Education or Propaganda? Why Remembrance Day Needs to be Re-Examined

CONTENT WARNING this post contains multiple references to and mentions of genocide, rape, the murder of children, and other disturbing topics related to war.

When I was a child, I was taught to observe Remembrance Day the way most children in Canada are. We would watch the ceremony in Ottawa live on TV, complete with solemn music, speeches about sacrifice and heroes and freedom, and the recitation of In Flanders Fields (a poem I memorized, because memorizing poetry was very much my thing).

But as I grew older, and as my political understanding grew along with my knowledge of history, I started understanding that what I had learned, the ideas I’d been inculcated with, were not merely neutral and apolitical, but a deliberate interpretation of history and current events, a deliberate shaping of individual and national identity. What I had been taught was nationalism, and once I saw that, it became startling to me how many people--many of them quite a bit older than myself--refused to engage in any deeper consideration of the whys involved in the wearing of a poppy. What are the stories that are being internalized, and should they really remain unquestioned?

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I’ve started referring to November as Poppy Hell season. 

Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

There's a reason I react this way to Remembrance Day in particular: you won’t see me write something negative about, say, D-Day commemoration ceremonies, or monuments to soldiers who died in WWII, or anything like that. Recognizing specific losses, from specific conflicts, is something I know can be really important for survivors and those who love them.

Remembrance Day is something different.

There are multiple reasons I feel this way. First, the idea that soldiers "fought and died for our freedom" needs to be examined. That is one of those phrases that is absolutely meaningless outside of its purpose as propaganda. Who's "us"? What "freedom" and for whom? Was the Korean war, the Gulf war, or the Afghanistan war even remotely for "freedom" for literally anybody, never mind Canadians? Of course not. Those were wars fought for oil, for political gain, to support allies engaged in imperialistic pillaging (and for the Canadian state to do some pillaging for themselves).

Many people bring up WWII when defending the valorization of soldiers and wars, because it's one of very few conflicts where it clearly was right to join. Most people who aren’t fascists know that fascism is extraordinarily dangerous, violent, and needs to be fought on all fronts. However, I am deeply disturbed by how simplistic the role Canada played has become in popular memory. Again, reiterating that I am very glad that Canada fought the Nazis, and that fascism is a true horror, I still think it's important people go far past the idea that the allied countries were benevolent liberators. It might make people feel good to think that way, but I think often instead about the Canadian state’s deliberate exclusion of Jewish refugees leading up to and during the war. How the Canadian head of immigration at the time bragged about how good he was at keeping Jewish people out. That of the 800,000 Jews who fled Nazi controlled countries in the 30's, Canada accepted under 5,000, leaving so very many who were turned away by country after country to die a horrifying death. I think about how popular eugenics was as a philosophy in North American governments and the UK. I think about how impressed by Hitler many European and North American leaders were, including prime minister Mackenzie King (he wrote in his diary of Hitler that "He smiled very pleasantly, and indeed had a sort of appealing and affectionate look in his eyes. My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him was that he is really one who truly loves his fellow man and his country ... his eyes impressed me most of all. There was a liquid quality about them which indicated keen perception and profound sympathy (calm, composed) - and one could see how particularly humble folk would come to have a profound love for the man."). I think about how much world leaders underestimated the threat posed by a fascist Germany, because they liked fascism. A "strong Germany" was seen, for a while, as a good thing, until they started realizing that Hitler's expansionism threatened them too, not only the people they didn't give a shit about.

Considering that's the political context of the second world war, it should be clear that it was not fought for any noble reasons, it was just a war of self-protection, and in Canada's case a war to support Britain.

And going back to that phrase, "fought and died for our freedom," I want people to consider for a moment the conclusions that are reached when that's your starting point. If soldiers are heroes, who fight and die for something as noble as freedom, well then, if they're fighting somewhere, anywhere, it must be for freedom. If they're heroes, they must be doing good wherever they're sent.

Repeat it often enough, and people believe it without question. Soldier heroes fighting the good fight for our freedom! It's a cudgel used by the state to justify any conflict they choose to engage in. What? You say this war is bad? What are you, against FREEDOM? You claim war crimes were committed? How dare you! Don't you know that soldiers are HEROES?

It's a toxic, dangerous mentality that works to foster a nationalistic, militaristic attitude in the general population, where soldiers are above reproach, and wars, while regrettable, are fought for the “right” reasons.

