Back To School: VFP's Doug Rawlings On Why And How He Teaches Peacemaking

The Vietnam War Memorial on the cover of Talking Walls: Discover Your World, by Margy Burns Knight and illustrated by Anne Sibley O’Brien. From publisher Tilbury House's website: "...introduces young readers to different cultures by exploring the stories of walls around the world and how they can separate or hold communities together."

Doug Rawlings retired from teaching at the University of Maine, Farmington, a campus near me that prepares many of the educators working in public schools in the state. Doug is a founding member of the national group Veterans for Peace (VFP) and is a veteran of the war in Vietnam.

He has done much good work around the remembering of that war including projects like Letters to the Wall each Memorial Day, and his personal reflections on Ken Burns' documentary The Vietnam War (hint: he's not a fan). 

 VFP's Vietnam Full Disclosure mission statement:

The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans For Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Vietnam -- which is now approaching a series of 50th anniversary events. It represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon's current efforts to sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars.

Doug is back at UMF teaching first year seminars in peacemaking. As educators everywhere began preparing for the start of a new school year, he explained why and how he structures his course to meet the needs of first year college students. Not all are straight out of high school; many have loved ones in the military (Maine is a big poverty draft state), and some are veterans themselves. I consider Doug a true educator, one whose goal is to teach students how to think, not what to think.

His conversation here is well worth listening to. Heard but not seen are Martha Spiess, videographer, of Peace Action Maine, and Eric Herter of VFP.





Go here to Take the Pledge to join Doug and others in VFP working for a true history of the Vietnam War that students can learn from.

Please join us and TAKE THE PLEDGE: "I’m with Full Disclosure. I oppose the Pentagon campaign to re-write the history of the Vietnam War."