Running head: REMEMBER THE PAST 1

Remember the Past:

Mandate Holocaust Education in Michigan

Alexis Clark

Oakland University

REMEMBER THE PAST2

Remember the Past: Mandate Holocaust Education in Michigan

Abstract

This essay presents the idea of Mandatory Holocaust Education in the State of Michigan.

Through extensive research and surveyed school systems, I have compiled multiple sources

advocating for Holocaust education in schools along with scientifically driven data to suggest the

best age to learn about the subject along with ideas for actually teaching students about the

subject. Data from surrounding school districts to prove the Holocaust is not being taught, or if it

is, then the subject is lumped together with other subjects and only gets glossed over. The main

idea seen throughout the paper is that students need to learn about the past; otherwise they will

be doomed to repeat it in the future.

REMEMBER THE PAST3

Introduction

To children in school, history may seem like the most boring subject. They think

everything that is being taught is stupid because everything has already happened, the same

events will not happen again and they are wasting their time learning this stuff when they could

be doing something relevant with their lives like texting or tweeting selfies to their BFF. These

children are wrong. As philosopher George Santayana once said “Those who cannot remember

the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Santayana, 1905.) This is especially true when it comes to

the matter of genocide, World War II and specifically the Holocaust. Today, there are only five

states that mandate Holocaust Education and Michigan is not one of them.

Simone Schweber in her book entitled “Holocaust Education” (2011) describes how the

field of Holocaust education is a new one, only having three generations of researchers to

develop ideas and theories for the best approach for teaching the Holocaust in classrooms. One

of the biggest issues to deal with is the idea that the Holocaust can be taught in two different

ways: as a unique occurrence in history that requires a unique teaching approach, or it can be

universal and glossed over when taught in schools. On top of mountains of secondary research,

Schweber also conducts her own primary research on the subject consisting of interviewing

teachers, students and parents of students who have received Holocaust teachings in class.

Schweber concluded that the Holocaust should not be taught to students under the age of ten.

The subject has been traditionally taught in high school, where is can be most absorbed by the

students not just trivially, but also philosophically and at a deeper level. However, in saying this,

Schweber also mentioned that the majority curriculums she investigated found that the Holocaust

is taught only for (on average) eight days and is intertwined with tolerance and stereotyping

versus an anti-Semitic approach which was the true culprit (468.) Schweber even suggests the

REMEMBER THE PAST4

idea that when taking the unique approach, teachers should be certified to teach the subject

because it is unlike any other subject in the curriculum. Schweber also includes that Holocaust

education has only been mandating in five U.S states: California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey,

and New York, whereas entire countries such as: Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands,

Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Ukraine have all mandated Holocaust Education.

However one of the points that Schweber made that stood out the most was her statement that

“the purpose of teaching about the Holocaust is precisely to learn from it, no matter how

difficult.” (464.) In other words, the Holocaust is a difficult subject to teach, but in the end, to

learn from it, it must be taught.

Congruently, Leslie Ditta’s Chapter “Holocaust Education” in the Encyclopedia of Cross-

Cultural School Psychology expresses similar concerns when it comes to how old students

should be and how to approach teaching the subject matter. Ditta finds that the subject matter is

not for children under the age of seven, and has helpful ideas for teachers to educate students on

the Holocaust. Some examples include children’s fictional literature, such as: “Number the

Stars” by Lois Lowry, or “Daniel’s Story” by Carol Matas. “The Diary of Anne Frank” is an

example of non-fiction literature which is great to use in class. Ditta’s overall idea is when

teaching younger children, to try to focus on Jewish children of the time so that the students can

develop empathy (516.) Ditta also suggests teaching students about Jewish communities pre-

World War II so students have a chance to connect with the Jewish children as children, and not

as victims and try to pick stories of survivors to show not all life ended at extermination.

Such a story of a survivor comes from the South Bend Tribune in Indiana when

Holocaust survivor, Yaffa Eliach, shared her story in staff writer Maggy Tinucci’s article “Never

Another Holocaust” (1998). Though a simplified version of Eliach’s life story, this is the kind of

REMEMBER THE PAST5

insight that students today do not understand because they are not taught or told about it. Eliach’s

story includes her family’s struggle of hiding under a pigsty for almost three years. During

Eliach’s time in hiding her baby brother was smothered so his cries would not give away their

hiding spot. Her mother and brother were shot in front of her and her father was exiled to Siberia.

