Lines

I will not argue with my teacher and I will wear a poppy on Poppy day.

I will not argue with my teacher and I will wear a poppy on Poppy day.

I will not argue with my teacher and I will wear a poppy on Poppy day.

I will

Miss Hastings, I know that you want me to write out a hundred lines as punishment for being myself and doing what I believe in but if what you say about the soldiers in World War 2 is true at all then doesn't that mean it is right for me to fight for what I believe in?

Did the soldiers who died in the First and Second world war die so that no one would have the right to follow their own conscience?

Did they fight fascism so that I wouldn't have the freedom not to wear a poppy?

And, Miss Hastings, I believe that you are trying to fill my innocent, developing mind full of lies and propoganda which I think is an immoral thing for an educator to do to a child.

What you should be doing is asking us to question the tradition of poppy wearing; debate and decide for ourselves whether we believe wearing a poppy is right or wrong.

You present the poppy to us as if it were a harmless National holiday symbol like a mistletoe or a pumpkin but it is not; it represents a belief that war is necessary; good and even heroic and the ideas that you implant in my mind today may have fatal consequences for if I believe them I may one day be influenced to become a soldier, to take other human lives or sacrifice my own life.

Why don't you ask the children in your class, "How would you feel about shooting and killing another human being in a war?".

Why don't you teach us the savage reality of what war means? Killing or being killed.

Or what death can mean; the pain and horror and grief.

And why don't you teach us about the innocent civilian casualties of war, like the civilians killed in the firebombing of Berlin and Dresden or the civilians killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Why aren't we remembering those people?

Why don't you teach us about all the soldiers who were mentally traumatized by war? Is that a trauma that you wish upon the children in your class? Do you want us to, believing that war is good and noble, expose ourselves to its horrors and live with nightmares?

What I believe is that war is usually nothing more than a way of furthering the economic interests of a ruling elite; that soldiers are needlessly sacrificed for nothing more noble than that.

In ancient times soldiers fought to protect or increase the power and wealth of kings and queens; in the second world war Britain fought to keep hold of its Empire, the lands that it had unjustly seized control of because they were the source of Britains wealth and, today, soldiers fight to protect the interests of international oil companies.

Why don't you teach the children in your class about the economic reasons for war? Why do you teach them a fairytale version of history where war is always fought for noble causes between heroes and villains?

And why don't you teach us about the people who opposed wars; about conscientious objectors and pacifists? Why shouldn't we remember their moral courage and pick them for our heroes?

I do not really blame you for what you are doing because I think you were probably lied to by your teachers and they lied to by theirs but this tradition of feeding little children propoganda has to end.

So I will not write out the sentence you gave me to write a hundred times but I will write out these lines by Wilfred Owen, soldier and poet;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.