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My daughter's social studies class was studying the Vietnam War last spring......she was excited about a Veteran coming to speak to the class about his experiences...... he turned out to be a 60 year old guy wearing an old fatigue jacket covered with peace sign patches and "make love not war" type of insignia........

All he did was bitch and whine and make the kids uncomfortable.......

I was ready to go to the principal with a complaint when my daughter said one of the girls in class had complained and asked if her Father could come in to give the "other side".....her Dad was retired military and had served in Vietnam.......... My daughter said he came in uniform and gave them more facts and details and did, in fact, back up some of the feelings the first guy had commented about, but gave more explanation to what was going on in the world and the kids got a much better understanding of that War............

A little OT but I remember when I was in high school social studies as a junior (1983/84) we had a Vietnam vet come and speak to us about the war. He must have been in his 40's at the time and still an active serving Colonial (Lt. or "full" I can't remember) and was a father of one of my classmates. I remember he basically said that it was a job that they had to do and did it as well as they could. I also remember the pictures he brought in on his tours there, they were very interesting, from the front lines to everyday life in the street.

I remember we spent a couple of weeks talking about Vietnam, of course, in the early to mid 1980's, it was more of a recent memory than it is now. It is like on today's kids, the Vietnam War is as much "ancient history" to them as Korea or World War II was to my generation (I'm 36). Still I understand the significance in history and what it meant for those events unlike a lot of younger people today.

Thanks for the comment....... my husband served in the Marine Corps in Beirut in 1983 - and was a Reservist for 12 years......so our daughter has a great respect for the military.

She was very excited to be studying more recent history that semester - it seemed she had studied ancient history until she was pretty well versed.......

She was expecting "some" of the comments by this speaker to be negative, but not everything out of his mouth......she said he was anti government, talked about drugs, sex...... she really was upset with the whole thing......... I was upset that the teacher hadn't checked him out prior to allowing him to speak to the class........THAT was going to be the focus of my complaint..that he was unsuitable to speak to the class with the language he used, and the content......... I didn't have a problem with hearing the "two" sides of the story - but she needed to be more aware of how it would be presented...........

Apparently the Military Dad thought so too........ and he did a great job of giving some facts on the positive side.