There are ‘wrong’ ways to teach about the Holocaust.
Here are the general guidelines in a project I created for the Museum Teacher program at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with fellow Museum Teacher Fellow Sara Kollbaum, set to original music sung and performed by student Kylie James. For students, her song is also a good model of what an expressive and appropriate learning project can be about.
From the original You Tube link: ‘Educational project completed for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to help educators teach the Holocaust. It features the work of Kylie James, student, her song set to photographs collected by USHMM Fellow Matthew Rozell and USHMM Fellow Sara Kollbaum.It is four and a half minutes long. The song begins 30 seconds in.’
This is for Remembrance
Verse 1: Six million died
Innocents who lost their lives
Children and their mothers all lined up by their numbers
Told that there were showers
They were gassed within the hour
Chorus: this is for remembrance
For all of those who lost their lives
And this is for remembrance
Of all of those left behind
So don’t forget the people who died
‘Cause they won’t forget their genocide
Verse 2: everything was taken
Husbands from their wives
No one can forget the
Day the Nazis arrived
Houses were torn apart all around
Synagogues were burning to the ground
this is for remembrance
For all of those who lost their lives
And this is for remembrance
Of all of those left behind
So don’t forget the people who died
‘Cause they won’t forget their genocide
Verse 3: how could they do this?
Exterminate more than half a race
Why would they do this
With no remorse like child’s play
How could they do this?
The world just looked and turned away…
this is for remembrance
FOR all of those who lost their lives
And this is for remembrance
Of all of those left behind
So don’t forget the people who died
‘Cause they won’t forget their genocide
this is for remembrance
For all of those who lost their lives
And this is for remembrance
Of all of those left behind
So teach your children, not to hate
Learn from our past, before its too late
This is for remembrance
DOWNLOAD THE GUIDELINES HERE:
http://www.ushmm.org/educators/teaching-about-the-holocaust/general-teaching-guidelines
IMPORTANT EXCERPT:
‘One of the primary concerns of educators teaching the history of the Holocaust is how to present horrific, historical images in a sensitive and appropriate manner. Graphic material should be used judiciously and only to the extent necessary to achieve the lesson objective. Try to select images and texts that do not exploit the students’ emotional vulnerability or that might be construed as disrespectful to the victims themselves. Do not skip any of the suggested topics because the visual images are too graphic; instead, use other approaches to address the material.
In studying complex human behavior, many teachers rely upon simulation exercises meant to help students “experience” unfamiliar situations. Even when great care is taken to prepare a class for such an activity, simulating experiences from the Holocaust remains pedagogically unsound. The activity may engage students, but they often forget the purpose of the lesson and, even worse, they are left with the impression that they now know what it was like to suffer or even to participate during the Holocaust. It is best to draw upon numerous primary sources, provide survivor testimony, and refrain from simulation games that lead to a trivialization of the subject matter.
Furthermore, word scrambles, crossword puzzles, counting objects, model building, and other gimmicky exercises tend not to encourage critical analysis but lead instead to low-level types of thinking and, in the case of Holocaust curricula, trivialization of the history. If the effects of a particular activity, even when popular with you and your students, run counter to the rationale for studying the history, then that activity should not be used.’
Teaching History Matters 