The Rock Eisteddfod Challenge is a dance, drama and design spectacular for students from schools around Australia. The students themselves are the performers and plan an 8 minute performance which incorporates a theme of their choice set to contemporary music. Participating students commit to being 100% drug free.
This year, two schools from NSW will represent the state in the National finals. There was however a rather astonishing (in my opinion) reaction to one of the winning schools' dance production. Entitled "Bad Night in Baghdad" it made a distinctly anti Iraq war statement and was particularly critical of the coalition of the willing. "In it the students ask whether the war was "evil", whether the leaders lied to justify the war and whether too many innocent people were killed in the conflict" (The Courier-Mail). Instead of the students receiving applause for expressing an opinion on an important political and moral topic, they were blasted by parts of the media and the Federal Minister for Education. Their argument was that the students were under the influence of public school teachers who were pushing their left wing values in the classroom.
Our daughter at 16 attended peace rallies prior to the invasion of Iraq - at no time was she influenced to do so by her school or by us (although we did support her). Along with thousands of her teenage contemporaries she is a thinking, intelligent individual who is perfectly capable of seeing through the shallowness of world leaders. To accuse teachers of putting "words into the mouths of babes" is simply underestimating the intelligence of our youth.
This post by Doc Roc over at WriteOutLoud prompted me to raise the story of the 2004 Rock "shock" Eisteddfod. I applaud Doc Roc's actions in giving a young man some thought provoking material on war to read and would be very happy for her to have had a chat to my children on the same issues. Who knows, she may well have been addressing a future decision maker for her country. Our youth is our future after all.
