It was a discussion class where teachers and fifth graders shared their discussions and reflections on the theme of "War and Peace" online
Caption: From the Network (Intrusion and Deletion).
At the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, I heard children discussing the war sporadically in my class, and some children would say excitedly: I think it should be fought, if it is not fought, Russia will be finished. There are also children who say: No matter what, to fight a sovereign country, this is not right. There are also children who do not comment.
In any case, this is a problem that has been put in front of the children and cannot be bypassed.
Should we present the whole picture of the world, including the cruel, poor side, to our children? My personal view is that children cannot and do not need a separate "greenhouse", and rather than hearing only a few words through some other means, it is better to put it on the table and discuss it together.
So I took a few steps, the first step was to read and watch the movie.
Children live in times of peace and are alienated from war, but there are many excellent literary and film works depicting war and peace. Due to the limited time, I recommended the picture book "Little Flowers on the Barbed Wire", which is a story set in the concentration camps of World War II, and the core is the cruel war that also has "bread sent"; the movie I recommended "War Horse", which is a film set in the history of The First World War, and the core is that even the enemy sides can have the beautiful emotions that humans have in common.
▲ Picture book "Little Flowers on the Barbed Wire"
The second step is to talk about it in general.
After reading and watching the movie, I asked them to collect excerpts of famous quotes about war and peace, and then I talked about war and peace myself, and I could write anything I wanted. As expected, the children handed in three types: the first was to write the history of Russia and Ukraine. The second is the sense of hindsight. The third is purely one's own feelings.
▲ Poster of the movie "War Horse"
The third step is to create a situation to write a fragment.
After sorting out the children's homework, we spent two lessons completing the third step.
In the first lesson, we used the history of Russia and Ukraine introduced by two students. Speaking from Russian and Ukrainian sources, the influence of Mongolia on them more than a thousand years ago, including Polish rule over Ukraine, so that children can understand that the cause of this conflict may seem to be the current words "NATO, Europe, the United States", etc., but in fact, behind this is a long history and entanglement. As for the content of the after-feeling, we will leave it to the second study training to write the after-reading feelings before we will talk about it in detail.
In the second lesson, I wrote the words "war" and "peace" on the blackboard. Let them think of the scenery first, what does war mean? What will it bring? What does peace mean? What will it bring?
Children, you say a word, the board book has been full of blackboards and whiteboards. For some children who struggle to write, the content on the blackboard provides a good scaffolding and material.
Now, it's time to set the scene: Imagine what you see when you're in a room in Kiev right now, getting up in the morning and pulling back the curtains? What do you hear? What do you smell? What comes to mind? After the children thought about it for a while, I asked them to describe the scene they imagined in the solitaire way. A pair of weary eyes opened and looked out the window, and the sky turned gray, and fighter jets flew overhead, dropping missiles downward from time to time. Where the missiles landed, there was a mess. The ground was blown up and the houses were blown to pieces..." (excerpt from the children's fragments)
Thus, the idea of one child lights up the thoughts of another child, and the speech of one becomes the ladder of the other speech, constantly growing, constantly rising, the details become more and more prominent, and the language becomes more and more powerful. I didn't tell them directly that war is cruel, but just let them imagine and try to "empathize" with the feelings of people in war conflicts.
Then, the conversation changed: Children, let's leave Kiev, go back to Beijing, go back to the present, go back to the here and now. Close your eyes and think about it, what is your most cherished scene when you return from the battlefield full of smoke and smoke? Please write it down.
▲ Image from https://unsplash.com.
The round moon hung high in the sky, and the warm orange light peeked through the window. The family sat neatly at the table, eating and chatting. The puppy was also full and rubbed at our feet. "This is the scene that a child describes that he cherishes the most...
At this point, there is no need to say more about what is right and what is wrong. In such a strongly contrasting scene description, the children have deeply felt the cruelty of war and the preciousness of peace. As they write:
Hopefully, the end of the war will be peace. And the end of peace is still peace.
Hopefully, all of us can be free to bathe in the sun, breathe fresh air, have a warm home to return to, have quiet desks, and have the joys and laughter of childhood.
▲ Image from https://pixabay.com.
Here are the classroom exercises for the children in the two classes of the fifth grade:
It was still a cloudy day, the sound of planes was heard in the distance, but the trench of virtue was silent, and the machine gunner was lying in the trench, not knowing what he was thinking, but the machine gun was smoking, and the smoke was floating into the sky, and it was mixed with the smoke of war, and it was indistinguishable. The no-man's land between the two sides was covered with small and large puddles, and the water and blood were mixed together and could not be distinguished, making the puddles red.
The black crow flew across the sky, landed on a corpse, pecked, and its mouth was red, and the crow found that there were only bullets and severed limbs, and flew away bored. But which father's child was that skeleton? unknown.
