It is surely a sign of my getting older (I'd like to say greyer but that ship seemed to have sailed many years ago) but I have started to be genuinely concerned that the World is forgetting. Whole countries and continents seem to be enveloped in a collective amnesia about the cost of conflict - even when we have the means by which the unimaginable horrors of war are daily beamed into our lives by the news, by smuggled images and videos of suffering laid bare. Forgetting is dangerous. 

Today is about remembering the folly and cost of the lives lost in countless conflicts.

We look at the causes of World War One and Two and we hold a mirror up to the world around us - and we remember.

Undertaking military action, often but not always a last resort, has a cost far in excess of the money it costs to create the weapons. At Hornsey School for Girls, we are committed to ensuring our students have a strong and deep political literacy. They'll need it in a changing world order where past lessons are perhaps not being listened to or heard by newly anointed leaders with cavalier attitudes to expected norms of behaviour, protocols or truth. Much like buses, the world at large seems to have acquired this type of leader in an unexpected queue. 

Countries have paid a terrible price in the blood shed that continues in conflicts across our world. Let us remember today but act in the future to do all we can to stop the hate. 

We'll be holding a two minute silence tomorrow to reflect as a school community. 

Lets not forget. 

Ms R 

10/11/2019