Equally dangerous is the call to "support our troops." The "our" assumed in that is yet more phrasing that, when you actually look at it, is far more about playing on emotions than a meaningful statement in itself. How are they ours? What say do you and I have in what conflicts are waged? The closest we get is voting for the party that will possibly, if we're lucky, engage in less war. That's an utter perversion of the idea of "choice."

They're not our troops, whether we personally know any soldiers or veterans or not. They're a weapon of the state, most often used to prop up the imperialism of the US and UK, or to support the economic interests of Canadian corporations.

I suppose you could say that Remembrance Day isn't about the leaders and their reasoning, or why a war was entered into, it's about soldiers. But while I'm happy people fought the Nazis, I still think it's a dangerous flattening of a nuanced reality to name all veterans martyrs and heroes. Allied troops, including Canadians, participated in the rape of tens if not hundreds of thousands of German women after Germany surrendered. I saw a Facebook friend relating on this day that his grandfather, a WWII vet, had told him how Canadian troops shot Italian children in the street for sport. Wars don’t produce any heroes. They are universally a horror that lead to some complicated mess of victims, survivors, and perpetrators. The way so many veterans who survive end up changed forever by that incredible trauma is a tragedy. But they're still not heroes.

I also take a big issue with the messaging around Remembrance Day that treats war as tragic but necessary and unavoidable. As if war is a natural disaster, something no one has any power to prevent and must merely be endured. This lays the path for future violent conflict, when a populace is told again and again that wars just… happen. As if there aren’t hundreds, thousands of steps leading up to a conflict, countless choices to be made, options that might mitigate harm or even stop the course of war entirely. We can’t know what may or may not have happened had people made different choices in the past. But I do know that the way people talk about war now will lead to more war. As if it’s inevitable. As if that’s just the human condition. As if we have no power to stop it. As if the powerful don’t benefit immensely from ongoing conflicts (never forget that Canada is still selling arms to Saudi Arabia, who are almost certainly using them to murder Yemenis).

All Remembrance Day is, is an opportunity for the state to twist people’s understandable grief and horror towards a nationalistic agenda, to make sure their path towards any future wars they want to engage in or support remains smooth. It’s an empty gesture that pays lip service to “peace” while taking absolutely zero steps that could actually contribute to peace. Those who don’t perform patriotism by wearing the poppy and gushing piously enough about freedom and heroes are met with social censure, especially if they’re people of colour, as evidenced by Don Cherry’s tirade last year (thankfully, after years of racist rhetoric, he was finally fired). If this day was REALLY about peace, people would look at the horror of war without the comforting veneer of catchy propaganda phrases, and without telling stories that prop up Canadians' sense of a positive national identity. Instead we would look at history and current engagements with clear and critical eyes; immediately cease all sales of weapons and armoured vehicles; cease the support, either material or diplomatic, of British and American “interventions” in foreign countries; and make the legal changes necessary to require a referendum before this country is allowed to engage in any military conflicts.

With all the violence, at home and abroad, that the Canadian state has enacted and been complicit in, that still wouldn’t be enough. But it would be a start, a sign that this “remembrance” could actually be part of an attempt to do better, instead of the act of war-worshiping it is now.

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When you know better, you have the opportunity to do better. It’s easy to repeat simple stories--Canada as peacekeepers (just don’t look too hard at the peaceful machine guns “our” soldiers are carrying), Canadian soldiers as liberators (who, along with the rest of the allies in WWII, sent “liberated” gay men straight from the concentration camps to prisons)--but these stories, as comforting as they might be, are half-truths and distortions. Children deserve truth from the adults in their lives, deserve people who will ally with them in learning that goes beyond the surface, in thinking critically and questioning the motives of the powerful. And far more so the world deserves people who do not repeat the same justifications for colonialism and imperialism, who do not support their country in it’s exportation of war.

I don’t have an irrational hatred of poppies. I just hate the way this holiday acts in service to violence.

Yes, There ARE Things Every Kid Should Know: Social Justice and Self-Direction

I’ve seen some interesting discussion from fellow leftists in and around the unschooling world in regards to social justice and the importance of children--all children--knowing certain things. The issue raised is this: if we can agree that there are important issues of power and oppression that all children should understand, how do you reconcile that with an approach which, on the surface, looks like children learning whatever they want, regardless of what anyone else thinks?

I agree that there is a baseline of knowledge and understanding necessary in order to be a thoughtful and kind person, and in order to engage in the work needed to dismantle structures of oppression. How are children to understand the current context if they don’t know the history of the Holocaust, of American slavery, of British colonialism, of Canadian residential schools? Children are generally taught about the ways in which they themselves are marginalized either by a hostile world which never lets them forget it, or by loved ones looking to prepare children for that world. But what about making sure all children, no matter their background, are equipped to challenge power and behave conscientiously towards those around them?

