Education

The Charge of the Last Brigade

Lord Tennyson wanted to remind people of the sacrifices made by the soldiers who lost their lives during the battle of Balaclava. Also, that all people are fallible but decisions made by those with authority can result in disastrous consequences.

• ‘ “Charge for the guns!” he said.’
• ‘Boldly they rode and well’
• ‘When can their glory fade?’
• ‘O the wild charge they made!’
• ‘Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade’
• ‘Noble six hundred!’

Exposure

Many people were disillusioned about the happenings in war, Wilfred Owen wanted to expose the truth about the true conditions.

• Merciless iced east winds that knife us…’
• Low drooping flares confuse our memory’
• ‘But nothing happens’
• ‘Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles’
• ‘We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy’
• _‘For love of God seems dying’ _
• ‘The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp’
• ‘All their eyes are ice’

War Photographer

Many people have become desensitised to some of the appalling conditions which exist worldwide. The aim of the photographer’s job is to educate the Western audience about the conditions abroad:

• ‘spools of sufferings set out in ordered rows’
• ‘He has a job to do.’
• ‘his editor will pick out five or six for Sunday’s supplement
• ‘reader’s eyeballs prick with tears’
• ‘where he earns his living… they do not care.’

Tissue

The people look to different books for information to guide and stimulate them:

• ‘light shine through, this is what could alter things’
• ‘well-used books’
• ‘the back of the Koran’
• ‘names and histories… height and weight, who died where and how’
• ‘pages smoothed and stroked and turned transparent with attention’
• ‘Maps too.’

Kamikaze

The daughter who is speaking to her children about their grandfather. She is educating them about Japanese history and Kamikaze pilots. Plus, is teaching them a moral; we must consider how we treat people, as it can have a detrimental effect:

• ‘Her father embarked at sunrise’
• ‘a shaven head of full of powerful incantations’
• ‘journey into history’
• ‘though he came back my mother never spoke again in his presence’
• ‘the neighbours too… treated him as though he no longer existed’
• ‘till gradually we too learned to be silent’

Checking Out Me History

School curriculums worldwide, reflect what Governments want students to learn. Often, there is not scope to teach about histories from other cultures:

• ‘Dem tell me Wha dem want to tell me’
• ‘Bandage up me eye with me own history’
• Blind me to me own identity’
• ‘dem never tell me bout…’