitations. For instance, the source is secondary, as it was made nearly 50 years after the events actually took place, and therefore some of the details may have been left out of the film due to memory loss in the period between the event and making the film. The film was a generalisation based on the director's own experiences, which were largely negative. It has been slightly sensationalised, with exaggerated scenes to maintain the audience's interest, and to make it a good film. However it is useful as Boorman grew up and experienced war in the East End of London, so we have first hand knowledge of what it was like to live there at the time, and the atmosphere between the people of London at the time. It is similar to Source C as both the sources are based on own knowledge and research, and are fictitious. It is different to Source A as Source A is positive, and this is quite a negative source, and due to the reason why it was published.
In conclusion, Sources A to F show that all the authors had different opinions of evacuation depending on their position and views on it. As all the sources and authors are different, they are likely to show different attitudes, with varying degrees of positive and negative in the sources. However, these sources only represent a small proportion of the people that were involved in evacuation, and their views. Essentially, evacuation was different for everyone, and this is portrayed in the broad spread of attitudes in the 6 sources stated above. The people that were evacuated are likely to have their opinions of evacuation influenced by the host families that they stayed with. We can also see from these sources that attitudes differ depending on whether you were a child or adult at the time.
Laura Parrish Candidate No. 1183 Centre No. 65217
