Toward a Philosophy of Holocaust Education: Teaching Values without Imposing Agendas

Society for History Education. California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, CA 90840-1601. Tel: 562-985-2573; Fax: 562-985-5431; Web site: http://www.thehistoryteacher.org/

Y

20

Jews; Historians; Liberal Arts; Epistemology; Educational Philosophy; Values Education; Metacognition; History Instruction; Teaching Methods; Nationalism; Political Attitudes; Racial Discrimination; European History; Foreign Countries

0018-2745

Most teachers hope to make a difference in the lives of their students, but whether they accomplish this with any regularity is often left unclear. With a topic like the Holocaust, the stakes are greatly raised. In this essay, the author discusses the place of the Holocaust in the liberal arts. He argues that the content of Holocaust education must revolve around a methodology that allows students to conjure and experiment with new and deeper self-understanding(s). Teaching the Holocaust effectively means freeing (and urging) students to ask questions about historical epistemology (i.e., the ways in which historians come to know what they do), as well as questions which speak directly to the challenges of the current moment. The idea behind this philosophy is to teach the past in a manner that equips students to see the ramifications of their choices in contrast to the Germans who, by virtue of their own choices, allowed themselves to be fastened in a system designed to achieve national revitalization and racial purification at any and all costs. He stresses that history teachers, as the most recent data show, cannot further their own agendas by using the Holocaust as an instrument for political indoctrination, but they can still lead their students toward new ways of thinking about the world and their place in it. (Contains 52 notes.)

ERIC

2012

EJ971711