WW1. Celebrate or just quietly remember?

We should quietly remember - just as the Belgians have been doing for nearly 100 years. I think every secondary school child should visit the Menin Gate at least once.

Not happy about Lord Kitchener on the £2 coin. Completely insensitive. Kitchener was a very highly experienced army chief who was one of the very few before WW1 to predict the length of the war and massive casualties that it was likely to produce. That did not stop him from firmly directing the British army forward without hesitation into the hideous years of death and injury which followed. Furthermore, his private life was alleged to have been very strange. He is one of the last people I would want to remind me of WW1. I am saddened and disappointed that the government has not realised this, but am not surprised. Cameron has shown his ignorance of our history many times before.

I see that the Minister for Tinkering with Education has had a bit of a slap round the back of the head from other Conservatives because of his comments about World War I. They feel that their plans for commemoration – which do include a range of educational projects – are being undermined by his grandstanding. Reading between the lines, I would guess that they find his 1914-style jingoism is doing more harm than good.

this article puts the conflict in a different perspective - from the Australian point of view. And the columnist is right - we should never forget the losses sustained by the ANZAC forces.

I think the problem is that many people might look at the image and not understand the nuances jing - I would expect Mr Gove would approve. I rest my case.

It smacks too much of 'them and us'.
Officers from one class, 'rankers'from another ( working men and 'pals').

There was some clever psychology behind that poster, and the poor little sods fell for it.

These days the posters have changed but....

Why do people need everything spelt out for them in black and white? Has thinking gone out of fashion completely?

I think that extremely emotive coin sums up admirably why young men felt the need to go and fight in this war. And at the same it illustrates how the more reluctant ones were forced to go.

It in no way glorifies Kitchener. It sums up the mood of the generals and politicians of that time.

Does the Royal Mint ever consult about its commemorative coins?

Signed the petition. Gruesome bad taste. Obviously the mint have not consulted many people before making this crass decision.

I guess I should add that my grandfather was a young 'Boer rebel' at the time of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), so some of my knowledge of Kitchener is from my grandfather's diaries, which he wrote as an adult from memory, because he went to school for the first time at age 19.

www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/kitchener%C3%A3%C2%A2%C3%A2%C2%82%C2%AC%C3%A2%C2%84%C2%A2s-opinion-concentration-camps

I'm not posting this to be provocative, by the way. It's simply history, and it concerns Lord Kitchener's involvement in South Africa. And nowadays my granddad would have been a freedom fighter

Gonna sign the petition now.

I was interested to read about the Kitchener coin (via Twitter) today. I hadn't known that there was this campaign.

The causes, and the effects of WW1 are taught intensively and well in most secondary schools, at KS3 and above, often incorporating visits to Ypres and the Menin Gate, and study of the war poets. I have seen students return chastened by the experience.

I was much saddened when the poetry of WW1 was removed from the GCSE Certificate by the powers that be, and replaced with something like "poetry from 1918.....(can't remember the detail) The power of that poetry cannot be underestimated.

Reflect, yes. Commemorate, yes. Be grateful, yes. Celebrate, no. It was a wasteful, dreadful war, and the media freedom which we so castigate today would surely have served its purpose had it been prevalent then!

Answering the original question ; I think it should be reflective, as others have suggested. So little is known of it by the young generation [45 and below] as to be almost ridiculous.We cannot now address this suddenly and forcefeed war docu on tv.In schools, for years there has only been the second world war taught in history, in fact almost nothing else!Also, as someone has said, nothing should be taught to primary age children.
In secondary schools, the bare facts about the causes of the first war should be taught before next year [bet they won't be] and the school library can display any books of fiction or non fiction that is suitable, that is about the Great War [to end all wars, that was a bitter laugh, wasn't it?]
Since there is nobody now alive that took an active part [soldiers] in that war, perhaps families who are able to talk to children about the part that their own Grandfather played could do so? There are also recordings from old soldiers, that are very moving.

I would have been at primary school age when my dad's friend came round. He had a bayonet scar down the side of his face. Even at that tender age I realised what WW1 actually involved and Dad used to read me war poetry which I found incredibly moving - and still do.
I visited Fromelles about 3 years ago now where my Aussie grandad was wounded and some of the war graves in the area. Seeing those rows upon rows of headstones and standing for the ceremony at the Menin Gate I found incredibly moving. I've read a lot about WW1 - particularly about the 'ordinary' Tommy but seeing the aftermath for myself affected me deeply. The visit to Poperinghe where even teenagers were shot at dawn was very affecting.
I dread the politicians putting in their twopenn'orth. David Cameron's 'pained' face is so insincere.

