Putting the Holocaust in Middle School Curriculum
Imagine never knowing about or having a good understanding of 9/11, it affected thousands of people and their families and it will continue to affect people for years to come. What if no one gave you good insight and understanding of this horrible day, leaving your only outlet being the people who were there, have a biased opinion and a vague understanding. Now imagine that times one thousand, way more people affected and a lot more people involved. What do you do? Take the rumors and go with that? Seek answers so our history does not burn out because of someone's feelings or confusion from teachings at home? Do we give our youth the needed knowledge to educate and culture them or do we shelter
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them till we deem them mature enough? Is anyone ever mature enough for genocide and hate crimes by the thousand, to wonder why their friends do not have grandparents? The Holocaust needs to be in the middle school curriculum to give our students the knowledge they need to carry out life, proper morals, and extensive comprehension benefits. In the late 1970s to early 1980s there was a school teacher who willfully promoted hatred against Jewish people due to personal beliefs.
The school sued him for not only withholding knowledge, but misteaching the students. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, the main point in the teacher’s case was that he had freedom of speech and religious beliefs, but is that the same thing as withholding knowledge and teaching solely off of personal opinions. Have you ever wondered why your parents wanted to keep secrets from you like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy? Well it is to keep your innocence, but is that the same thing as withholding knowledge from a completely grown and ready child? Not easing kids into the Holocaust from a young age is almost sinister in the mindset that, having them think of it as a glorified dictatorship, or coming up with worse things than what actually happened, both of which are not acceptable. Giving the Holocaust the facade that it was a minor event in history does not help anyone. By giving children the basics and political standpoints behind the Holocaust at a young age, and then gradually releasing all of the information later, it is a more efficient and practical way to teach such a sensitive subject. When dealing with knowledge and the transfer of knowledge, children can only be sheltered for so long until the truth comes out in one way or another, so who is to say what we should and should not give to our next
generation. Morals are a thing of controversy that induces special treatment and lots of excuses, but when it comes to teaching what morals should be followed, if any. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of morals is: Concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character. If people pride themselves on their morals the best possible thing to do, is to teach students morals through the story of the past. The Holocaust is not just a tragedy, it is a learning experience, that needs to be used to it’s full potential. We need to use the Holocaust to teach students how to be a good adult and citizen. Morals are formed in many different ways, by upbringing, experiences, and religion. The Holocaust was bred and manufactured on morals, just not ideal morals. Everything that happened was because Hitler truly believed they should happen that way. So If we broaden student’s horizons and show them the negatives to see the positives it will truly be a unique skill set. The only upside to the Holocaust is that we can learn from it and make sure that it never happens again. So if giving students the skill set to see things that need to be changed and changing them is what needs to be done, then it shall be. Morals may be controversial and very specific, but the job of educators and the community is to teach children the proper morals for this day and age. Everyone wants a good education for their child, complete with brain exercises and real world training. So why would anyone be opposed to learning things like critical thinking and self-reflection through learning about the past. When you are learning about the Holocaust you do not just get the story and the knowledge that it happened and it is over with, no, you get so much more. Through learning about the Holocaust students develop critical thinking and self-reflection skills that can help in other studies. By developing these skills they can compare events in history to events in current day and think of what they can do to improve upon their environment and surroundings. If teaching a normal history class is all it takes to enhance your students’ abilities in other areas and achieve the things most students do not achieve until high school. Why would there be any other option? As meager as they may be, there are still a few downfalls to teaching the Holocaust in middle school. As ideal as it might occasionally students do not have the prep work that needs to be done in order to easily shift the Holocaust into advanced Holocaust education, but this can easily be fixed by some simple background information. Upon first introduction to a topic as serious as the Holocaust, some schools have said that is makes the students stereotype other students or teachers as well as evoke negative thoughts and dreams. This made skeptics about the Holocaust in the curriculum. Most of the time there is a lot of content for a student to learn so in order to get all of the important knowledge from these events in history it can stress the students and the teachers.\ There are many valid points in this side of the debate, in any deliberation, such as this one, all of the points need to be honored. This debate will not end smoothly, there are too many opinions and objectives, but if anything stands true that is, that the Holocaust is a major event in history, and that knowledge should be shared and understood by everyone. Through morals, knowledge and educational benefits it is clear that the Holocaust needs to be put in the middle school curriculum worldwide, because the Holocaust works to culture and thoroughly educate the students.
James Keegstra was a well known and respected man within his town. He taught social studies, mathematics, and law to both junior and senior high students (Bowal) He was teach his version of what happened during the Holocaust in his social studies classes and would teach how he believed the Jews controlled economics in his law classes (Bowal). When word of Keegstra’s teaching reached the school board they immediately took action by telling him he needed to stop teaching his students about his version of Jewish society and Holocaust or there would be consequences (Bowal). Keegstra ignored the board’s warning and his teaching positio...
On September 11, 2001, foreign terrorists hijacked and deliberately crashed commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The attack and resulting loss of nearly 6000 lives have changed the way Americans view the world and life in their own country. This was mentioned to show how education is part of our ongoing culture, how schools have responded to crises in the past and how schools can promote democratic values and multicultural understanding in a time of crisis.
