Honor the Warrior Not the War : Who Are the Warriors of the Vietnam War?: A Seven-Week Unit for Eighth Graders

Honor the warrior not the war is the slogan of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, hence the title of this unit which intends neither to honor nor dishonor the Vietnam War - i.e., to assess per se its rightness or wrongfulness. That sort of investigation may be within the scope of a social studies unit. The intent of this language arts unit is to honor the warriors of that war. Focusing on those who fought in the war and exploring the question Who Are the Warriors of the Vietnam War? leads adolescents to a major discovery – i.e., that most of the warriors were teenagers. Young adult nonfiction writer Don Lawson (1986) describes the Vietnam War as America\u27s first teenage war (p. 28). The average age of the American soldier in the Vietnam War was 19 as compared to 26 in World War II. If the United States was still fighting in Vietnam today, many of the students studying the unit could anticipate becoming the warriors in a few years