To think school shouldn’t insist that everyone wears a poppy and donates £1

[moonlightholly]

It’s supposedly in a deprived area too - there are constant reminders of the high percentage of pupils with PP.

Also, I don’t think a school should insist everyone wears a poppy - or AIBU?

People who are against remembering are a fucking disgrace.

"People who are against remembering"?? Who are these people then? Have a word with yourself
Nowhere on this thread has a single person stated or even implied that they want to ban "remembering" the dead, that they think it's wrong to remember the dead or that they don't wear a poppy because they think the dead should be forgotten. You're getting outraged about something that only exists in your own head.

Believe it or not, some of us might be perfectly capable of "remembering" something without having to pin a visual reminder to our clothing.

It's also bemusing that this is now apparently a competition as to whose WW2 veteran relatives lived longest. My grandad chucked his medals in the river and would've told the posters in this thread trying to conflate remembering with pinning certain things to yourself to stop talking shite. In fact, he wanted to forget rather than to remember, quite understandably given what he went through. But he died in his 80s rather than surviving long enough for me to be able to disrespectfully use cite him in an MN debate, so apparently I'll have to cede the moral high ground there.

Once it becomes mandatory it loses all meaning, the school should be talking to the children about why they may want to wear a poppy and letting them decide. And it should be any donation, not specifically £1.

I assume the head wants to brag in the local paper or some such that they raised £x amount.

i fume at it, the british army have butched people all over the world for hundreds of years, Yemen is our latest accolade, providing weapons for lovely Saudi millionaire to kill little Yemeni children , in a way only Saudis are comfortable with...... and US and British diplomats and Tory politicians. Along with French and others...... also the WW1 kids , my Grandad was shot in head and suvived aged 15....he then took on his mates wife and kids and had my Dad and 4 others....10 in total ..... and stuggled with that wound all his life...... WHY? Why did we send our boys to die? What reason? Poppy is a reminder of blood split, feeding poppy plants and making them thrive in the blood of our grandads, FOR NOTHING. RMEMEBR THAT. its never mentioned. only glory glory glory.

sorry its not just the tories , its all the britsh prime ministers ....... however..... theres a candidate now whos is dead against this kind of foriegn policy.

I sell poppies, I work in a deprived area, the HT is wrong on every level. You donate what you can
Challenge it, there should be no pressure on anyone

Yes well Bertrand, people who fought in WW2 apparently only matter if they survived until late 2019. If your father wanted an opinion on the war he endured and risked his life in and to be taken any notice of by people who have no idea what it was like, he shouldn't have died.

If you truly disagree with how your school do things, then I would go talk to the head, instead of posting on AIBU thread on MN. It won't solve anything.

I can’t even with this thread so I’m gonna ignore it! The ignorance on this thread however is shocking.

Wear a Poppy and show some respect for the men often men barely out of their teens who died in a war that stopped a very evil man who long term goals were mass extinction of Races of people he thought we’re animals and disgusting. Fine don’t wear your poppy or make your children wear your poppy, but then shame on you.

@DawnOfTheDeadleg.

“ My grandad chucked his medals in the river and would've told the posters in this thread trying to conflate remembering with pinning certain things to yourself to stop talking shite.”

The distasteful thing for me is people thinking they can speak for people who lived-or died- through the horror of war. Your grandfather spoke for his generation. Hijacking his memory for political purposes or personal remembrance top trumps is disgraceful.

Don’t go to the head, go to the board of governors.

Neither of my grandfathers who fought in WWII chose to wear poppies.

More generally I am against schools pushing children and their families into supporting any charity. Charitable giving is a personal matter and pressure should not be applied.

Or if you really wanted to know what other parents think, I would post on specific board, like primary in this case, where you can expect the responce from parents of certain age group children, and not hostile in nature compared to Aibu.

its an academy school isnt it. You cant make people get involved in soemthing they dont want to be part of. Its a disgrace, it also makes you feel like your a monster for not, like you are on the side of the Germans for not nuying a poppy. A lots of old vets, dont like poppy day.... ww1 vets. As well as 2018 injured soldiers. Fighting for oil .

