I recently asked a class of 14-year-olds what they knew about Hiroshima. Only seven out of 30 had heard of the Japanese city, which was the target for the world’s first deployed atomic bomb. The pupils knew very little of the devastation and misery caused by the nuclear strike; their knowledge of the Second World War and the Holocaust was similarly sketchy.

If our future is shaped by our understanding of the past, then we must do more to teach pupils about the terrible events that disgrace the recent history of the world. The lack of mandatory and precise curriculum guidelines means that Scotland’s broad general education does not always include key topics and issues that really should be covered.

During a year in Japan, I was able to join various schools on their annual visits to Hiroshima - now a city of peace - to pay their respects to the innocent victims of war. A Peace Memorial Park has been built at the epicentre of the bomb blast and includes monuments, gardens and a museum.

Many pupils are visibly moved by the museum’s exhibits, which include films of the effects of nuclear bombs and recordings of those who witnessed and survived the attack. Outside, children pray at the memorials and leave paper cranes at a monument to the many young people killed by the nuclear bomb.

Some Scottish schools organise similar trips to France and Belgium to visit the graves of those killed in the two world wars. Smaller numbers of pupils visit memorials of the Holocaust in Berlin and at Auschwitz.

Most pupils are properly prepared for these trips and behave accordingly. One school in central Scotland organises an annual trip to the Thiepval Memorial in France. This year, on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, a group of more than 100 pupils stood quietly, and with considerable thoughtfulness, as a teacher played a lament on his bagpipes.

If our future is shaped by our past, then we must do more to teach pupils about Hiroshima and the Holocaust 

But others are noticeably ignorant about the fear and the pain of the victims of war. Too often, you can see pupils laughing and larking around on their way to visit memorials to those who suffered and died. At the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, school groups now have to be reminded that taking selfies - with the death camp’s terrible train tracks and buildings in the background - isn’t appropriate.

Then there was that awful incident last year when two British teenagers on a school trip stole items from Auschwitz, including spoon fragments and buttons.

A national Holocaust memorial and learning centre is being built in London. Something similar for Scotland, to remind us of where evil and hatred can take us, is surely worthy of consideration.

John Greenlees is a secondary teacher in Scotland