My kids are attending a new school this year, and for the first time in their school career, they do not have today, Veteran’s Day, off as a holiday. Granted, they attend a private Jewish day school, and they just had a ton of days off for the Jewish holidays. I can only imagine that the school administration felt it was just too many days to be out of session.
At first I was a little annoyed by the decision to not close the school today. It is our responsibility as Americans, after all, to acknowledge and honor our veterans, but yesterday, my opinion changed.
As we were driving to school, my son began to talk about his special Veteran’s Day performance his class was working on for the special Veteran’s Day Assembly that the whole school would be attending. Then the conversation turned into, “Mom, what is Veteran’s Day?” Holy wow – all those years in public school taking the day off, and they had absolutely no clue as to why.
So, it occurred to me that perhaps we’re doing the wrong thing with kids on Veteran’s Day. I say, put kids in school on this day and spend the whole day devoted to the topic and with special programming all day long. Let them really learn why this is such an important day by embracing it in a kid-friendly way. Get on it, teachers, and thank you to our kids’ school for making my kids think about this day enough ask about it.
My song of the day, is of course, a long-standing Veteran’s Day anthem. Creedance Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” brings us back to Vietnam as they sing “Some folks are born to wave the flag…It ain’t me, it ain’t me!”
