My daughter came home from school today and informed me quite seriously, in her own words, that there is a true story about a man who got shot in the back.

“What are you reading?!” I asked her, shocked, to which she responded that her Grade 2 teacher had read them a story about a man who was killed by getting shot in the back and that the bullet went through his heart. Shocking I know! My daughter had a look of wry expectation as she waited for what she most surely knew was going to be my negative reaction. She’s a very perceptive girl like that.

Now you may ask yourself, why is a seven year old being read stories in school about people being shot and killed? What could possibly make the discussion of such graphic violence acceptable for a primary school classroom?

If you haven’t guessed already, the apparent justification for this disturbing classroom story time was – Gallipoli. After a bit of proding I came to the conclusion  that the story my daughter was told was the story of Simpson and his donkey, Duffy.

I object wholeheartedly to this kind of indoctrination and propaganda being taught in our schools. Even without the recent controversy around whether the majority of this tale is actually a myth or not.

I do not believe it is right to continue to foster a cultural identify for this nation around war. We are teaching kids to have honour and respect for war “heroes” even before they can possibly understand the tragedy of war. We are teaching our kids that war is an inevitable (if unfortunate) consequence of conflict, even while teaching them that there is no justification for fighting in the schoolyard.

I am livid.

Let me make this perfectly clear. I do not hold particular issue with our soliders personally. They are individuals like everyone else. They are not “good” or “bad”. They are people. People who are kind, who are selfish, who are trustworthy, who are arseholes. Being in the military doesn’t make a person any more than a person, with all their flaws and virtues.

I have a line of military men in my family. I honour the role they played in doing what they believed to be right. Perhaps this is made easier for me because they were all in the medical corps.

But I do not support fostering Australia’s cultural identity around war. We are better than that. And I do not support classroom teachers telling our young primary school students war stories. Yes, we all know that the “moral of the story” is probably “war is bad” (which my daughter didn’t offer when I asked what she thought the moral was) yet the spoken and unspoken subtext of such a story is that of glorification.

We use the terms “hero” and “legend” and “Great Aussie Battler”. But I tell you what, the “other” side use terms like “hero” and “legend” and “freedom fighter”. Although I’m not sure what the Islamic words for these are.

Soldiers are not heros. Yes, they may commit heroic deeds in situations that I cannot begin to fathom the horror of. Yes, they have done great things for their fellow soliders. And at the same time they have also killed, maimed and committed unspeakable atrocities. There can be no glory in war. Our soldiers are as much victims as anyone else for having believed the lie that war was the only answer.

They are people who believed their governments and their leaders. They are people who believed, and still believe in many cases, that without fighting we would all be “speaking Japanese” or “speaking German”. Now I’m not sure how much truth there is in that. But as an aside, perhaps these same people who spout such sentiments should consider their logic when getting all agro about Aboriginal rights. Seems the fear of a potential invasion outweighs the reality of white man’s invasion of this land. Perhaps they should consider that Indigenous Australians are now “speaking English”… But I digress.

To put our military on a pedestal is no different from the goose-stepping parades in North Korea. Yet we react in horror to that. War is war is war is war.

And I do not accept that it is any school teacher’s duty to teach my children to honour our military for fighting for the freedoms we take for granted. How can we sleep at night, teaching our kids that soliders keep them safe even while our nation supports bombing other countries like Iraq where hundreds, if not thousands, of children have been killed or maimed.

I’m sorry but I can’t get excited about that.