Resources for Teachers and Students on Ron Kovic

Prepare: Ron Kovic was a U.S. Marine who suffered a spinal cord injury due to enemy fire during the Vietnam War, and became a leading activist against the war by helping to organize the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. His biography can be found on the "My Hero" website.

Read: Ron Kovic's brief Architects of Peace essay is excerpted from a magazine article, "When a System Goes Astray, Go to the Streets: Today's Leaders Look to Tomorrow."

Explore: Ron Kovic wrote a best-selling biography, Born on the Fourth of July, which was made into an Academy Award-winning film by Oliver Stone. Both DVD and VHS versions of this film are available in most video stores.

Write: In his Architects of Peace essay, Ron Kovic claims that those who opposed the Vietnam War were good citizens. How is this possible? Do citizens have an obligation to "support our troops" during times of war? Is there something un-patriotic about anti-war sentiment? Under what circumstances does anti-war activism constitute good citizenship? Write a three-to-five page reflective paper in which you take a stance on one of these questions.

Extend: Ron Kovic continued to function as a peace activist even after the conclusion of the Vietnam War. He has helped organize anti-war demonstrations recently to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and was interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about one such demonstration in Washington, D.C.

Additional Resource: Ron Kovic helped organize a group of his fellow veterans who had become peace activists into an organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Biography of Ron Kovic