I agree and disagree with his statement. Some things are better to be left unsaid and others are not. In his case however, it was best to share his story. If these false accusations about Jews are still believed, then they would never be treated with respect. We now know today that these statements are false thanks to survivors like Elie Wiesel.
Millions upon millions of people were killed in the holocaust, that is just one of many genocides. There are many similarities between different genocides. Throughout history, many aggressors have started and attempted genocides and violence on the basis of someone being the "other".
Holocaust Hero: A One of a Kind Man. What is a hero? A hero can be classified as a number of things. A hero can be a person who, in the opinions of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal.
Chris Bohjalian once said, “But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much Genocide can one sentence handle?” and Elie Wiesel says, “To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.” There is a connection between every genocide, but how much can one sentence actually handle? This is just a repeating thing that keeps on happening and it has gotten to the point where it is not getting any better. If we stop teaching about the Holocaust, it is to kill twice because there will always be that one person who can actually make a huge difference and make good and peace in the world. However, there will always be that one person that has no care for the world and wants to discriminate one race, gender, or religion for no reason, or even because of stereotypes. We should continue teaching about the Holocaust and
The Holocaust in general was a very terrible time period. There was a lot of horrible misunderstandings in this period of time. I think of it as these people were brainwashed and had no one better to look up to so they went with what he said. Hitler lied to them unt...
It is important not to teach young children about the Holocaust, due to its gruesome, dark events and accounts. According to Steven Penn, an assistant principal in New Jersey, students need to focus on other things in Elementary School. However, by 7th/ 8th grade, students have gained maturity and can participate in
The attacks that occurred on 9/11 took place on September 11th, 2001. In this devastating event, four different attacks had taken place. Each of the attacks were carried out by terrorists. The group responsible for the attack was Al-Qaeda, a militant Islamist organization that is known to be global in present day. The group itself has a network consisting of a Sunni Muslim movement that aims to make global Jihad happen. Furthermore, a stateless, multinational army that is ready to move at any given time. This terrorist group focuses on attacking non-Sunni Muslims, those who are not Muslim, and individuals who the group deems to be kafir. Ever since the late 1980s, Al-Qaeda has been wreaking havoc all around the world. The leader of the group once being Osama bin Laden. Three planes were bound for New York City while another plane headed towards Washington, D.C. which was supposed to take out the U.S. Capitol. Two of the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. One plane hitting the North Tower and the other hitting the South Tower. The third plane had crashed into the Pentagon taking out the western side of the building. The last and final plane was focused solely on taking out the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. but failed due to passengers of the plane coming hijacking it from the hijackers. The passengers attempted to take out the hijackers but sadly failed, crashing it into a field in Pennsylvania. Throughout the content of this paper, we will be focusing on the role of media when it comes to 9/11; more specifically: how the media's coverage of 9/11 manipulated our feelings towards 9/11, how it affected Islamophobia in America, and the lasting effects of 9/11.
One thing that is argued is that children’s minds are young and innocent. While this may be true in some cases, it is not relevant. It would be better for the students to learn about the Holocaust when they are young then to coincidentally learn about it when they are older. Also, they are already learning about other things, and the first claim is an opinion. Another argument is that teachers may teach the Holocaust in a way that is different from a student’s family's beliefs. This could ruin the family's beliefs for the students, causing them to turn to the perspective taught in the school. While the students and their families may have different beliefs, they should still be taught about the Holocaust. Plus, if the beliefs are correct, then the parents or family members should not need to worry about what is being taught in the schools. This is important because these arguments could impact the teaching, The arguments from the families and other people should not impact teaching the
I think a big impact on the life of Jews would be their belief in God
When I was younger, I always knew that my mom took her job very seriously, but I was never able to fully comprehend what she did as a teacher. Once I started getting older, I understood that in order to teach certain topics to students, she had to understand a lot about history. One of the topics she studied in order to teach her students was the history of the Holocaust, which indeed is very serious. Then I began hearing that word, “Holocaust,” in school and made the connection. That’s when the seriousness of her job started to resonate with me as a student as well as her daughter. One could probably say that this topic is interesting to virtually everyone who comes across it. However, for the reasons I indicated, it sparks a little bit more of an interest in me than the average person.
My name is Eva Berlinski. I’m only 13 years old and I was brought up
When World War 2 broke out in 1939, the United States of America was facing the dilemma of whether or not to intervene in the massacre known as the Holocaust. Some people believe that the United States did all they could to help the victims of the war. Some believe that America did hardly anything. But, there is stronger evidence pointing towards the fact that the United States did not do enough to stop the killing initiated by Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi army.
The Holocaust was one of the most tragic and trying times for the Jewish people. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and other minorities that the Nazis considered undesirable were detained in concentration camps, death camps, or labor camps. There, they were forced to work and live in the harshest of conditions, starved, and brutally murdered. Horrific things went on in Auschwitz and Majdenek during the Holocaust that wiped out approximately 1,378,000 people combined. “There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” –Fidel Castro