The only way she made it out alive was by pretending to be her Uncle’s daughter and escaped

into Palestine. This story cannot be made up or reproduced. What she learned from her father can

also be taught to children today: "He told me many things could be taken from us but that they

could never take what is in our heart and what is in our minds. Nobody can ever take that away"

(Eliach.) This lesson was learned the hard way for Eliach. If taught in school, students will have

the chance to learn from her wisdom without experiencing her heartbreak. They can take the

knowledge from those who came before them and lived through an experience that they can only

barley fathom the true horror that was the Holocaust.

Another article from the South Bend Tribune of Indiana entitled “Better Education

Needed on the Holocaust” (Fosmoe, 1998) discussed an ad that was placed in the campus

newspaper questioning if the Holocaust happened at all. The ad ended up sparking outrage

among campus professors and students educated on the subject. One Jewish sophomore, Martha

Hathaway, went as far as to interview twenty university students about what the Holocaust was,

“Twelve of them told me it was a movie” (Fosmoe, 1998.) Hathaway blamed ignorance for the

students’ sub-par answers. This article is just another example of why Holocaust education

should be mandated. If students are not educated now, the Holocaust will be lost to history and

ignorance will be to blame for it.

The National Holocaust Memorial Museum provides information on any and all aspect of

the Holocaust including what exactly the Holocaust was, outreach to survivors and victims,

REMEMBER THE PAST6

information on Genocide and anti-Semitism, along with an array of ideas for constructing lesson

plans for educators today. Their goal is to make genocide and events like the Holocaust a thing

of the past by educating the present. One trip to their website (http://www.ushmm.org) will keep

a person busy and learning for hours.

The site with the most information on Michigan public school curriculum was from

www.michgian.gov. Here, there are PDF files for both k-8 and high school curriculum

requirements. According to these files, there is no mandate on Holocaust education, or even

World War I for that matter. The unit that would encompass the time period of the Holocaust

would be “the Great Depression and World War II” (section 7.2.3). However, because America

was not involved in the Holocaust until liberation, this unit would not be helpful to learn about

the details of the Holocaust because it does not include life before WWII or specific details about

what actually happen before and during internment. For the Holocaust to be mandated, one

would think that another subject would have to go, because there are only so many weeks in a

semester. On the contrary, in Michigan, a student only needs three years of social studies/ history

in high school, leaving two whole semesters free for Holocaust education. With the last

generation of survivors are among us, it is more important than ever to mandate Holocaust

education in Michigan public schools.

Methods

I started this essay by choosing a subject I was passionate about: history. After I decided

the genre, it took me a while to determine a specific thesis and topic from, literally, thousands of

years of options. This was when I remembered a YouTube video my Writing 150 professor

showed us last semester. This video was in support of mandating Holocaust education in the state

REMEMBER THE PAST7

of Pennsylvania; a topic that is currently going through the state legislature. The video stared

Rhonda Fink-Whitman, author of 94 Maidens and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Fink-

Whitman was trying to prove that because Holocaust education was not mandatory in

Pennsylvania, that even students at the Ivy League- Penn State University would not be able to

answer general knowledge questions about the Holocaust, or even World War II itself, correctly.

Fink-Whitman’s hypothesis was correct, which was what truly captured my attention. The point

of her video was not to assume that these students were ignorant, it was to prove that they were

not taught information they clearly should have learned. This video inspired me to research the

topic further in this essay.

Mainly for this essay, I did a lot of research in the internet and in the Oakland University

Library search engine (for scholarly articles, journals and such.) I found the South Bend Tribune

articles first, and I knew I would be able to use them as support for my thesis. After these, I

refined my search to Holocaust education specifically. The article I found next, and which

contributed the most to my research, was “Holocaust Education” by Simone Schweber. This

article was a study on the subject of Holocaust Education and opened my eyes to the statistics

and actual process/ science behind teaching the subject to students.

