Veterans fight to save school remembrance mandate

http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/01/12/ignoring.holidays.ap/index.html

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- For World War II veteran Sam Stia, a legislative proposal that would cease requiring New Jersey schools to teach about Veterans Day and Memorial Day can be summed up in two words. "That's wrong," Stia, 83, said Thursday from his Hamilton home, where he flies an American flag at half-staff to honor fallen soldiers. "We're just giving our flag away and our patriotism away."
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Other holidays about which schools no longer would be required to teach include Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day and Commodore Barry Day, which commemorates Revolutionary War hero John Barry.
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But state Senator John Adler, a sponsor of the bill, cited a 2004 report by a state commission that recommended giving schools more flexibility to decide holiday observations. He questioned whether schools even bother to recognize the holidays. "I don't believe that most schools fulfill the spirit of the law and the mandate," he said.
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"It's simply time and flexibility," said Mike Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. "There's nothing in the legislation that can undermine the amount of pride and honor a community feels toward their veterans."

I think that, especially at the lower grades, NCLB and a lack of creativity are largely to blame. "Oh, if we have to spend four days a year talking about that stuff, we lose out on math instruction, and then we won't make AYP!"

Every year my kids go through a three day lesson on World War One. They get a powerpoint lecture with interesting music and photos for half a period, and then we work with WWI poetry, Wilfred Owen and the like. It all fits in with local, state, and national criteria (though nothing rational quite fits in with the NCLB tests). The kids get into it, and not one of them ever comes away from my class not understanding Veteran's Day on a whole new level. We do similar stuff for Thanksgiving and even Columbus Day.

Okay, maybe math and science teachers have it hard, but there's no reason for liberal arts teachers not to tie this stuff into their curriculum.

from the cost of war