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. To answer this question I will analyse and evaluate sources A to F and come to a conclusion on how they differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children. This source shows Evacuees walking to the station in London in September 1939. The source was a photograph taken in September 1939. In the photograph the children are walking with there teachers to the station, all of the children are happy because they will feel a lot safer in rural places appose to the cities.
The purpose of the source is to show people evacuation was good. The government might use the picture for this reason. The intended audience of the source was people that were going to be evacuated so they could see that the people were happy. We need to be careful using the picture as the scene could be posed. From the picture, it would appear that evacuation was working. This source is from an interview in 1988 with a teacher, the teacher remembers being evacuated with children from her school. In contrast with the first source she says that the children were “too afraid to talk”.
They hadn’t any idea where they were going so this would make the children scared, the mothers didn’t want to leave they children because they pressed against the iron gates calling “goodbye darling”. The intended audience of the source is the people of today so that they could try and imagine what it would be like to be an evacuee. For this reason the source is quite reliable. 50 years after the events, the teacher might have not remembered things accurately. Things could have been changed. However they have no reason to do this.
Source C is an extract from a novel about evacuees, the novel “Carries War” was written by Nina Bowden in 1973. The intended audience of the source was children in 1973. The purpose of the source was to teach children in 1973 what it would be like to be an evacuee. In the source there is two children and a teacher that is looking after them, the children hadn’t enough room in the cases to put any slippers in, miss Evans assumed that the children were to poor to have a pair of slippers. This source is an appeal for more people in Scotland to provide home for evacuated children.
The advertisement was issued by the government in 1940. It showed that the children liked the foster parents a lot. It shows that there aren’t enough foster parents about in Scotland and they need to be ready for any crisis that might come. The intended audience of the advertisement is all the adults in Scotland and it is trying to persuade them to be foster parents, as they are needed urgently. By producing the advertisement it shows that the government are trying to do something about the situation. This source is an interview with a parent in May 1940; it is an extract from a mass observation survey.
The observer was interviewing a southend father of a seven-year-old child. It shows that the people change their mind on whether to evacuate the children or not. The father feels that where he would send his boy he wouldn’t be looked after very well, they would be sending the children into Wales and the west. The reason they don’t want the children go to the west is because there isn’t much there and even before the war people were starving there. He is worried about what will happen to his child if he gets killed.
The purpose of the source is to find out what people really think about evacuating their children. The intended audience of the interview was all the people that had children so they could try and get more information about they evacuations and what would happen if the parents got killed. It is showing what other people feel about their children having to live with foster parent who they hadn’t even spoke to before. As a government survey, mass observation should be reliable. It was used to find out how successful evacuation was. The government would want the truth.
Good night mr tom was a film that was made from a novel, it was about evacuees from the east end of London who is put with a hurt person named Tom Oakley. The film shows the growing relationship between William beech and Mr Tom. At the beginning of the film Tom doesn’t want William and eventually they become close and after a number of tribulations Tom adopts William. The film is Important because it shows feelings of evacuees. It shows the effect of German bombing on London and you can see the blackouts and everyone wearing their gas masks.
This source differs from the other sources because you can get the feeling as if you were there and you can see what I was like for evacuees. The purpose of the source is for entertainment and BBC had a large audience viewing it but it is accurate as far as evacuation is concerned. This source is similar to source C (carries war) because it is a novel made up. The film is very accurate so it looks like a reliable source because seems to be very well researched. Sources A to F differ in there attitudes towards the evacuation because some sources are showing just the good things about evacuating so more people think that evacuation is good.
But on the other hand some sources show just the bad points about evacuation, this makes some people think that evacuation was a bad thing. But by interviewing a parent (source E) this shows exactly what the parent thinks but he could have been influenced on his choice not to let his child go by other sources that have been published. In contrast with the other sources, source F (Good night Mr Tom) shows what evacuation was like and it shows the good and bad points of evacuation.