Remembering through peace

There are two main approaches to health: pathology and salutogenesis. The pathogenic approach focuses on finding treatments for diseases whereas the salutogenic approach focuses on making healthy life choices to avoid becoming unhealthy. In other words, “dis-ease versus health-ease.”

As I sat through yet another Remembrance Day assembly that is supposedly honouring veterans I started to wonder why educators don’t have more of a salutogenic-style approach to Remembrance Week and Remembrance Day.

If you were to ask the average elementary school student about the meaning of war, you would get a multitude of responses all involving guns, fighting, combat gear, tanks, land mines and bombs. The names of their favourite war video games would also be thrown in. Children know all about war, even if they have not lived it themselves. When asking my children this week what peace means, I was met with blank stares and fidgeting. This was obviously a new and uncomfortable question for them.

The main focus for Remembrance Day activities in most elementary schools is war. Students talk about wars that have happened and where they happened. Statistics about how many people died are discussed. Destructive technology is studied and ogled. War is glorified.

At assemblies, students watch videos depicting war- bombs being dropped, no man’s land, barbed wire, artillery, troops in combat gear, tanks, bodies being shovelled by a backhoe, children playing on burnt-out tanks. Every time an explosion happens on the screen or a picture of a gun or tank appears, there is a collective murmur of “Whoa, cool!” that ripples through the assembly. War is glorified. War is “cool.” The children then go outside for Recess and play war while the supervisors yell “No gun-play at school!” In the staff room you can hear “Why don’t they get it? We just had an assembly on why war is wrong!” Not quite. Somebody(ies) obviously missed the point.

A colleague of mine told me that a member of the armed forces came to speak to the intermediate students at her school. When asked “Have you ever injured or killed anyone?” he replied, “I never answer that question. It is too personal.” In not answering the question he has answered the question. Do you think children are stupid and can’t see through your lack of bravery to speak the truth? If you have the guts to pull the trigger or set a land mine, you had better have the guts to tell the truth about it. There is no honour or bravery in avoiding the truth.

I’ve taught students who have had their houses bombed, whose parents have had their eyes gauged out in torture, whose parents had to run for their lives while their neighbours hunted them down. I bet those students don’t think war is “cool.” To them, someone being injured or killed is a reality, not an embarrassing question.

I spent an entire day by myself at Vimy Ridge. It was peacefully grotesque. The pock-marked ground juxtaposed starkly with the all too orderly white headstones. The bright green grass was dotted with tall skinny trees replanted by the German government as part of the war reparations. The white limestone memorial piercing the sky seemed to pierce my heart at the same time. I had the park to myself yet I felt crowded by the horror of the past. Underneath my feet, on the very ground I was walking, lay the dead. Young lives, cut short by gun-fire. This was nothing to glorify. This was a tragedy. This was a nightmare. Everything at Vimy was still ripe with conflict, yet is was a place of sacred peace.

Many years ago, my sister went to Guatemala shortly after the Guatemalan Civil War had ended. While she was met with much pain and suffering, she was also met by a movement of peace. Where North American culture would hang on to pain and let resentment and the desire for vengeance build, the Guatemalan people are finding empowerment and peace through their pain. They are choosing peace. In a church, where many indígenas were tortured, raped and murdered by the militia, their spilled blood staining the floor, was a sign that read “Take off your shoes. You are on sacred ground.” In a place of horrific pain and suffering they are honouring their dead through peaceful remembrance. Where the ghosts of the past could and should haunt them, the indígenas are allowing their wounds to be opened, cleansed and therefore healed through peace.

Why then should we not have the same approach when teaching children about Remembrance Day? Why is the focus not peace? Why are we not allowing ourselves to find empowerment in the past? It is possible to recognize veterans without glorifying war. To discuss and expose the truths and reality of war (post traumatic stress, depleted uranium poisoning, disfigurement, refugees, loss of life…) is to demystify war and to ensure that it isn’t glorified. It is also possible to celebrate Remembrance Day through peace.  How can we expect children to learn that fighting is wrong if we continue to glorify war rather than promoting and teaching about peace? War is the pathological approach to conflict. We must fight our “enemy” to solve the problem. Peace is the salutogenic approach. Why not give our children the tools (and not just lip service?) to prevent conflict so that we may all live peacefully? We can teach our children to wear a white poppy next to a red poppy so that hopefully, one day, we will find that we no longer need either.