History is made by real people. Remember this when you teach.

As a history teacher, I spend a lot of time teaching war… unfortunately. In five years we will have to teach about this Ukrainian war. We usually talk about political/economic reasons, but in practice, they always end up being ridiculous reasons. As a teacher, I always want to remind my students of a simple and sad fact. War affects people. People like us, like them. War kills children. War kills parents. For example, when I teach about World War II, I sometimes show a picture from American historian John Dower’s book “Embracing Defeat”. This is a book about postwar Japan. The photo shows the arrival of Japanese orphans stranded in Manchuria.The saddest thing for me is that the girl on the right is carrying the cremated bones of her parents and brother in a white plastic bag wrapped around her body, she is alone in the world. The whole family is in this photo. Sadly, the world has changed so much, but human stupidity has changed a little. Six years ago I read an article on BBC. It was about a boy who was abandoned by his family in the 50-degree heat of the desert and no one knew his name. I don’t think so. His eyes were dry and his retinas stuck together. The family was most likely fleeing the Islamic State (EL) or (ISIS). They probably couldn’t save all the children and left him behind because the boy in question was paralyzed…he was chosen to die. However, he refused to die.History is made by people and affects people. can’t forget it. Nearly 70 years separate the photo above and the report below. The world has changed a lot. But men seem to have changed little. And children are forced to be alone in the world because of war.