A great way to learn

Friday, December 9, 2011

Every once in awhile, and probably more often that we actually remember, we run across someone who just gets it.

Such a person is Hollis/Brookline High School junior Haley Barbour, who recently organized a day in which war veterans came to the school and spoke to civics classes.

Now that is a way to honor our veterans, rather than just pasting stickers on the backs of our SUVs – give them a chance to tell people what they went through and to be appreciated publicly by those people.

According to our story last week, the day of public speaking featured a host of war veterans whose experiences ranged from World War II to the war in Iraq.

And Barbour told the Journal “This started last year. We had an assembly at school where the veterans would come and we would celebrate Veterans Day at the school, but I just thought that wasn’t enough.”

And she was absolutely right. Veterans Day is a wonderful event, as is Memorial Day, but as many veterans could tell you, the rest of the year we, as a nation, have a tendency to forget about them, how else can we explain that so many of them get poor medical care or suffer from post traumatic stress and don’t get proper care for that?

But Barbour remembered them, and thanks to her, and to her school, a lot of her classmates will, too.

She told our reporter, “I wanted to do something where the students could actually talk to the veterans. So it’s been a long time coming, and it’s really exciting that it’s here now.”

Wow. Talk to the veterans. It shouldn’t be a novel idea, but it is because who else is doing it? Most of the time, veterans talk to one another: at the VFW or the Legion. That’s fine, but people need to know more about the men and women who served their country, even those who served her in time of peace. Service is service is service, as Gertrude Stein would undoubtedly say, and giving a few years to your country, even if no one is shooting at you, is important.

But few do anymore, now that there is no draft.

“This is the first time that we’ve had the interface with the high school,” said Andy Seremeth, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, who served two tours in Vietnam. “How the young lady came up with this idea to invite us is outstanding.”

Here’s what social studies/civics teacher Kimberly Coughlin had to say about Barbour’s project:

“The students had been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time and were very honored to welcome their local veterans to the classroom. We hope the students reflect on the many lessons learned this day, and apply them, not only to their study of civics this semester but more importantly, that they incorporate them into their everyday life.”

That is our hope, too.

This was certainly a fine start.