Learning History

My 6 year old has no opinion about the countries my wife talks fondly about (Belgium and France) or the one I’ve been to in recent times (China). But for whatever reason, she wants to go live in the US! (Taking us along, of course). But she never tells us why. Neither of us have ever spoken to her about the US, so it must be her friends or classmates who have influenced her.

At the other end of the spectrum of countries on which she has an opinion lies Pakistan. In this case though, we do know how she formed her opinion. On the anniversary of the Kargil War, her school had a session on thanking the army and told the kids about Kargil. So she got to know that:
-         India defeated Pakistan at Kargil;
-         Pakistan is the enemy with whom India has fought many times.

No wonder then that she was glued to the movie, The Ghazi Attack, which is about an Indian submarine crew who sank the Pakistani submarine named Ghazi in 1971, right before the Bangladesh war started.

Having finished the movie, she started telling everything she knew about Kargil. Not paying attention, I thought I heard her say “tiger”. So I corrected her saying that Kargil is in the Himalayas, which is not a place where tigers live. “No”, she said, “I said ‘Tiger Hill’”. I realized that she did pay attention to the school talk on Kargil! I can only hope she pays attention during all her classes…

The tiger/Tiger Hill incident also made her realize something that Calvin told his dad:
“I take it there's no qualifying exam to be a Dad.”
And yet she wanted to know more about Kargil. Her solution:
“Is there a movie about the Kargil war? When can I see it?”

I guess kids nowadays learn history through movies, not books…

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