A recent story which came from Australia, still raises a lot of questions as to what terrorism really is, and whether it is entrenched in the society or in the mindset of the people.
The story itself is rather simple. A high school teacher of a Society and Environment class in Western Australia gave her 10-grade students an assignment to plan a terrorist attack on an ‘unsuspecting Australian community’ with the aim of killing as many people as possible. In order to achieve the aim the ‘terrorists’ were free to use any kind of weapon they could possess including biological and chemical weapons.
The story might have gone unnoticed, if one of the students, 15-year-old Sarah Gilbert had not lost one of her relatives in a 2002 terrorist attack in Bali, Indonesia, when 202 people, including 88 Australians were killed. Sarah was horrified and shocked, and in a letter to her teacher refused to do the assignment because she didn’t want to disrespect Australia.
Eventually, the school Principal Terry Martino had to intervene and cancelled the assignment.
At the same time, the school Principal actually defended the teacher. He refused to disclose her name to the media referring to her privacy, and also said that the teacher was “hardworking, keen and highly regarded by staff, students and community,”
This could well be the end of the story. But really, was it an isolated curious accident in a small provincial Australian community, or does it reflect something more serious?
Well, for most Australians terrorism remains a kind of a fairy tale which – however horrible it might be – happens to someone else somewhere in distant parts of the world. Therefore the whole story can be regarded just as an intellectual exercise.
As if to prove this thesis, another completely unrelated incident occurred in another Australian school just a few days after the incident in Western Australia. A schoolboy was awarded a prize for the best costume when he dressed himself up as Adolf Hitler.
Some experts even point out that the assignment given to “would-be terrorists” could have a positive impact on the students. An Australian-based terrorism expert Chris Westinghouse has even called it “educative and useful”.
But somehow it seems that the apparently isolated incident reflects a more profound tendency not limited to Australia which – thank God – has really been too distant from the horrors of global terrorism. It reflects a certain tendency in the minds of the ‘civilized community’ when the notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ lose their inherent contents and moral judgment is regarded obsolete.
As a common saying goes, “he who is a terrorist for some, is a freedom fighter for others”. And therefore, for those “others” there is nothing strange in an attempt of a school teacher to make her students feel in terrorists’ shoes.
Within the framework of this tendency, terrorism becomes entrenched not only in society and politics but in the whole mindset of people for whom it becomes just one label among many others devoid of any moral assessment.
And should we be surprised if some time in the foreseeable future, another teacher in another part of the world gives her or his ‘ecology’ class a task to plan a chemical attack on a huge megapolis, or devise a new type of weapon of mass destruction which would surpass the nuclear bomb?
It is well known that Osama bin Laden was initially created by American special services as a ‘freedom fighter’ against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Now, it looks like the task of creating new Osamas has gone down to high school level. 
Download
Please rate: