Teaching the Holocaust...or not

Across Canada, the Holocaust is widely accepted as fact; not too many people object to the teaching of the Holocaust as a devastating event, never to be repeated. That said, there are individuals who dispute that the Holocaust was related to Nazi anti-Semitism and that the Nazi government perpetrated 12 million deaths in its concentration camps. Known as 'Holocaust deniers', they publish and promote propaganda that challenges one of the gravest atrocities of time.

A recent report in Britain, "Teaching Emotive and Controversial History", published by The Historical Association with funding from the Department of Education, documented a trend of teachers shying away from teaching the Holocaust in instances where there was opposition, or the prescribed events conflict with viewpoints of local religious institutions or other organized groups. It is being portrayed in some circles as a system-wide policy-driven decision; however, that is not the case. It is very few individual teachers. However, this does not make it less worrisome. The report offers several recommendations of 'lighthouse' practices for the education system as a whole to support the teaching of so called "emotive and controversial history". While it awareness of different experiences is key to all effective teaching, we cannot shy away from the reality of events such as the Holocaust because of opposition. In fact, it is those cases where it is most important to teach it, and to emphasize both the reality and its lessons in terms of human dynamics, tolerance, respect and the need for individuals to engage in the world around them.

The Holocaust isn't the only thing that some teachers shy away from - there are many genocides - the Armenian genocide and the Rwanda genocide - that are left out of curriculum. History isn't the only thing that is left out of curriculum because it is contentious. Social justice issues - current treatment of Aboriginals, immigrants, the queer community, welfare recipients, stereotyping, violence against women to name a few - are just some of the things Ontario curriculum overlooks. There is room for these things to be taught, but it is at the discretion of individual teachers, and only in certain courses. While not all learning occurs in schools, these issues, which are fundamentally important to today's societies, should be included in what we are teaching. We are failing history, ourselves and our students by excluding controversy from schools.

Check it out yourself:
-TEACH Report: http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/Others/Teach%20report.pdf