After I learned how the Holocaust is most proficiently taught to students, my next move

was to find specific ideas for teaching material. I knew the South Bend Tribune interview with a

survivor was be perfect for this category. However, I also found Leslie Ditta’s Chapter

“Holocaust Education” in the Encyclopedia of Cross- Cultural School Psychology which gives

specific examples of books for children to use to connect with the Holocaust.

REMEMBER THE PAST8

For more basic information and education options I went to the National Holocaust

Memorial Museum website along with some random internet sources to find more statistics on

genocides since 1945.

For my primary research, I conducted a survey of the public school districts around

Oakland University to see if any had the Holocaust as a subject in their curriculum. I looked at

five school districts total, including: Pierre Toussaint Academy (Detroit Public School branch),

Rochester Public Schools, Utica public schools, Oxford Public Schools and Detroit Public

Schools. I also relied heavily on the Michigan Department of Education curriculum requirements

on the Michigan.gov website for my findings.

For all my research, I had two major sittings at the computer where I found nearly all of

my information, the first being the day when we presented our proposals, I stayed at a computer

in the library for a few hours. The second being just before our first draft was due when I was at

home and got really into what I was researching. I did most of my primary research (in detail) on

Wednesday when we did not have a class meeting; this research was done in my dorm when my

roommate was gone. Every time I did research, electronics were off and out of sight and the only

windows open on my laptop/computer were the ones I was using to contribute to this essay; there

were no distractions.

Results

Through research, I found that in the state of Michigan, there is currently no policy or

mandate for the subject of the Holocaust to be taught in schools. (“K-8 and High School”, n.d.)

Instead, in middle school, the topic of World War II, 7.2.3 (Appendix B) is supposed to

REMEMBER THE PAST9

encompass the Holocaust. Never is it said how in detailed the lesson must be nor how to teach it

in a classroom.

Congruently, three of the five school systems I surveyed have no Holocaust education in

their curriculums, or at least no not mention the word “Holocaust” in their curriculum lists at all

(Utica, Oxford and PTA Detroit.) However, PTA Detroit includes section 7.2.3 in their category

of “informational text” which also included sections 7.2:1,6,7,A,B and 7.5:1 and 2. All of these

subjects are supposed to be taught in one semester. The big problem is, section 7.2.3 is taught

from a literary stand point, meaning students are learning about Holocaust text and focusing on

the text itself and its styles, not the historical content.

In comparison, Rochester and Detroit Public Schools include some aspect of Holocaust

education in their systems (Appendix A). For example, Rochester has a Holocaust unit for their

seventh grade classes where they conduct research on Hitler’s Youth and Concentration Camps.

Rochester also had assemblies for the seventh and eighth grades in early March for a Holocaust

survivor to come and speak to the students. Detroit Public Schools are not as thorough in their

Holocaust education. The only mention of the Holocaust is during the eleventh grade when

students are taught about Nazi ideology and policies along with the consequences of the

Holocaust.

According to the findings of Ditta, the best time to teach Holocaust Education is after the

age of seven, when students can fully grasp and understand the concept of Genocide and its

horrors. Schweber goes a step further and says students should be in double digits. Because of

this, the Holocaust can only be taught in middle school or high school. In other words, when

students have dozens of other things to learn and teachers are already struggling to fit all the

REMEMBER THE PAST10

requirements in. One could make an argument that if Holocaust education was added to the

curriculum, then something else would have to go. This assumption is not correct. According to

the Michigan Department of Education, a student is only required to have three years of social

studies in high school, leaving a whole year free for Holocaust education.

Discussion

As a student who has learned about the Holocaust on a detailed level, I am appalled when

I talk to friends at my University who have never heard of the word Anti-Semitism. Some

students at Ivy League schools cannot say what the Holocaust was, who Adolf Hitler was, what a

concentration camp was, and more extreme cases cannot even name the President of the United

States during World War II, who the Allies were, or even that genocides are being committed

today. (Fink- Whitman, 2013). There are limitations to my research. Not all school systems post

their curriculum lists and some do teach the Holocaust. However, those schools that teach the

Holocaust in depth are hard to come by. When people are not taught about genocide or mass

murder, it keeps happening. Since 1945, 7.3 million people have died in nine different genocides

around the world. The number will continue to rise because there are genocides still happening

today. To learn from the past, students of the future need to be educated or they will repeat the

atrocities and millions more will die because of genocide. Mandate Holocaust education and be

one step closer to never having another Holocaust.

