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Why is it not taught in schools that among the murdered 6 million Jews, 2 million were rounded up and shot in daylight?
I do not know. Speaking for myself, the Holocaust was never taught in my public school system. That is not saying it was hidden or even purposely ignored. Our history instruction was pretty substandard. We studied the American Revolution, Slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. Also the Roman Empire. All worthy topics, but we tended to repeat them year after year. Funny thing is my son is saying the same thing decades later.
I do know a great deal about the Holocaust, but that came from my own efforts.
European history wasn't taught even in private schools in the SF Bay Area. In highschool, it was an elective. In Middle School, 2 years were spent on Greek and Roman mythology, but nothing of the history of those empires, or any empires. Sixth grade "social studies" was spent on contemporary Latin America. History wasn't part of that.
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(set 11 days ago)
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Originally Posted by Moth
Why is it not taught in schools that among the murdered 6 million Jews, 2 million were rounded up and shot in daylight?
I do not know. Speaking for myself, the Holocaust was never taught in my public school system. That is not saying it was hidden or even purposely ignored. Our history instruction was pretty substandard. We studied the American Revolution, Slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. Also the Roman Empire. All worthy topics, but we tended to repeat them year after year. Funny thing is my son is saying the same thing decades later.
I do know a great deal about the Holocaust, but that came from my own efforts.
I'm having a hard time with this. If the Holocaust wasn't taught in your school system, it seems it was because it was a purposeful decision on the part of the administration to not inform the students this happened. It seems this wouldn't be an oversight, but a decision to omit this hugely impactful period of US history (and world history) so the children in that school district remain ignorant of this horror.
May I ask what school system you were educated in?
I'm having a hard time with this. If the Holocaust wasn't taught in your school system, it seems it was because it was a purposeful decision on the part of the administration to not inform the students this happened. It seems this wouldn't be an oversight, but a decision to omit this hugely impactful period of US history (and world history) so the children in that school district remain ignorant of this horror.
May I ask what school system you were educated in?
I went to school in southern Indiana the the 70s. Thinking back, I honestly don't remember if there was a segment on this or not. If there was, I'm sure it was a general overview, with a great deal of horrifying detail left out.
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"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 11 days ago)
35,637 posts, read 17,989,189 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Seguinite
I went to school in southern Indiana the the 70s. Thinking back, I honestly don't remember if there was a segment on this or not. If there was, I'm sure it was a general overview, with a great deal of horrifying detail left out.
Did you not read The Diary of Anne Frank in school?
I went to High School in southeast Texas, tiny town, and we had two full history periods where we watched an extremely graphic Holocaust Movie as sophomores. It was horrific. No one graduated high school without a VERY VERY well-informed view of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Did you not read The Diary of Anne Frank in school?
I went to High School in southeast Texas, tiny town, and we had two full history periods where we watched an extremely graphic Holocaust Movie as sophomores. It was horrific. No one graduated high school without a VERY VERY well-informed view of the horrors of the Holocaust.
I read it at some point, but no, I don't think it was a school assignment.
Very good point that millions of Jews were killed outside of concentration camps.
Why is it a good point? Because it's the beginning of bad events that shows how these things start and become bigger.
It's intolerance and hatred of "the other" and it's happening in the US, some people are becoming used to it and that can lead to very bad actions if it is tolerated by governmental types, whether small town or national.
We read Anne Frank's diary in my Catholic high school, we read about the Holocaust. What we didn't read about were the many, many genocides in history and in current events, in Europe and Asia and Africa and in the US toward Native Americans. It would probably have been too emotionally disturbing to find out how bad human beings can act.
I'm having a hard time with this. If the Holocaust wasn't taught in your school system, it seems it was because it was a purposeful decision on the part of the administration to not inform the students this happened. It seems this wouldn't be an oversight, but a decision to omit this hugely impactful period of US history (and world history) so the children in that school district remain ignorant of this horror.
May I ask what school system you were educated in?
Los Angeles Unified School District 1966-1979
There are many demands from various interest groups and in the end we ran out of time long before we got to the memory of folks who lived through the period. My 6th grade teacher from a segregated "Colored" Engineering Battalion mentioning being a short term prisoner of the Japanese during the US counter invasion of the Philippines being an example of the teachers during the 70s I had.
While the school district never got to the subject PBS did. Survivors baring the Nazi tattoo scars spoke at remembrance events. Israel's battles to survive invasions by the pan Arabic states were in the news and historical fiction also taught what happened during our parents (actually mine were Korean War generation) young adulthood.
I'm having a hard time with this. If the Holocaust wasn't taught in your school system, it seems it was because it was a purposeful decision on the part of the administration to not inform the students this happened. It seems this wouldn't be an oversight, but a decision to omit this hugely impactful period of US history (and world history) so the children in that school district remain ignorant of this horror.
May I ask what school system you were educated in?
Sure. I grew up in Washington, DC (DC, not Maryland or Virginia) and attended the local public schools.
Curriculum is largely a local concern. I have no evidence that it was purposefully kept out of the system.
The one exception is when the mini series Holocaust was broadcast on network, they did distribute some learning materials. But nobody discussed it any of my classes.
FWIW my kid is currently a freshman in a Maryland public school. Up to this point, the Holocaust has not been mentioned.
I will say that just because the local school does not inform you does not mean you cannot learn about it. I had a vague notion of it during childhood. That aforementioned mini series sparked my interest and I began reading a great deal about it. Also my friend's father was a survivor, tattoo on the arm and all that. As were some of the older folks at the local deli. My grandfather was with a unit that found one in the closing days of the war. Eventually, I went on to visit a concentration camp. All that in addition to simply reading a great deal about it.
That was all before the internet. Nowadays you have all kinds of information available. And in that same town I grew up in there is now an entire museum devoted to it.
My high school years was in the 80s in south Louisiana and we did touch upon WW2 as well as the “Trail of Tears” as part of US History. They didn’t cover the more disturbing aspects of what the Nazis did and never mentioned the things the Japanese did except for Pearl Harbor attack. Learning about those details later in life made me understand why it was delayed until university level. However I believe that as high school juniors and seniors we should have been mature enough to learn about such things.
Very good point that millions of Jews were killed outside of concentration camps.
Why is it a good point? Because it's the beginning of bad events that shows how these things start and become bigger.
It's intolerance and hatred of "the other" and it's happening in the US, some people are becoming used to it and that can lead to very bad actions if it is tolerated by governmental types, whether small town or national.
We read Anne Frank's diary in my Catholic high school, we read about the Holocaust. What we didn't read about were the many, many genocides in history and in current events, in Europe and Asia and Africa and in the US toward Native Americans. It would probably have been too emotionally disturbing to find out how bad human beings can act.
"...too emotionally disturbing"?! Since when is that a criterion for literature selection in the schools? Nearly everything I had to read for high school lit was emotionally disturbing. Bordering on traumatizing, in fact. It completely killed my interest in literature. Anne Frank would have been a cakewalk by comparison!
There was a discussion on this forum earlier this year I think, about how high school literature teachers didn't, and perhaps still don't, make an effort to choose readings that are age-appropriate. Someone said they were given a book to read in freshman year, then later were given it again to re-read sometime in the last two years of HS, because the teacher said they'd been too young to understand it as 14-year olds. I looked up the title, and found an essay by a university professor, who said he'd found, that the book isn't even appropriate for undergraduate students. He only assigns it to grad students now.
I think that carelessness in selecting books for young teens accounts for why many adults I've broached the subject with, say they were completely lost in literature classes, and bewildered as to why the selections were so overwhelmingly grim, often filled with graphic violence or other grotesque scenes.
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