Even though the War in Iraq is barely a week old, media coverage is anywhere from extensive to exhaustive.
Anyone in touch with the news has heard from a host of voices.
Soldiers. Politicians. Diplomats. Bureaucrats. Journalists. Peace activists. Pro-war demonstrators.
But what about teenagers?
In contrast, their thoughts and feelings aren?t that well known.
One ninth grade class at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire has spent the entire year covering the troubles in Iraq.
NHPR?s Dan Gorenstein spoke with the students about how they have come to think about war.
Sfx: kids settling in
This is the first time Heidi Huntley?s 9th grade social studies class has discussed the war since it began about a week ago.
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:00 sound of settling in?:22 let me give you an overview of what the day is going to bring. You need to have your homework out?:40 we are going to move back to the main objectives of the War in Iraq, but I want to make sure we are focused on that, b/c there is so much going on.
Students talked about everything from too much war coverage to US oil interests in the region.
Many didn?t hide whether they felt the war was right or wrong.
But like any typical high school class discussion, getting students to answer questions was a like pulling teeth.
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1:13 Sfx: third objective?hello, are there words coming out of my mouth? 1:46
Obviously some kids were more interested in the paint on the ceiling or just with their private thoughts.
Conversely, students who did answer questions?withheld little.
Asked if the war images look like video games, Travis, who admits to owning 15 separate game systems, says one is shockingly similar to the war.
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:36 ? there is this one game called ?Conflict Desert Storm,? where you are supposed to go to Iraq, and take out Saddam?1:36 in video games they try to add more objects to make it harder for the player to get ot the end. Where Iraq is very plain, I look in the video games and there?s a ton of objects, you really got to walk through a maze, rather than a desert. But it does have the key points like the buildings and cities.
Travis worries recent military recruits have been duped into believing war was little more than a video game.
Shannon clearly doesn?t suffer from that delusion.
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2:20 this war does feel very real to me, b/c unlike a video game. You can?t turn it off. Video games, they are kind of like cut out for you. This is good. This is evil. This isn?t what you are supposed to do. I don?t know if this war is exactly like that. It just seems real to me b/c with all the people dying, and every single time I hear that, I feel terrible and sick.
Vanessa understood the war was real, when it seeped into her life.
Tape 4a
For Cathleen the war seems more distant.
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:25 nothing has impacted me personally, b/c I don?t know anyone over there, it?s nothing personal, yes, it?s my country at war, but it?s not all that personal to me, except watching it on the news, that?s about as close as we are going to get to it, unless something happens on this side of the ocean.
What do kids say to each other about the war, when adults are out of earshot?
Apparently jokes find their way into quite a few conversations.
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:48 this seems kind of insensitive but sometimes my friends and I will poke fun at it, make fun of the French, b/c there are so many jokes?Tell a joke?ok, like going to war without the French is like going hunting with an accordion. And that?s just like you so don?t need an accordion. And then there are a bunch of Bush jokes (group giggle).
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1:10 one joke I could think of it?s not too offensive, ?why is it twice as easy to teach Iraqi fighter pilots to fly a plan? B/c you only have to teach them to take off?I guess out of class we talk about war with our friends, and I guess, jokes that we make are showing that we really do care what is going on out there, and it?s hard to escape what we are seeing.
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:03 ?.a lot of people were just like let?s kill all the Iraqi?s, and just like, overboard on stuff they wouldn?t want to happen, but they just kind of make a joke out of it, thinking it?s no big deal, but it really is.
2:30 I don?t joke about it. I can understand people doing that to get a little bit of their emotion out. I am not taking it super serious like this isn?t funny, you shouldn?t joke. I don?t go that far? Any stereotypes of the Iraqi people, or what they are doing, those have to get checked, b/c I don?t think they are helpful, and I think they are just making fun of a situation that shouldn?t be made fun of in my opinion.
Even if these young teenagers did crack a few jokes, they also take the situation quite seriously.
Thanks to the 24-hour coverage, Mike now feels he knows what war looks like.
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3:24 ?we could fight in a war someday, and this gives us a good look of what it looks like?Before I didn?t really have a clue of what it looked like out in the field, but with all the media now, it gives me a better understanding of all the tough sandstorms?probably be exhausting, be hard being away from your family for so long.
Juliann considers what she would tell her own children someday about her reflections of war.
2:42? I guess I would say, we are only a week into this, and so many people have died and it?s just war is a really scary thing, and it?s real, and it?s going on.
These kids haven?t had much experience with war.
It may resemble video games, or be good joke fodder, but they end up thinking and reacting to it just like adults.
And Andy thinks war can be a time when adults realize how much they have in common with kids.
5:32 ? if we still share the same morals, values and ideals of life, I think that is far more important than the music we listen to, the movies we watch, I think that?s really the essence of why we are here.
A few thoughts on war from 9th graders in Heidi Huntley?s social studies class at Souhegan High.
For NHPR News, I?m DG.