WW1 is on the curriculum both in primary and secondary schools and I am sure all teachers here will know of assemblies and events in schools to teach children about WW1. It is not a case of not teaching it.

I recall learning the War poets in English literature (O Level) in the 60s and it having an impact on me. My two great aunts lost a husband and fiancee to the war and never married/marries again. My grandfather died aged 50 as a result of war damage though some years later.

I think the issue with commemorating the war is that there are two opposing opinions who are 'warring' about the war!

Those who would like to promote a memory of 'glorious Britain' and a justified conflict and those who would prefer to promote the memory of those who died & the tragedy of war.

I agree with Grannyactivist that we should use the commemoration to teach children and young people about conflict resolution and also to promote organisations like the UN, Red Cross. Red Crescent etc. and all those organisations that work to bring peoples together after war.

We should never ignore the reasons why countries make the decision to fight because if we do how do we ever begin to learn to avoid those situations again. However sometimes the reasons countries go to war are ugly and not noble and sometimes that might apply to GB

sunseeker I remembered enough of it ( . . "nation that forgets its past" . . .) to be able to search for it. It should be framed and displayed where all MPs have to pass it daily.

It's not so much the mixed imagery Absent. It's the cynicism!

Thanks Elegran - I seem to be able to remember (sort of) quotes just never who said them!

"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Winston Churchill

Commemorate yes, celebrate no. Who was it who said those who forget mistakes are destined to make them again (or something like that).

Photographs of young people urinating on war memorials and their later defence being they didn't know what they stood for make me very sad. Isn't this an argument for teaching the reasons for both WW, including the mistakes that were made and what, with hindsight, could have been done to prevent them.

I lost at least 4 family members in WW1, including my grandfather, three within six months. I think the next four years are a time for commemoration. Nobody, I know has suggested we celebrate it.

I am with Michael Gove when he says attitudes to WW1 are too governed by Black Adder and Oh what a lovely war. I have recently been rewatching the 26 episode history of WW1 made by the BBC in the 1960s and following that reading around the causes of the war and German aggression and its threats to Britain were as much the cause of WW1 as WW2.

War is not a choice between killing and not killing. It is a choice of who dies.An uncle of mine, an emotional pacifist, once asked me what difference it would made to us if we had refused to fight and let Hitler occupy us. I began listing all the groups of people in Britain who would have been killed by the Nazis; the Jews, homosexuals, politically active people, the disabled. the list is endless.

Like most people I opposed the Iraq war but I was very conscience that this would not a choice between killing and not killing. I opposed the war because there was no justification for it. Saddam Hussein was a sadistic Dictator but had breached no international law and had no connections with Al Q'aida. However I was well aware that one of the results of not going to war was that were many people in Iraq who would die as victims of Saddam Hussein's vicious regime who might otherwise have been saved.

It is of course obvious why there is a fanfare for the 100th anniversary for the start of World War I. With an election in 2015, today's politicians have no certainty that they will be in the public eye and important enough to feature in celebrations of the 100th anniversary of its end in 2018 – and they can't resist the opportunity to strut and fret their hour upon the stage in borrowed plumes to show how statesmen-like they are.

Sorry about all the mixed imagery.

For me, the most poignant description of the effect of WW1 and its aftermath on ordinary people is in Lewis Grassic Gibbons 'Sunset Song', probably because the characters are drawn from the small farming communities of Aberdeenshire where my Grandparents were born. My own Grandfather was rejected for service when he became old enough because he was the only son left, his two elder brothers having already been enlisted and killed. Grandfather called HIS two eldest sons after his brothers and did everything in his power to dissuade them from joining up in WWII. Fortunately for GF both sons were declared essential war workers (electrical engineers) although my Father was drafted to Gillingham near London for highly secret work on aeroplanes and was 'at home' when the factory was bombed and 'at work' when his lodgings were flattened by a land mine and also strafed on a train. One of the big differences between the 2 WWs was that in the second the Home Front could be just as dangerous as the front line.