the conversation HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
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WHEN STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT THE CAUSES OF PREJUDICE—AND HOW SUCH ATTITUDES CAN LEAD TO GENOCIDAL BEHAVIOR—MANY SHED THEIR OWN PREJUDICES.
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WE NEED MORE TEACHERS Thank you for this excellent article (“The State of Holocaust Education in America,” Winter 2022). It is 50 years since Holocaust education was established. Society was ready to ask: How did this happen? Why did it happen? When survivors like me come to schools to tell our courageous stories of survival, students are deeply touched. With the loss of survivors, teachers can still show films of testimony. And fortunately, there are family members of survivors who speak about their parents, using memorabilia, film and interviews. But teachers are overwhelmed with responsibilities. They are asked to teach required subjects but also to mold character and citizenship, stop hate and help students develop empathy. The act of legislating Holocaust education doesn’t mean that it will be taught well or correctly. There are plenty of examples of ignorance by administrators, members of Boards of Education and teachers. The teachers who choose to study and teach about the Holocaust are very much needed, especially at this challenging time in history. A special thanks for your hard work to make this a better world for our children and future generations. Peppy Margolis Galloway, NJ CHALLENGES WE FACE An important aspect of Dan Freedman’s excellent article is its recognition and concern regarding the difficulty of measuring the degree of learning that occurs as a result of Holocaust education in our schools. The development of effective and reliable methods and instruments to assess what students are learning is complex because of numerous factors: the wide disparity between what different schools teach; how much time is devoted to instruction on the
Holocaust and the lacking knowledge base of teachers who have not studied this subject thoroughly themselves. Compounding the challenge is the unintended impact of state testing, which for several decades has placed greater emphasis on reading, writing and mathematics. In many schools, this has resulted in less time and fewer resources devoted to the teaching of social studies, where lessons on the Holocaust are normally taught. Since formal education must play a key role in assuring that future generations attain knowledge of the Holocaust and keep its memory alive, we must continue to build upon the impressive foundation that has been established. Richard Flaim The Villages, FL LESSONS LEARNED The extensiveness of this article, buttressed by its in-depth research, will make it a fascinating piece for quite some time to come. I was one of many involved in the development of California’s Holocaust education curriculum. It was well over ten years between the legislative approval of California’s mandate in 1985 and the start of widespread teaching about the Holocaust in classrooms. The lesson we learned is that without a legion of educators and advocates devoted to this subject, the words of any state’s mandates are meaningless. I hope that our experience truly will help state leaders and teachers devise meaningful Holocaust teaching mandates. These are a few issues we struggled with in California: • How best to determine “age-appropriate” instruction. • How best to integrate within schools’ curricula—within specific subjects or, perhaps, even across core subjects. • How (if at all) to fund teacher trainings, including in-person
SPRING ISSUE 2022
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