I moved from the US to Canada last year, and the way Remembrance
Day is handled here is one of the biggest cultural differences. In
the US, there is very little actual recognition. And, as Margaret
O-K points out, WWI is really not taught at all in American
schools. Or, the very beginning is taught (interlocking alliances,
assassination of the Archduke), and trenches are mentioned, but
nothing more. You read Flanders Field, having little sense of the
scale of the thing, and then it's on to the 20s and the Depression.
It's on the scale of the Spanish-American war; that is, about a
day's worth of class time. There are lots of war memorials with
names; every town in the northeast has one in its town commons.
There are memorial highways, and Veteran of Foreign Wars posts. But
it occupies zero position in most people's minds. They wouldn't
know what a poppy was, or what it symbolized, if they saw you
wearing one.
In Canada, the veteran's care organization sells felt poppies for a
dollar apiece starting in early October. You can buy them
everywhere, and everyone walking around town wears them --
businessmen, little kids, teenagers. I was very surprised and moved
by this last fall.
I think for the US, part of the reason to forget it is that it
doesn't have the right storyline. We study the Revolutionary War --
we won and created the land of the free! We study the Civil War --
we won and freed the slaves! We study WWII -- we won and stopped
the Nazis! But we don't study WWI or Vietnam in school; there's no
happy ending to those, so the question about whether the results
justify the costs isn't so comfortably answered.
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