SCHOOLING KIDS ON GENOCIDE AND MORAL RELATIVISM
by John Turley-Ewart
National Post
comment/archive/2008/01/08/john-turley-ewart-schoo ling-kids-on-genocide-and-moral-relativism.aspx
Ja n 8 2008
Canada
When I learned that the Toronto District School Board offers a course,
albeit to a very small number of students, on the history of genocide,
I was pleasantly surprised. Most students leave High School with
little knowledge or and little interest in the world that came before
and the horrors that have befallen previous generations. Any effort
to bring students into the world they are a part of is welcome.
After reading the first couple of paragraphs of the story I should
have stopped. Gerri Gershon, the Toronto School Board Trustee who
championed the course’s creation, explained the course objective in
response to concerns expressed by some members of the Canadian-Turkish
community about the course’s take on the Armenian genocide by stating:
"This isn’t a course to teach hatred or blame the perpetrators –
no, no, no," declared Gershon. This statement raises an interesting
question. If the perpetrators of genocide do not deserve blame,
what do they deserve?
Gershon’s simple minded take smacks of the kind of moral relativism
that, rather than ensuring genocide never happens again, opens the
door to it. Toronto students deserve better. Let’s hope their teachers
have a superior moral compass than their school trustee and teach
kids the genocide is wrong and those who are guilty of it deserve
both blame and punishment.