"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself".-- John Stuart Mill
That should be the words below the monument. My favorite quote. But I want my son to come to that conclusion on his own. By being an educated student who knows that life is not in the gray areas. It is black and white. Right or wrong.
This is the letter I wrote to his teacher.......
Mr. Graham
I am Stephan Caricchio's father. I would like to know what designing a monument has to do with Language Arts? It seems a bit outside of the realm of reading. This is not graphic design or art class.
I hope that there are no political motivations here. To allow an option to students to basically make protest art is poor judgement in my opinion. These kids are not mature enough to weigh out all of the reasons and whys sacrifices are made. All they have are images of the dead. No logical discussion of terrorism. Why we want to fight terrorists over there instead of here, that there are groups of radical muslim fanatics that have no other goal than to kill Americans. At 14 kids are either to sensitive and think killing is never right, or overzealous and think killing is never wrong. There isn't that area of thought in between that allows them to weigh issues and options. I truly believe that this is not appropriate for my son to be involved in. If it were just monuments to the sacrifice of our soldiers, fine. But I will not allow my child's immature thought process be weighted in a way that I do not choose. And I do not choose to have him be influenced by your possible underlying political motivations.
This will turn into a discussion of politics in a classroom where you are the final arbiter. Where your views can be accepted as fact and the truth can be tilted to meet your opinions.
Please do not take this in a bad way. Nothing personal, just the way I feel. I look forward to a response from you. Please contact me at your convenience.