Headline, April 22 2022/ EUROPE : ''' '' THE SCHOOLCHIDREN TAP '' '''

EUROPE : ''' '' THE

 SCHOOLCHIDREN

 TAP '' '''

THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY - FOR EVERY SUBJECT IN THE WORLD, is the exclusive ownership of every school child of Europe, just as it is the exclusive ownership of every child in the world.

AND WHEN STREAMING SOARING GEOGRAPHY, please, allow me just one honour, to remember and acknowledge and memory-serve my geography teacher, Professor Ernest Dulvy, of Forman Christian College, Lahore, Proud Pakistan, and at the time, also the Head of All Christian Association.

''May Almighty God, bless you,Sir. And many, many thanks not for any one thing, but for just about everything. Rest in Peace! Amen!  And I wonder, Sir, if the European schoolchildren study or know about Kashmir, Palestine-Israeli conflict, the Rohingyas, Syria, Yemen, African quagmire? Who is to teach them?'' 

AS THEY RETURNED FROM PLAYING TAG at recess on a recent sunny morning, the red cheeked children / angels had lots of questions on their minds.

''RUSSIA is big enough. Why does he want more land?'' Max, 11, his eyes on an atlas, asked the teacher about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Jessica, 11, stood with a knee on her chair.

''Why are most crazy people men?'' she wondered. Issy, 11, turned to the teacher : ''Would you stay and fight for your country?''

Tara Harmer, a teacher of 36 years, paused to think. ''It's a difficult one, isn't it?'' she said in her elementary school classroom in Horsham, a town in southern England. ''My instinct would be to protect you,'' she reasoned. ''YES, I think I would fight for my country.''

As Europeans have grappled with the shock of facing a war on their doorstep and a frenzied news cycle, many teachers have little time to process what was happening - they had to provide answers, and fast.

''I have had 100 questions,'' said Sandro Pellicciotta, who teaches geography at a high school in the city of Bologna in northern Italy. ''And to be honest, I am quite afraid of saying some nonsense..''

Today's schoolchildren were born long after the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, and some were toddlers when the war in Syria was its height. No conflict they are old enough to remember has been as widely displayed on their TikTok feeds as the war in Ukraine, or so close to home.

The distance between their world and that of geopolitics has narrowed, and teachers have struggled to calm fears that this war might affect them all. After two years of pandemic, they also say the war has undermined their efforts to convince children that the world is not a hostile place.

TEACHERS across Europe, many reached by telephone, described the challenges they faced in the classroom and the questions they had been asked.

In Marseille, a 10-year-old student raised his hand to say that he felt like hiding. An 18-year-old boy in Warsaw worried he might be called up to fight, and a 16-year-old in Milan said that she could not imagine what the future held for her.

In Tuscany, a boy wondered whether some had bombed the Eiffel Tower after watching a fake video of an attack on Paris. 

GOVERNMENTS around Europe have acknowledged the challenges that the war in Ukraine poses for teachers and have drafted guidelines for them.

The British Department for Education said that the situation ''raises issues that some schools and teachers may never have encountered before.'' It advised teachers to ''establish the facts'' and promote discussion, and provided resources to fight disinformation.

In France, the government said teachers should explain the common history of Russia and Ukraine, has made clear that it ''does not substantiate the threats that Ukraine, a sovereign state, does not have the right to independence.''

According to the guidelines, teachers should also insist on discussing the war if students were reluctant to do so.

Stanislaw Dutkla, a teacher in Warsaw, agreed with this approach, but on the first day after the invasion, his seventh-grade students asked him to stop the lesson and to talk about Ukraine.

First, he gave them paper to draw and calm down, then he asked if they had something to say.

''All the hands went up,'' he said. ''It was sort of auto therapy.

In February, Mr. Pelliccotta's students were intent on grilling him about whether there would be a war. When it started, they wanted to know more. ''If you were in Putin's shoes, would you have attacked?'' a student asked him.

In a conflict that has been called the world's ''first TikTok war,'' children and teenagers have had access to a mass of information that is often unverified and troubling and may trigger anxieties.

Mr. Pellicciotta said he was happy that his students came to him with questions. He said understanding geography was critical. ''The beauty of geography is that it gives you tool to interpret reality.''

The Honours and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Schoolchildren, all Little Angels, and The World, Peace and War, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Emma Bubola.

With most loving and respectful dedication to All The Schoolchildren of Europe, and then the world. And then Leaders, Grandmothers, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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