National Post (Canada)
January 24, 2005 Monday
National Edition
Old lessons hard to learn: ‘The Holocaust is not something that has
been taken on squarely by anti-racist educators’
by Heather Sokoloff, National Post
Last year, Ontario teacher Tasha Boylan covered the Holocaust in
about two hours with her Grade 10 history students. Crammed into a
few classroom periods was everything from the rise of the Nazis, to
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s refusal to admit Jewish
refugees to Canada, to a discussion on discrimination and genocides
in Rwanda and Somalia.
”They really wanted to understand how people could have done nothing
to help the Jews,” Ms. Boylan says. ”When they knew this was going
on.”
Ms. Boylan wanted to spend more time on the Holocaust. Many of her
Toronto-area public students had little previous knowledge and were
keen to learn more. But the course — the only history requirement in
the Ontario high school curriculum — is jam-packed with 20th-century
content that must be completed. The standard 300-page history text
used in classrooms across the province, which covers Canada and its
role in the world from 1880 through the 1960s, devotes two pages to
the Second World War genocide.
Many educators fear students are getting little information on the
extermination of six million Jews, and worry Canadian classrooms may
not be doing enough to prevent students from making a blunder similar
to the one committed by Britain’s Prince Harry, who, as a joke,
donned a Nazi uniform at a costume party three weeks ago, during the
same month the world is marking the 60th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz.
A National Post survey of Canada’s 10 provincial departments of
education found the Holocaust is covered in required history courses
only in Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Quebec’s curriculum is the only one that never explicitly mentions
the Holocaust. The Second World War is covered only in an elective
Grade 11 20th-century history course, and even then, the period
1914-1945 is detailed in two pages of a 50-page teachers’ manual.
Manitoba, British Columbia and Saskatchewan cover the Holocaust at
both the elementary and senior level. The three Western provinces
also go over the Holocaust in curriculum on Canadian immigration
policies, detailing how Ottawa refused to admit Jewish refugees
during the war.
Quebec’s curriculum, by comparison, is silent on the intense support
from groups such as Societe Saint-Jean Baptiste and L’Action
Nationale for Ottawa’s anti-immigration policies.
Newfoundland has put The Diary of Anne Frank and Night by Holocaust
survivor Elie Wiesel on a book list students are expected — but not
required — to read.
Official curriculum documents may have little relevance to students’
everyday learning, especially in subjects such as history and social
studies, where teachers decide which texts and historical periods
will be studied to accomplish opened-ended course objectives.
As a result, the amount of information students receive on the
Holocaust varies from province to province and even school to school,
depending on the interest of individual teachers. Ms. Boylan, for
example, also teaches about the Holocaust in a popular elective
social studies course called Introduction to Anthropology, Sociology
and Psychology, during a unit on discrimination. Although
anti-Semitism is not a required part of the section, she selects
texts and resources that discuss persecution of Jews during various
points in history.
Part of the problem, says Myra Novogrodsky, a veteran educator who
teaches a history pedagogy course at York University’s faculty of
education, is many teachers do not know much about the Holocaust
themselves. Even when they do, they may fear that bringing up the
issue could lead to an uncomfortable classroom discussion.
Teachers also worry about how to respond if their students repeat
anti-Semitic comments that they may have heard from their parents, or
from the governments in countries where they lived before coming to
Canada, she says.
According to a 2000 study from B’nai B’rith, only two Canadian
university faculties of education, at York and McGill, offer some
course material on how to teach the Holocaust to aspiring teachers.
The University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education (OISE) briefly offered a masters-level program on Holocaust
and genocide education, but cancelled it after a year in 2002.
According to the university, the reason was lack of fundraising. But
Carole Ann Reed, who co-headed the short-lived program, believes the
university never bothered to try to raise the money.
”I was told there was not enough money rounded up by the community
and I have always found that very, very hard to accept as the full
answer,” says Dr. Reed.
According to Dr. Reed, who specializes in anti-racist education and
is currently working with the National Film Board of Canada to
produce classroom materials on the Rwandan genocide, ”the Holocaust
is not something that has been taken on squarely by anti-racist
educators.”
As a result, the Holocaust is often included as one option along with
a smorgasbord of other human-rights-themed material. A new Quebec
course called History and Citizenship Education, for example, planned
for Grades 7 and 8, suggests a selection of Holocaust literature for
a unit on liberty and civil rights, along with works such as Simone
de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago and
Assi bo nanga by Johnny Clegg.
Still, many teachers do embrace the topic with gusto, while some
provinces have been vocal in ensuring resources make it to their
teachers. British Columbia published two 90-page booklets on teaching
the Holocaust for all Grade 6 and Grade 11 social studies teachers,
while Saskatchewan is providing funding for a travelling exhibit on
Anne Frank this year.
OISE is offering a new masters-level course this year on Holocaust
literature called Anne Frank, Writings of the Adolescent Self, taught
by Lesley Shore. (Ms. Boylan is one of 12 students, all teachers or
student-teachers, taking the course.)
For teachers, Anne Frank’s diary is a sure way of sparking classroom
discussions on morality. Last week, the teachers probed each other
with questions such as: If I was a Gentile, would I have tried to
save a Jewish family? If I was a Jew, which friend could I ask to
take me in? And what about all the people who knew Jews like Anne
Frank were in hiding but didn’t say anything?
According to Dr. Shore, The Diary of Anne Frank remains the
second-best-selling nonfiction book after the Bible. Recently, a
series of children’s books written by two Canadian authors, including
Hana’s Suitcase, Gabi’s Dresser and The Underground Reporters, have
become best-sellers, selling hundreds of thousands of copies around
the world.
Amy Rohr, a Grade 8 English teacher at the Halton Catholic District
School Board, also taking the OISE course on Anne Frank, has spent
months with her students exploring themes of war. Students were able
to choose any book and share it with the class; many chose
Holocaust-themed books, while others selected works on children
living through genocides in Armenia and Rwanda.
Some parents, as well as her colleagues, were worried the material
might be too stark for the middle-school-aged children, but Ms. Rohr
says students are enthralled.
”Students are interested in learning about injustice,” says Ms.
Rohr. ”Teachers have a powerful role to play in initiating
discussion on how they can make a difference.”