On 12/1/08 17:17, in article , "Bob
Hobden" wrote:


"Eddy" wrote ((SNIP))
This is off-topic but as other replies appear to have been allowed I
would like to add my view.

That is why I put OT in the subject line. However poppies are flowers (or
weeds). :-)

I used to be a teacher at a good number of schools (primary and
secondary) and universities, until a few years ago and I was, and am
still, appalled at how most young people have little knowledge of and
regard for the extraordinary sacrifice that was made for the freedom
from Nazi domination which we all enjoy today. (Let's not forget the
Nazis dominated Europe and got as far as invading and occupying our
Channel Islands and it is a miracle we managed to beat them back!)


You berate the young and middle aged for not understanding about Remembrance
Day and yet also tell us you were a Teacher for years.

snip


I suppose, to be fair, that teachers have to follow a curriculum. Are they
allowed - or were they - to go off onto their own chosen path of interest?
That's a genuine question - I know they have to toe a party line now but I
don't know if someone who has been teaching for 60 years would have been
able to choose topics about which they, personally, were passionate.
But I'm in accord with you, Bob, about the teaching, or lack of it, that
children get now with regard to history. If you don't learn from history,
you learn nothing and IMO, every single child in every single country in the
world should be taken to see the sites of war graves or e.g. Auschwitz so
that they learn what man can do to man if *they* don't put a stop to it in
each successive generation.
Eddy mentions the Channel Islands where my parents, grandparents, aunts and
uncles, were living under Nazi rule. They - and we - are lucky that rule
didn't prevail because from them I learned enough about how bad it was while
it lasted.
In our Parish magazine there was a short piece about young people in the sea
cadets collecting money during the Poppy Appeal in Totnes. Some equally
young drop out type came up to one young girl and told her she was
supporting 'murdering scum'. I do so wish I'd been there. I wonder if he
realises what would have happened to him if he'd said that to someone
collecting money for the Nazi party, from which fate he was saved by what
his ignorance describes as 'murdering scum'.


--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'