“War is not the answer”
Four Carterton Community College students have recently been named
winners of the Peace Pledge Union & Carterton Community College Writing
for Peace Competition. Here Peter Glasgow, Peace Education Officer for the
Peace Pledge Union, details the role of the PPU (the oldest secular Pacifist
Organisation in the UK) and talks us through the competition in question.
As Education Officer my job is to try and get young people to challenge
some of the ideas that are often perceived as our common sense notions
and to try and get people to apply critical awareness to what they are being
told particularly in relation to ideas that wars and that armed conflicts are
inevitable.
Pupils from state schools in Northern Ireland, Wales and England responded
to the call for submissions to the Peace Pledge Union’s Writing for Peace
Competition. Because of the quality and number of submissions from
Carterton Community College we decided to hold a specific competition for
this school.
Pupils were asked to express, in no more than 500 words of prose or poetry,
how a Conscientious Objector who refused to kill, or a man or woman
opposed to the war, may have felt during the First World War, as they strove
to make words of peace as resounding as those that were championing war.
The quality of the entries was very high so it was difficult for the judges, who
included a playwright, who has written scripts for Brookside and EastEnders,
to determine the actual winners here at Carterton Community College.
And so we celebrate Lizzie Hubbard, Kayleigh Saunders, Michaeal Orzovski
and Ciara McAleese winning the Writing for Peace Competition.
I never pulled the trigger
by Lizzie Hubbard
Life is an hourglass, with little specks of sand descending one by one and
then perishing forever. We tend to believe that we have control over our
“hourglass.” We never tend to see that at any moment that glass can shatter;
that life will slip through our very hands, and we will not be able to grasp
the specks of sand. Life is only very short, and we should never take it for
granted because what happens if it ends today? Tomorrow?
That is why I never pulled the trigger...
It is a surreal situation, blood flourishing around you like poppies in a field. In
the footsteps of men who once stood; now stand the crimson-stained specks
of sand.
I never pulled the trigger.
I no longer wished to be a part of this conflict and struggle. War is not the
answer to any of the world's problems.
I never pulled the trigger.
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