The picture hanging on the barbed wire next to it was also stained red with blood, and it was impossible to see the smiling teenager on it. And its owner was pale and frightened, but before he could scream, he was already dead, and thousands of miles away, his mother was preparing for his return, the colorful wreath, but unfortunately could not be worn on the head, but on the tombstone. At that time, the mother received not his son's smile, but a piece of paper, which read invariably: "It is a pity that your son died gloriously on the battlefield.
The "American Soldier Casualty Figures During World War II: xxxxx" written in the book now is just a cold number, but I don't know how many tears and corpses are behind it, and those children who have dreamed of going to the battlefield to get military medals since childhood have also become one of the casualty figures.
- Joon-woo
The war is brutal, but maybe on the corner of some street, someone will give you a piece of bread.
Almost no one loves war, so they send out a few warmth under fire.
"Start with me"
How many people have really done it from me?
Everyone is waiting for redemption, so who is going to "redeem"?
What is the end of the war? Is it a winner?
Victory or defeat is the product of a duel, and there are bound to be casualties. Why are good people just as bulleted as evil people?
Casualties, massacres.
The soldier who killed the red-eyed soldier was not restrained by the order, and ran around wielding a knife.
Is it sanity? Is it catharsis? Or is it because of nationality?
Extinction, exit?
Is this the end? No.
Human beings are creatures that will never be satisfied,
I want this cake today, I want someone else's territory tomorrow.
The so-called war is only the accumulation of greed again and again.
And in our lives, there are no wars of gun smoke everywhere.
The meaning of the word is only a rough approximation, and it is not only a dispute over life, property and territory that is considered war.
Who washes the dishes today? Why is this so expensive? Don't you walk with long eyes and hit people?
There is also a layer of understanding, that is, the beginning, war, peace...
hope
The end of the war is peace,
And the end of peace is not war.
- Enin
What is war? It is death, it is cruelty, it is consumption, it is chaos, it is economic regression, it is endless killing for profit, it is the shame of mankind!
A pair of weary eyes opened and looked out the window, and the sky turned gray, and fighter jets flew overhead, dropping missiles downward from time to time. Where the missiles landed, there was a mess. The ground was blown apart, the houses were blown to pieces, and the living young beings turned into cold corpses.
A young mother was crying and crying out for her child; a soldier who had been beaten up had already been pierced by a bullet before he could make a sound. A photograph hung on a barbed wire, blood staining him red, and it was no longer clear who the face on it was. The tank rumbled past, not knowing how many people had died under its muzzle.
——Yang Ke
What is peace? Peace is listening to the laughter of your loved ones in the early morning and looking out the window at the green trees. Peace is about running hand in hand with good friends through the playground in the bright sun. Peace is lying on a soft bed, curled up in a warm blanket and smiling into sleep.
But on the other side of the world, there is war.
When he woke up from his slumber in the morning, the little boy found his mother not in the house. He heard a succession of gunshots, he heard the rumbling of shells, he heard the screams of many people.
He cried and ran out to find his mother. Suddenly, a cannonball fell from the sky...
It all came to an abrupt end...
- Yike
▲ Image from the Internet (intrusion and deletion)
What is war? War is darkness.
What is peace? Peace is light.
No war is good, and no peace is bad.
What does it really bring to the world?
Pain, displacement, casualties, despair... Anyone who would like it?
What does peace bring to the world?
Happiness, peace, warmth, hope, what reason is there to refuse?
- Euphoria
Yesterday, I simply watched a very heartwarming film called "A Beautiful Life", in which the father made up a story for his son in order to give his son hope of survival - in fact, they did not go to a concentration camp, but to participate in a game. I felt that the father wanted to make up a story for his son in order not to let him see the cruelty of war and not want to give up on life. Because concentration camps are not terrible, the most terrible thing is to give up on themselves.
I hope that there will be no more wars in the world, that everyone can coexist peacefully, create a beautiful and free world, and live everyone's life, just like the movie "Beautiful Life".
--Ruixuan
▲ Movie "A Beautiful Life"
I got up and opened the curtains to see not homeless people, not soldiers with guns;
Instead, cheerful children run around.
What was heard was not the sound of gunshots, not cries of not being able to find a home or losing a family member;
It was the sound of birds, the wind blowing through the leaves, the joyful laughter of the children.
What you smell is not the smell of fire but the fragrance of flowers and trees.
War is cruel, peace is beautiful and happy.
- Clearly
What is death? Is it to disappear from this world? No, after the heroes of the war died, their names and spirits were because of their efforts and the spirit of not being afraid of death in everyone's hearts, although they died but the spirit was still there. If I think of the two horses in War Horse as adults. I think the greatest sadness is not that they die, but that you don't have time to grieve and go to another battlefield, and you don't have time to accompany them.
--Xinwen