Holocaust: The careless anti-Semitism of morally-incoherent educators

[Mosby]

Sorry about the source, but this is a really excellent piece about the recent incidents of educators using the Holocaust for "critical thinking" exercises.

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In February, high school students who enrolled in the course, “Principles of Literary Representation,” offered through the Oswego, New York county CiTi/BOCES New Vision program, were taken aback when presented with an assignment in which they were tasked with supporting or opposing the “Final Solution,” in other words, justifying the extermination of Jews. 

Given a memorandum addressed to senior Nazi party members, “THE FINAL SOLUTION OF THE JEWISH QUESTION,” the students were instructed to “analyze the issue, provide ‘your’ Nazi point of view for or against the Final Solution and why, and thoroughly explain your support or opposition to the Solution.” Half of the students were randomly told to justify and support the implementation of the Holocaust, and half were to oppose it.

Presumably, the assignment was meant to promote one of the Common Core’s desired skills of helping to sharpen critical thinking: “Ultimately,” the assignment read, “this is an exercise on expanding your point of view by going outside your comfort zone and training your brain to logistically find the evidence necessary to prove a point, even if it is existentially and philosophically against what you believe.”  

Confronted with backlash over the assignment, Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia at first defended it by contending that it forced students to hone their persuasive and rational skills, that, as she put it, “The concept of having students identify a particular position is pretty critical, whether they can analyze a position, and then decide whether to agree or not.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20426

[JudyM]

1. Ugh. A better exercise is one that I had in a Constitutional Law class.

We were asked, essentially, to do a similar analysis but in relation to the neo-Nazis desire to march in Skokie, IL (home to many Holocaust survivors). It was a good challenge.

Asking high school students to justify the Holocaust is revolting, "academic exercise" or not.

[benpollard]

3. The right to march is a free speech issue

Neo-Nazis or any other deplorable group has a right to march protected by the 1st Amendment. We can't single out groups that we don't agree with. Unless they're trying to incite a riot or violence, they have the right to speak (or march in this case). If the government singles them out, there's nothing stopping the government from stopping environmental or anti-war activists from speaking.

Asking students to justify Hitler's attempt to murder all the Jews in the world is just nuts. They might just as well have asked the students to justify David Berkowitz's murders.

[JudyM]

4. You get an A, ben.

And that assignment is nuts for HS kids. Implicitly promoting a relativistic alternative view as if some things are not just purely evil and inherently, morally wrong.

If they wanted a tough "stretch" assignment they could've easily looked instead at the question of doing away with module technology, or something that would be closer to home for the kids.

[benpollard]

2. That's like asking students to support or oppose Charles Manson

The Nazis were cold-blooded murderers. Asking students to support or oppose the "Final Solution" is like asking them to support or oppose Charles Manson or Ted Bundy. They're being asked to put themselves in the position of a psychopath, which might be appropriate for a detective but not for what I assume is a high school class.