REMEMBER THE PAST11

References

Curriculum and instruction (n.d.). Oxford Community Schools. Retrieved March 21, 2014,

from http://oxfordschools.org/section_display.cfm?section_id=2106

Ditta, L., & Clauss-Ehlers, C. S. (2010). Holocaust education. In Encyclopedia of Cross-

Cultural School Psychology (pp. 515-516). N.p.: Springer. Retrieved March 12, 2014

Excellent schools for every child (2011) Detroit Public Schools. Retrieved March 21, 2014 from

http://detroitk12.org/admin/academic_affairs/docs/2011-2012_HS_Course_Catalog.pdf

Fink-Whitman, R. (2013, September 27). 94 Maidens- mandate video. Retrieved March 14,

2014 from YouTube.com.

Fosmoe, M. (1998, October 21). Better education needed on holocaust. South Bend Tribune, p.

A1. Retrieved March 11, 2014

Genocides, politicides, and other mass murder since 1945 (2008) Genocide Prevention Advisory

Network. Retrieved March 27, 2014 from http://www.gpanet.org/content/genocides-

politicides-and-other-mass-murder-1945-stages-2008

K-8 and high school social studies standards (n.d.). Michigan Department of Education.

Retrieved March 11, 2014, from http://www.michigan.gov

Lamb, S. (2005, January 26). Genocide since 1945: never again? Spiegel Online International .

Retrieved March 13, 2014, from http://www.spiegel.de/international/genocide-since-

1945-never-again-a-338612.html

REMEMBER THE PAST12

Mrs. Berger's webpage: Holocaust unit (2014, March 20). In Rochester Community Schools.

Retrieved March 21, 2014, from http://www.rochester.k12.mi.us/hart-middle-

school/pages/9678/holocaust-unit

Pierre toussaint academy contract: curriculum (2008 ). In Ferris State University Charter School

Office . Retrieved March 21, 2014, from

http://www.ptadetroit.com/uploads/4/3/9/7/4397552/pierre_toussaint_academy_charter_c

ontract_2008-2013.pdf

Resources for educators (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved March

13, 2014, from http://www.ushmm.org/educators

Santayana, G. (1905 ). Reason in common sense. The Life of Reason, (Vol. 1, p. 284).

Retrieved March 14, 2014

Schweber, S. (2011 ). Holocaust education. International Handbook of Jewish Education,

(Vol. 5, pp. 461-478). N.p.: Springer Netherlands. Retrieved March 13, 2014

Secondary curriculum resources (n.d.). Utica Community Schools . Retrieved March 21, 2014,

from http://www.uticak12.org/uticawebsite/instruction/ins_studentguides.asp

Tinucci, M. (1998, October 6). Never another holocaust. South Bend Tribune, p. A2. Retrieved

March 11, 2014

REMEMBER THE PAST13

Appendix A

See the second bullet point above “explaining the Nazi ideology, policies and consequences of the Holocaust.” The only mandatory learning of the Holocaust is the consequences of it, not the causes, the people or anything pre- liberation. In other words, completely missing the point of educating students about the Holocaust in the first place.

(K-8 and high school social studies standards, n.d.)

REMEMBER THE PAST14

Appendix B

Schools Utica Rochester PTA Detroit Oxford

Elementary No No No No No

Middle No Yes No No No

High School No No No Yes No

7.2.3 (In curriculum)

No Yes Yes Yes No

The chart above visually represents the surveyed schools and whether Holocaust Education is included in the districts’ curriculum regardless of State of Michigan Education requirements.

(Curriculum and instruction, n.d.) [Oxford]

(Excellent schools for every child, 2011) [Detroit]

(Mrs. Berger's webpage: Holocaust unit, 2014) [Rochester]

(Pierre toussaint academy contract: curriculum, 2008) [PTA Detroit]

(Secondary curriculum resources, n.d.) [Utica]

REMEMBER THE PAST15