The past hundred years have set a record for the number of armed conflicts around the world and amount of blood shed. Paradoxically, it has also ushered in an era in which many parts of the world have stopped accepting war as part of an ordinary life. To wit, most–if not all–of the ABIS community hope and assume that our students will never have to be part of a war. In the course of human history, this has not typically been the case.
This sentiment began to emerge after the First World War, 1914-1918. The level of destruction and death was both unprecedented and unexpected, leaving a shell-shocked world to question the morality of humankind’s motivations and actions. American author Ernest Hemingway called the survivors “the lost generation”.
Grade 9 is beginning to study what caused this worldwide conflagration, both in the long and short terms. But the first challenge was helping the students to understand why this war mattered, why the disillusionment it created across the globe set the stage for a century of wars, cynicism, peace movements, nationalism, the idea of “never again”.
Together, we read the following poem, “Lost in France” by Ernest Rhys. It captures the meaninglessness of the war, as well as the hopelessness felt by so many after the guns had been laid down.
He had the ploughman’s strength
in the grasp of his hand;
he could see a crow
three miles away,
and the trout beneath the stone.
He could hear the green oats growing,
and the south-west wind making rain.
He could hear the wheel upon the hill
when it left the level road.
He could make a gate, and dig a pit,
and plough as straight as stone can fall.
And he is dead.