When and how should children learn about the Holocaust?
Posted at 6:25 AM on April 15, 2010
by Steve Mullis
(16 Comments)
Filed under: International affairs
An act of Congress sets aside "Days of Remembrance" this week to commemorate the Holocaust. Some states require Holocaust education, but Minnesota doesn't. Today's question: When and how should children learn about the Holocaust?
Comments (16)
Children should learn about the Holocaust when their history class covers that period. MN should require in the history curriculum some minimum coverage that include Nazism, WW II, and the Holocaust.
The public schools should definitely teach about the Holocaust in history classes. They should also give other examples of such atrocities, so kid's don't get the idea that it was the only time such a thing ever happened. I don't know if it would be practical or possible to give a comprehensive list of all the genocides that have ever happened. There would be too many. How far back do we go? To the extermination of the neanderthals by modern humans?
The question posed by Steve Mullis assumes that we all agree on the meaning of the phrase "the Holocaust." We do not. I think it requires an adult to fully appreciate the political conflict embedded in that rarely-defined phrase.
Laura Zelle informs us that she and other members of the JCRC "want every young person to have an understanding of it." The JCRC's Holocaust education programs "are designed to educate individuals and communities about the legacy of the Shoah (Holocaust.)" If the JCRC's materials were to be the exclusive source for study, would a young student learn about the Parajmos? Do current students learn that the National Socialists murdered approximately 11 to 12 million people of various ethnic backgrounds?
The fact that Holocaust Remembrance Day is officially called Yom Hashoah on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum leads me to believe that current students learn only a curriculum that corresponds to the concepts outlined by the JCRC.
It is inevitable that a primary or middle-school student is going to be introduced to the "Dairy of Anne Frank." It has been a television staple for decades. I would urge a more mature student to dive into Gilbert Martin's "Atlas of the Holocaust" (Wm Morrow and Company) and to read Norman G. Finkelstein's reflections on the Holocaust to see it from a non-JCRC viewpoint.
I am a Jewish daughter and granddaughter of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide. I am also a white settler on stolen land and the beneficiary of another genocide that was committed in this country and from which the descendants of victims are still suffering. I think there is reason for teaching about genocide in general, but not specifically the single event of the Nazi genocide against the Jews.
I feel students should learn specifically about cultural differences at a young age, elementary school age. They should understand that differences can hurt a person emotionally and physically. We started learning about the Holocaust when I entered middle school, 5th grade. Of course it is graphic and horrid, but it is history. I actually ended up livin gin Poland for a couple months while in college and it was because of my early education that it made me want to learn more. I feel the later you engage students, the less interested they become. My uncle throw a benefit right in Sioux City, IA every year called Tolerance Week. It is a week dedicated to educating on cultural differences and overal respect. The hidden undertone is of course Holocaust education because the last thing we want to do is relive those events. The students even get to hear stories from Holocaust survivors, one is a survivor of Auschwitz. This past year was the 5th anniversary of the event. The main event is also a film. In the past they have done Paperclips, an amazing film. This year they did the Hallmark film about Irena Sendler and had the producer come to the event. I highly reccoment Paperclips for younger students. If you have any questions about this event or how to contact my uncle email me at mdludvigson@gmail.com.
Fifth or sixth grade seems appropriate as many have already pointed out. Students should also be taught about the Native American holocost, the Janpanese American internment, slavery in the US, and Jim Crow lest they think this sort thing couldn't happen here.
I am litterally shocked to learn that MN does not require that the Holocaust be taught in schools. This should be corrected immediately. It is shameful not to do so.
A very timely question ... my 9-year-old and I watched "Diary of Anne Frank" last Sunday night.
I approached it much the way a parent introduces a "mature" subject. I introduced the topic, gave basic age-appropriate facts, answered questions ("what's a camp", "what does 'survived' mean"), but stayed away from specific details of the Holocaust. He'll study all that in school when it's part of the curriculum and we'll talk in more depth then. The values messages I tried to drive home Sunday night were that evil prevails when good people do nothing and we always stand up for what's right.
My kid did a report on St. Maximillian Kolbe I think in 5th or 6th grade. I'm not sure exactly how it was handled in school, but we talked about it in writing his paper.
My son is now 14 and likes to learn about WW2, so I'm trying to explain to him the motives, beliefs, and conditions that lead to WW2.