“The Poppy isn’t political”

But a lot of people are choosing to make it political.

SoftMyrtle I, and many others don’t see the wearing of a red poppy as glorifying or glamourising war. We just see it as a symbol of remembrance, and that is all, nothing else.

“I’m probably one of the few on here old enough to have been brought up by a father who was active in WW2”

Both of my parents were active during WW2 as well BertrandRussell

Our school is clear that any donations for charitable causes are voluntary.

I would be raising it with the school/ board of governors that with a high proportion of pp pupils it is ridiculous to require people to purchase a poppy.

You don’t have to wear anything to deplore the waste of life.
You don’t have to performance respect
You don’t have to donate to any stated charity

NOBODY should be forced to do this and the school is wrong to suggest it. It happened at my children’s school not so long ago and was extremely irritating.

I wear a poppy.

A pure simple reasoning behind it. To remember those in conflicts gone before and to prompt the younger generation to have an awareness of this.

I don't know wtf people are mentioning atomic bombs in relation to this issue, especially as it was the Americans who were responsible for the decision to drop the first bombs.
You can find horrific war crimes from the ancient world to today, there's no shortage of examples. IMHO the wearing of poppy's and the need to prevent this are two separate issues.

I can’t even with this thread so I’m gonna ignore it! The ignorance on this thread however is shocking.

Wear a Poppy and show some respect for the men often men barely out of their teens who died in a war that stopped a very evil man who long term goals were mass extinction of Races of people he thought we’re animals and disgusting. Fine don’t wear your poppy or make your children wear your poppy, but then shame on you.

It is bemusing that someone so ignorant as to equate wearing a poppy with respect and remembering thinks they're in any position to deliver pious lectures.

Precisely my point Bertrand. The majority of people posting on here will have had relatives who fought in WW1 and WW2, even more who experienced it without fighting. Millions and millions of people, and they aren't and never were a monolithic bloc. Much less a fucking debate tool for people who are high on their own moral superiority.

And to answer the op, it is however a choice, you cannot make it compulsory.

Is this the annual People Who Don't Wear Poppies Are DISRESPECTFUL Bingo?

My granddad volunteered in 1917. He was 16, about 5 foot tall and 6 stone. They still took him - and it was so obvious he was still a child, they put him to working with the horses, as his job was a stable lad in Camden (you know the stables market? Yup, when horses were kept underground, he was the kid who cared for them). He got gassed, then after he'd recovered from that and sent back, he was blown up along with his horses in France. The Germans picked him out of a muddy hole from underneath the bits of his horses, took him to hospital, put a steel plate in his skull and fed and clothed him until the end of the war. Christ know what else he saw, but as he received a citation for rescuing his senior officer from No Man's Land under direct fire, it sounds like there was a hell of a lot.

He bought one poppy. Never wore it, he kept it on the mantlepiece.

He despised remembrance parades, saying that from the moment they started, the most enthusiastic participants were those who would corner kids like him to try and force white feathers on them - something that was just handing them to the recipients - there were actual threats of violence for being male, preferably small enough to be an easy target and being visible, such as walking home from work.

He was absolutely resolute that, other than a church service, anything else that was done was purely glorifying war and for self aggrandisement.

If anybody had given him grief for not wearing a poppy, despite his usual maximum swearing level being 'Oh, balls', they would have got the full gamut of profanities from him.

Of course some parents are that school will already have bought their poppies elsewhere. Is the school insisting they pay twice?
Is appalling to put this pressure on people.

The longer these threads go on the less inclined I am to wear a poppy.

There’s something about some of these posts that makes me think that it might be better if fewer people wore them. Perhaps it would make it easier to see that wearing one has little to do with how much you remember or respect those who have been injured or lost their lives in war.

Remember that episode of Dad's Army where it they found out that Godfrey was a conchie? Turns out he had received a medal for bravery which he didn't wear. It's a very good episode.