Posted on 11/14/2010 4:59:12 PM PST by smokingfrog
The meaning of freedom to middle school and high school students changes considerably after they get to interview a military veteran.
“Now I can see,” Cora Bishop, an eighth-grade student at the Acadia Christian School in Ellsworth, said Thursday as she read from her essay on the topic “What freedom means to me after interviewing a veteran.”
Bishop interviewed veteran Richard Giffard of Brewer, who was drafted into the Korean War and later served in Vietnam.
“He gave his all, all the time,” she said during a Veterans Day ceremony attended by Giffard and many other veterans on Thursday at the Cole Land Transportation Museum. “You have my admiration and respect.”
The Veteran Interview Program, offered through the museum, places students with veterans to help teach youngsters about history, said Gary Cole, the museum’s chairman and president.
“It’s a wonderful program,” he said.
While the students read their essays, several veterans and audience members quietly wept.
Earle Aucoin of Orrington, who joined the U.S. Navy after Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, and served on the submarine Razorback for four years, stood by Meg Nadeau, an eighth-grade student at Winslow Junior High School, while she read her essay about interviewing him.
She spoke about how he was a youngster when he joined, how his efforts during the war saved fellow sailors, and how he saw himself after it was all over.
“He has experienced things no man should,” Nadeau read.
As the Japanese prepared to sign the papers to end World War II, Aucoin looked at himself in a mirror and “he realized the reflection looking back at him was a man,” Nadeau said.
Seven decades later, “I can still see the pride … radiating from his blue eyes,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at bangordailynews.com ...
Amen
If the collectivist, godless, government schools were SHUT DOWN, our nation's children would have more activities like this in their **private** schools.
Think about this. When were collectivists ever, at any time, interested in preserving freedom?
We have collectivist government schools run by comrade committees ( misnamed “school board”). Their first priority is turning out little collectivists who will vote for the Marxist Democrats.
The modern connotation of freedom to the average person means doing essentially whatever you want, but what it actually meant to people like Adam Smith and the founders of the nation was economic freedom e.g. the freedom to conduct business without the graft of His Majesty’s tax collectors.
It obviously meant a great deal more, or the bill of rights would have had much greater protections for property. I have read that 4th amendment freedoms were initially meant to prevent the prying eyes of tax collectors.
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