I believe the concern that these things won’t be learned if children just “do whatever they want” rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of what unschooling is, or at least my understanding of it. I’ve often described unschooling as self-directed learning that is guided by the desires and needs of the learner and their communities. We exist in a world full of other people, and I would never disagree about the importance of living as morally and justly as we can, which requires being educated about important topics.

However, using oppressive and authoritarian methods to try and teach anti-oppression and anti-authoritarian politics is ridiculous and counter-productive. People learn what they live, and no matter how great the content being taught, if the structure or ways of relating reinforce hierarchies, dominance, and oppression--if children are learning that people who are bigger and older are entitled to control and dictate to those younger and weaker, they will not be learning the lessons we want them to. It’s simply unjust to use force and coercion to try to “make” children learn something, and the belief that the ends justify the means is just the type of attitude that sustains modern schooling, that continues a system built on the denial of children’s autonomy, and the enforcement of a colonialist Western model of education and social organization.

I think becoming educated on important topics can be achieved through unschooling. I further believe it’s imperative to try and nurture these qualities respectfully, and detrimental to try and do so any other way.

After all, people don’t tend to remember the things they’re taught against their will, when they don’t see the relevance or real world implications, when they’re somewhere they don’t want to be and are being taught by people they may not like. There’s a quote by Katrina Gutleben that goes “Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he's not interested, it's like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating.” This is why I don’t believe a mandatory curriculum covering everything any of us might decide ALL children should learn would be any more effective than current curriculums, where most information that’s taught is never truly learned.

One of the things that’s always appealed to me about unschooling is the anti-authoritarianism baked into an ideology that treats education not as something done to children by learned adults, but as an organic, collaborative, community-rooted process. It embraces horizontal ways of relating to other people, across age divides, and invites us all to question the oppressive structures we’ve been told are just and necessary. It is one way to start creating a different world, to live as we wish things to be instead of recreating harm.

Do all unschoolers feel this way? Not remotely. There are unschoolers with politics I consider terrible, who have very different goals than mine when it comes to embracing self-directed education, and who are passing on a lot of harmful ideas about the world to their children.

Here is where I agree with the people who believe that some things just need to be learned in order to challenge injustice. Unschooling, on its own, is not enough. Respectful parenting alone is not a complete solution.

So what to do? Well, here is where I think the importance of family and community culture comes into play. Who is part of a child’s life? What are their perspectives, experiences, and values? If children are surrounded by people who talk about and embody different ways of existing and living outside of the dominant culture, who discuss inequalities and structural violence, important history and current events, who work to unlearn their own prejudices and fight for justice, who care and learn and struggle and include children in all of that--then that is what they will learn to do themselves.

While some disagree, I’ve never seen unschooling as a way to shelter children, or as a way to control what they learn. As I’ve discussed before, I see unschooling as a way to open up more of the world, not to restrict it. I’m also never going to argue against having firm boundaries about, say, not using slurs or derogatory language about marginalized people. I am not suggesting that unschooling is a free-for-all, but that there are far better, more authentic, more consensual ways for children to learn than an “anti-oppression curriculum.”

I also think it’s important to note that while children do not have all the knowledge and experience that adults generally have, and so of course it’s important for adults to be role models and help children gain those things, we must recognize that children, too, have valuable experience and perspectives that add to adults lives, and to social justice and liberatory movements themselves. There’s a great meme I’ve shared before on Facebook, that states in part “Children's innate tendency to question the status quo as well as their ability to imagine an ideal world without limits makes their active engagement in organizing efforts an invaluable resource as we move together towards ultimate liberation for all.”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing children as empty vessels to be filled, as people in training instead of people now, when the reality is that everyone has things to both learn and share, everyone has something to add across the spectrum of ages. And if any movements are seeing children solely as almost-people in need of molding they’re both perpetuating oppression and missing out.

To bring it all back around, there is definitely knowledge that is important in attempts to challenge injustice and create better ways of living. However, the best way to acquire it is to live it, to be surrounded by people who care. Kind of the same way adults gain the knowledge and skills necessary to make positive change. Children, though their needs, their experiences, and their development may be different from adults, are still every bit as deserving of basic respect, to be included instead of condescended to, to have relationships with people who see their involvement as valuable.

If we really care about making things better, we can’t do so by recreating the same power structures that oppress us all. Instead, we need to recognize every person as a potential ally and partner in the struggle for justice… including kids.