Folks, that word document you just read arent the university students I was talking about, these are highschool students in a completely different class. I was the one talking about the university sudents but also keep in mind that this is a Canadian military history class so their knowledge base is somewhat different then that of someone who has not taken this type of course or examined the material out of personal interest.
For my students, I did not hand out a paper based quiz, rather we just held a fire side chat of sorts to see what the students had to say. I will try my best to paraphraze the answers I got. Keep in mind I got a lot of answers as there are 130 people in the class, so I am mentioning larger consences here, not every answer I got.
I started the discussion off by saying that, the vast majority of you were using terms like "If it wasnt for X Canada would not be the power that it is today" ect...
I mentioned to them that I found this facinating because it was my beleif that the vast majority of the public would flatly disagree with this. Lets discuss...
Here is what I got.
-How can people think Canada is not a power. Just look at the facts and our track record. Wasnt it Canada that brought the British their first victory at during the Boer War, a fluke sure but still! Wasnt it Canada that was known as Shock Troops in the Great War? Wasnt there a guy that won an award for that in the papers a little while ago? Didnt we have over 1 million people in uniform during the Second World War?
Fast forward to more modern stuff, the facts that were presented were as follows...
-Didnt we bomb the crap out of the serbians in Kosovo? Arent we doing more fighting then anyone else in Afghanistan? Didnt we stop being global wimps after Sept 11th?
Again, I am paraphrazing their sentiments here...
When I asked them about Canada as a peacekeeping force...
-No, we arent peacekeepers, we just filled a task that nobody else could do, and now its a task that nobody can do, the world changed, and we changed with it.
-Yes we are still peacekeepers but we are pragmatic enough to understand that you cant peacekeep in a war zone
-yes we are still peacekeepers but only because of the myth, reality has yet to set in on society
- I wish that peacekeeping was still where Canada was, but, to peacekeep is to watch people die, nobody should ever do that
Should we stay in Afghanistan?
The vast majority of the students said yes. When asked why, they were proud of the fact that Canada could finally make a difference again.
There was a loud minority that objected to this, felt it was an American war, and that we had no business being there.
I asked them if Canada should become more aggressive on the world scene. The answers seemed to be evenly divided between yes and no.
But here is something I found really interesting. A fierce debate broke out between two students. One student insisted that we should not be getting involved in the rest of the world, that we shouldnt be trying to help people with our military, or stop others from causing harm. He felt that the money spent on the military would be better spent on health care and job protection programs during harsh economic concerns.
The other student jumped all over this arguments, called the kid selfish and then quoted Churchill. He said, "Sir Winston Churchill once said that ""All it takes for evil to endure is for good men to do nothing"" Are you a good man or not"?
The other student was speachless.
At that point I brought an end to the debate and we got back on with the class.
Overall I felt the results were rather mixed, but in a much more positive direction then I would have otherwise thought. I think as someone else said, this is a Canadian millitary history class, so were talking to kids that have spent the past semester learning all the facts about our military history, which makes them not a universal sample of the Canadian population.
