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OneShot

Napalm Girl, 50 Years Ago: This Happened, June 8

It's been exactly 50 years since the photograph was taken that many say is the most powerful image of innocent war victims ever. "Napalm Girl," which was captured at the height of the Vietnam War in 1972, is also the story of that girl at the center of the image.

Napalm Girl, 50 Years Ago: This Happened, June 8

Taken exactly 50 years ago, “Napalm Girl” has become a timeless symbol of the horrors of war as Vietnamese civilians flee their village after it had been hit by airstrikes.


But the “girl” in question at the center of the photograph — Kim Phuc Phan Thi — also has a story to tell that stretches beyond that defining 20th-century moment.

Napalm stuck to her skin

Kim was born in the small village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam in 1963. Despite the war around her, she has recalled her early years with fond memories, growing up on her family’s farm. One day, Kim was playing in the local temple courtyard when she heard a deafening noise. A plane swooped down, and suddenly her surroundings erupted in smoke and flames.

“I don’t remember running and screaming, Nóng quá, nóng quá! ('Too hot, too hot!'),” she told The New York Times recently. “But film footage and others’ memories show that I did.”

Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut, who was working for the Associated Press, shot the photo, on June 8, 1972, showing a nine-year-old Kim and other villagers fleeing after the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese airforce fighters dropped incendiary napalm bombs over Trang Bang and the surrounding area.

The children in the photo experienced excruciating pain as the napalm stuck to their skin. Kim is seen naked and screaming after ripping off her burning clothes, and Ut immediately picked her up after snapping the image and brought her to a hospital where doctors at first didn’t expect her to survive.

Life after the photo

At times, Kim says she resented Ut for allowing her disfigured naked body to be displayed so publicly, but ultimately remains a strong defender of what the photo stands for. The two remained close, with Kim referring to Ut as “Uncle Ut,” but they wouldn’t see each other for another 17 years after the photo was taken.

Ut had moved to the U.S. just 2 years after the fall of Saigon to continue a successful career as a photojournalist. Kim ultimately made it to Canada, where she now heads the Kim Foundation International, an organization which provides support for victims of war.

“I have carried the results of war on my body. You don’t grow out of the scars, physically or mentally. I am grateful now for the power of that photograph of me as a 9-year-old, as I am of the journey I have taken as a person. My horror — which I barely remember — became universal. I’m proud that, in time, I have become a symbol of peace.”

After 50 years, Kim relates her experience to the recurring horrors of school shootings in the United States, advocating the uncensoring of news images of the killings, with the hope that once the public is forced to confront their reality, change will take effect.

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Future

AI Is Good For Education — And Bad For Teachers Who Teach Like Machines

Despite fears of AI upending the education and the teaching profession, artificial education will be an extremely valuable tool to free up teachers from rote exercises to focus on the uniquely humanistic part of learning.

Journalism teacher and his students in University of Barcelona.

Journalism students at the Blanquerna University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

© Sergi Reboredo via ZUMA press
Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ - Early in 2023, Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates included teaching among the professions most threatened by Artificial Intelligence (AI), arguing that a robot could, in principle, instruct as well as any school-teacher. While Gates is an undoubted expert in his field, one wonders how much he knows about teaching.

As an avowed believer in using technology to improve student results, Gates has argued for teachers to use more tech in classrooms, and to cut class sizes. But schools and countries that have followed his advice, pumping money into technology at school, or students who completed secondary schooling with the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have not attained the superlative results expected of the Gates recipe.

Thankfully, he had enough sense to add some nuance to his views, instead suggesting changes to teacher training that he believes could improve school results.

I agree with his view that AI can be a big and positive contributor to schooling. Certainly, technological changes prompt unease and today, something tremendous must be afoot if a leading AI developer, Geoffrey Hinton, has warned of its threat to people and society.

But this isn't the first innovation to upset people. Over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Socrates wondered, in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, whether reading and writing wouldn't curb people's ability to reflect and remember. Writing might lead them to despise memory, he observed. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English craftsmen feared the machines of the Industrial Revolution would destroy their professions, producing lesser-quality items faster, and cheaper.

Their fears were not entirely unfounded, but it did not happen quite as they predicted. Many jobs disappeared, but others emerged and the majority of jobs evolved. Machines caused a fundamental restructuring of labor at the time, and today, AI will likely do the same with the modern workplace.

Many predicted that television, computers and online teaching would replace teachers, which has yet to happen. In recent decades, teachers have banned students from using calculators to do sums, insisting on teaching arithmetic the old way. It is the same dry and mechanical approach to teaching which now wants to keep AI out of the classroom.

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