Gettin' Serious in the Classroom

Ahhh… The joys of debate. Ridiculed by actual athletes and cherished by those with no other release. Tis a sport of the ages; necessary for politically aspiring youth and radical individuals that prefer respect. But how do events turn in your everyday classroom? It’s surprising how involved a forced group of students can find themselves.

Classroom debates aren’t new to me. As a seventh grader especially we participated in debates representing everyone from political candidates to corporations wanting land. But in a middle school classroom riddled by performance anxiety and the low self-image most MACATs had, emotions and meaningful progress were hard to infer.

Yesterdays debate was different. Either people didn’t care, and thus acted accordingly; relaxed and calm, or people were way over-zealoused and created chaos for the more focused students. Surprisingly, the different personalities balanced the room out. I found the debate stimulating and educational, but regret that it ended so soon.

Looking back on the actual war, I think every party involved is guilty against their enemy. The whole international community refused any responsibility, although they claim to care about everyone. There was a serious lack of aide from capable countries like the United States and Germany (not portrayed, but definitely to blame considering previous German involvement in the country).

When the U.S. brought up Somalia for the twentieth time I was about to pull my hair out. If the situation in Somalia was bad enough to require help, then the situation in Rwanda was surly just as deserving. All that’s without even mentioning that no one cares about a stupid hole the U.S. got themselves into a few years ago. The situation was the Rwandan Genocide, and if they weren’t going to help they weren’t going to help, but there’s no way you can justify that. In fact, the U.S. looked even more chicken for not helping because of Somalia; it showed that they played favors over equally struggling African countries.

Within the country the rebel groups were just insane.

There is no logical justification for the massacre of Tutsis. The MRND said the Tutsis met their fait for invading “hutu” territory, as if the land belonged to a particular ethnic group. This isn’t Israel. The Interhamwe also offered a favorite excuse of, “ We were brainwashed by the radio station.”. Considering the systematic way in which MRND propaganda was broadcast, this claim has some validity. However, every individual must choose for themselves whether or not they will kill their neighbors because of who has what identity card.

I don’t understand why the RPF went into Rwanda in the first place. Yes, they had to protect their people, but in attempting that they lost thousands of people. Isn’t there a point where you say, okay, let’s try something else? But because they were so small of an… offensive front, I can’t really blame them for anything, or the people that helped them [Uganda ;)].

But the question still remains, and was unfortunately left for military dominance to answer in the actual conflict. What can we do now?