Today the British government is unveiling their plans to celebrate the centenary of the Great War on August 4th, 2014 and they have announced that children will lead the way in remembering the 10 million men who lost their lives. With children from every school in England, travelling to the First World War battlefields to pay their respects.
Now, the fact that kids are getting involved I'm sure won't meet with the approval of everyone, because of the bloodshed and the brutality that took place. But war unfortunately is part of all our lives, whether in the past, now, or in the future.
This week in the book world Suzanne Collins and Walter Dean Myers, National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature, took part in a discussion with regards to writing for younger readers about war. Both feel that children need to be educated on the hard facts of conflict and I personally agree.
If children aren't informed, war as we are all aware can be romanticised. Children, especially boys can be led to believe that running off and fighting is somehow a cool thing to do, with horrific consequences. We see this now in Syria, where young boy soldiers are taking part in atrocities, as has happened in Somalia.
Of course boys being lured by war is nothing new and my own grandfather ran off at the age of fourteen to enlist in 1914. Luckily for him he was found out to be underage before he actually reached the front line and by the time he was able to enlist, which he did, the war was coming to an end. Otherwise, my family history would be a whole different ball game and I wouldn't be writing this today.
Children should be respected and by giving them every piece of information we have available, they will be able to make informative decisions in later years. If that decision means that they go off to war, when they are age to do so, they go off to war and God bless them. But, sweeping it all under the carpet and not discussing it will not protect our kids, in my opinion it will only harm them.
No comments:
Post a Comment