It is November of 2023, and humans continue to choose war.

I do not mean justifying war; I mean choosing war.

A decade ago, I published a piece about centering peace in a literature unit: 21st Century “Children’s Crusade”: A Curriculum of Peace Driven by Critical Literacy.

That multi-genre unit was grounded in part on a war poetry unit I taught for many years, anchored by R.E.M.’s “Orange Crush.” Traditional poems found commonly in anthologies included the following:

• “Beat! Beat! Drums!” Walt Whitman
• “War Is Kind” Stephen Crane
• “Grass” Carl Sandburg
• “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” Randall Jarrell
• “At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border” William Stafford
• “‘next to of course god america i” e. e. cummings
• “The Performance” James Dickey

The unit on peace (click on the title above and the article begins on page 15) includes work by Howard Zinn, music by CAKE, and fiction by Kurt Vonnegut, specifically Vonnegut’s explanation of how he crafted his most recognized work, Slaughterhouse Five:

Also in 2023, there is a pervasive national narrative that K-12 teacher and professors in higher education are indoctrinating students with leftist/Marxist ideology. While this argument is old and inaccurate, almost no one is confronting the real ways in which traditional schooling indoctrinates children.

Most traditional approaches to history, in fact, portray war as normal, characterize the US as an ethical victor of war (freedom fighters), and offers almost no concession that peace is ever an option for violence and acts of terrorism and aggression.

I suspect that conservatives will consider a peace-oriented liberal indoctrination but will never admit traditional approaches to history are indoctrination.

If we care about academic freedom and humanity, then offering peace as an option seems to be the least we can do for children and all students.

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