Teaching and learning about the Holocaust is central to school curriculums in many parts of the world. As a field for discourse and a body of practice, it is rich, multidimensional and innovative. But the history of the Holocaust is complex and challenging, and can render teaching it a complex and daunting area of work.
Drawing on landmark research into teaching practices and students’ knowledge in English secondary schools, Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies provides important knowledge about and insights into classroom teaching and learning. It sheds light on key challenges in Holocaust education, including the impact of misconceptions and misinformation, the dilemmas of using atrocity images in the classroom, and teaching in ethnically diverse environments. Overviews of the most significant debates in Holocaust education provide wider context for the classroom evidence, and contribute to a book that will act as a guide through some of the most vexed areas of Holocaust pedagogy for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policymakers.
Author(s): Stuart Foster, Andy Pearce and Alice Pettigrew (eds.)
Edition: 1
Publisher: UCL Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
City: London
Tags: Holocaust, Holocaust Education
Front matter
Half title
Title page
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
About the contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Challenges, issues and controversies: The shapes of ‘Holocaust education’ in the early twenty-first century / Andy Pearce
Introduction
Memory and knowledge
The state of the field
Contemporary contexts
Volume overview
Rationale, aims and objectives
Towards learning and learners
Curricula issues: Content, approaches, resources
Complicating assumptions
To the future
References
2. To what extent does the acquisition of historical knowledge really matter when studying the Holocaust? / Stuart Foster
Introduction
Knowledge, historical knowledge and the current political landscape
Limitations in historical knowledge and understanding
Why does historical knowledge matter?
Students’ knowledge and understanding of responsibility and complicity
How limitations in knowledge prevented deeper understanding of complicity and responsibility
Conclusion
Notes
References
3. Learning the lessons of the Holocaust: A critical exploration / Arthur Chapman
Introduction
‘Learning about’ and ‘learning from’ the Holocaust
Lessons from the Holocaust
Debates on the validity of a lessons-based approach to the Holocaust
Lessons rest on a category error and inference from the extreme to the normal
Lessons presuppose knowledge that we cannot have
Lessons moralise history in inappropriate ways
Lessons can simplify and distort past realities through anachronism and monocausal explanation
Lessons can be vacuous – too vague to be of value
Discussion: Affordances and constraints of a lessons-based approach to Holocaust education
Coda: ‘Understand in order to judge’
Notes
References
4. ‘They were just following orders’: Relationships between Milgram’s obedience experiments and conceptions of Holocaust perpetration / Rebecca Hale
Introduction
Milgram’s obedience experiments
Exploring students’ understandings of Milgram and the Holocaust
The role of fear
The role of propaganda in Nazi Germany
The nature of the ‘ordinary’ soldier
Considerations and implications
Acknowledgements
References
5. Look before you leap: Teaching about the Holocaust in primary schools / Eleni Karayianni
Introduction
Holocaust education in the primary school
Researching students’ civic attitudes
Attitudes towards equal rights for immigrants
Attitudes towards neighbourhood diversity
Knowledge about the Holocaust
Implications for future directions
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
6. British Responses to the Holocaust: Student and teacher perspectives on the development of a new classroom resource / Tom Haward
Introduction
British responses to the Holocaust: Then and now
British Responses to the Holocaust in context: Pedagogy and practice
Piloting and development
Student responses
Teacher responses
Conclusions
References
7. ‘I know it’s not really true, but it might just tell us . . .’: The troubled relationship between The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and understanding about the Holocaust / Darius Jackson
Introduction
Why is literature about the Holocaust prone to controversy?
Historical fiction and historical understanding
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
How The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas impacts upon students’ understanding of the Holocaust
Conclusion
Note
References
8. Antisemitism and Holocaust education / Andy Pearce, Stuart Foster, Alice Pettigrew
Introduction
A contested concept
Students’ understanding of antisemitism, Jewish life and the Holocaust
Implications
Conclusion
Note
References
9. Muslim students and the Holocaust in England’s secondary schools: ‘Reluctant learners’ or constructed controversies? / Alice Pettigrew
Introduction
Constructing a controversy? Reporting and misreporting the Historical Association’s TEACH research
Contemporary ‘folk devils’ and ‘moral panic’: A social constructivist approach
‘Reluctant learners?’
Teacher perspectives on the significance of cultural diversity in the classroom
Reluctance to remember? The Holocaust, ‘new’ antisemitism and Europe’s Others
Whose problem? Which Muslim students?
The 2016 UCL student study
Concluding thoughts and unanswered questions
Notes
References
10. Seeing things differently: The use of atrocity images in teaching aboutthe Holocaust / Ruth-Anne Lenga
Introduction
‘Powerful knowledge’ and the exceptional educational importance of the Holocaust
Using atrocity images to teach about the Holocaust: Opposition, opportunity and mitigating risk
Opposition
Opportunity and risk
What is an atrocity image?
Student reflections on encountering atrocity images of the Holocaust: Findings from the UCL study
Atrocity images of the Holocaust and education: Looking forward
Conclusion
Note
References
Index
