Remembrance Day
I live in a country that is sending young people to fight in Afghanistan and yet is not 'at war'. We do not, I think, as a country feel that the action being carried out there has much to do with us. We see automobiles with yellow ribbon decals and wonder vaguely if the family has a son or daughter fighting there. We stand silent for a few moments on Remembrance Day and wonder why Canadian troops no longer wear the UN peace keeper's blue beret. We put on a poppy in November or buy the War Amps key tags and wonder if another Canadian family will have to endure the maiming or loss of a son or daughter.
But we do not feel outrage -- the outrage needed to get us out to the polls to vote, the outrage needed to get us out on a rainy or snowy day to protest, the outrage to stand as part of a world movement of women and men who do not understand the 'glory' of young people throwing themselves into the path of oncoming bullets and who will, therefore, cease giving kids the message that there is something inherently noble in going across the world to kill people.
This morning I have been listening to the old songs -- Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Eve of Destruction, Blowing in the Wind, We Shall Overcome, Once I Was a Soldier -- wondering which will make the point to my students that they should just not listen to the hype, not sign up and not join up -- but rather that they should take their hammers and ring out warning and danger to drown out the heroes' tales.
I also watched one bit of video of a fellow constructing crosses, painting them white and planting them on a hillside by the highway. He said, "We can detest war but still should say thanks to those who are fighting." But if we do that, then how will our young people ever learn not to go? It sounds harsh as I write it but, to get this stopped I think that those who do the fighing must finally be persuaded that no one will thank them for it, no one will honour them for it, and no one will make it easy for them if they make it back. When will they ever learn? When they can no longer see world peace and personal violence as a dichotomy. When we have made our young believe that it's better and braver to stay home and make their mark here than to leave their blood on some foreign patch of soil out of some misguided sense of service. When we stop giving the double message that war is bad, but those who fight in it are good.
Two years ago, a student named Ken graduated from our school. He was a troubled kid -- anger plagued his days and sleep eluded him for nights on end. His Dad, whom he loved and respected, had served in WWII and felt that his own days in the army were the making of him. Ken thought that if he signed up, he'd be able to use his time there to straighten himself out, get a good free post-secondary education, and perhaps do a little sniping along the way. It's Ken's struggle for self and his belief the path to personal peacefulness lay through a battlefield that are on my mind today.
And so this weekend, I will take my students' PowerPoint for Peace projects and weave them into a video for our Remembrance Day ceremony. I have converted their work into swf's and the swf's to flv's and put the flv's into avi to which I have added the right plug-in. My teaching partner, Debra, has videoed the kids who created these pieces talking about what peace means to them, and we've converted those files as well. Now my work really begins. The final piece will consist mostly of student faces & student voices -- but my presence will be there as well, challenging them turn their backs on the urge to violence by saying over and over like a mantra: "Hell no; I won't go."
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