Bye Bye November

The last day of the month and I am starting to see the Christmas decorations going up. I write this in advance to see how the Christmas holiday will play out; how the Christmas Spirit, if you will, manifests itself. I am assuming that this will be my only Christmas away from my family and will be curious to experience the different feelings I go through as it approaches. I know there will be some guilt involved since I volunteered to deploy.

For your students: Although Christmas is meant to celebrate Jesus's birth; in being educationally PC, teachers are pressured to avoid that subject in the classroom. However, lets discuss the above picture I've chosen with the MINES sign posted. Ask your students to research (geographically) where the largest density of mines are in the world. Students will need a little background on what mines are and what their purpose is. The reason I bring this up is to propose that evil, and all that comes with it, exists; using mines as an example. See if your students can dig further to reveal how the Russian military used mines to purposefully attempt to eliminate a generation of children. Find examples of their attempts to kill and maim and the specific device they used for their purpose - prove whether I am right or wrong, better yet, prove whether the person who gave us the IED training when we arrived on base is right or wrong about this fact.

In short, my point is, throughout history we have seen manifestations of evil through a variety of human actions. In my eyes, if there is indeed evil then there must be a direct opposite, which is: all that is good, countering evil. Some people call the values and concepts of goodness their religion and attempt to live their lives according to the precepts of their religion. I don't know, using actions in history that were considered "evil" to justify a human cause could make for a stimulating discussion in a high school or college classroom! I'd sure like to be there to hear it...bye bye November.