We talk a lot of today's politics and how it relates to the rise of Hitler, National Socialism, and statism.
You need to make sure your kid knows what the core beliefs are of each political party/faction/religion and how it affects their actions both today and in the past.
I believe that all schools should teach about the Holocaust in grade 6. The curriculum materials for teaching the Holocaust are so thoughtfully done that many universal messages can successfully be taught. This is about history and the horror that the Nazis perpetrated and it is also about the present and future about creating a society that tolerates difference and stands up against prejudice, hate crimes, and genocide.
Our children will hear things about "the Nazis" or about "the six million" even if not formally taught. The question is how to provide them with a thoughtful context to hear about the depths to which humanity can fall. They need to hear that each person has a choice, to do good or evil. Thankfully many during the Holocaust also did good, risking their lives to rescue Jews.
The Holocaust was one of the most horrific and profound events in world history and we, at the JCRC, want every young person to have an understanding of it. After 60 years, there are still lessons that we can all learn from such as human rights, racism, anti-semitism, bullying and respect. This year over 800 Minnesota citizens attended Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in St. Paul, to witness the last survivors tell their stories. We are passionate about locking in their testimony into our collective conscious as a people and have produced a lasting legacy to Minnesota survivor families, our Holocaust Survivor Kits. These kits have new award winning films that tell the stories of our Minnesota survivors. They are for students in grades 6-12.
I agree that children should learn about the Holocaust, as well as more recent genocides. But I think that is information that should wait until children are at least sixth or seventh grade. As this information is taught, I think children should also learn that there are people actively working to stop genocide and that there is always something that individuals can do to help prevent future genocides.
I grew up around Holocaust survivors and though they themselves didn't talk about what happened, people around them did and as a very young child, I just didn't need to know that much about human cruelty. I wasn't going to expose my daughter to that information until she was older, but a daycare field trip included a tour of a Shoah photo exhibit. Once again, too much information too soon.
Students should learn of the holocaust when they learn world history or civil rights or slavery or WW2...or war in general. -Tony, Minneapolis
I can't honestly remember when I learned about it, but it feels like it was at an appropriate age.
As long as Holocaust deniers exist, as long as people still murder each other en masse over differences in religions and traditions, it will be necessary to learn about the Holocaust. More photography and first person accounts other than the Diary of Anne Frank should be used. Seeing piles of empty shoes outside a gas chamber strikes the heart much deeper than reading '6 million murdered' in cold black and white text.
What often gets ignored, however, are the numbers of non-Jews who were murdered, and the fact that American history does not end at WWII. I barely remember touching on anything beyond WWII other than watching 'The Killing Fields' in school. Where did all that history go? Is it really just an issue of not enough time in the school year, or do we basically just stop history at the point where America was glorious and victorious, and we don't want to talk about those messy wars that weren't so great for our image that happened afterwards.
I think studying the holocaust in school starting around grade 5 or 6 makes a lot of sense. At that age, students are beginning to understand war and concepts of nationalism, which makes understanding the backdrop of Germany prior and during World War II possible. As a Jew, I think it is also crucial that children understand that not only Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
I think understanding the Holocaust is crucial, because among other things, it helps us understand today why so many Jews in the baby boomer generation are so supportive of extreme groups like AIPAC. Jews in the babyboomer generation were and grew up with children of holocaust survivors. For them, discussions of wiping out the Jews are not just idol conversations made by crazy leaders- they are a happening reality, and even if AIPAC seems extreme, what AIPAC promises- making sure that the strongest government stands with Jewish people and protects them against another Holocaust, is of *vital* importance.
This kind of understanding is beyond what 5th and 6th grade children probably need, but the ideas of what people can do, how an entire nation got swept up in horrible ideas because they were poor and embarrassed, and how the rest of the world watched it happen- these are ideas that are probably central to the lessons of the Holocaust and I think 5th and 6th graders can begin to grasp those ideas.
When? At the same time the history curriculum calls for them to learn about WWII.
How? As a particularly glaring example of how cruel human beings have been to each other around the world and throughout history.
We should not shy away from teaching our children the ugly truth about what's gone on in the past, including in our own country with slavery, the displacement of Native Americans, alliances with brutal dictators during the Cold War (and with Stallin during WWII, who caused even more people to be murdered than Hitler did)-- all this after our country suffered attrocities by the British during our Revolutionary War (so we should have known better). If we don't face up to the past, we will never live it down.
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