UTAHNS DETERMINED TO TEACH ABOUT HOLOCAUST
By Deborah Bulkeley
Deseret Morning News , UTAH
April 25 2006
Litvack says some students not aware that it occurred.
Pat Drussel sees Holocaust awareness as a critical part of her language
arts curriculum at Dixon Middle School in Provo.
Jason Olson, Deseret Morning NewsMembers of the Armenian community
protest outside the federal building in Salt Lake City Monday, seeking
recognition of another genocide – the slaughter of more than a million
Armenians in 1915. She hopes her students get the message when she
tells them, “You have to learn acceptance and tolerance. …”
“It doesn’t matter what color people are or what religion they are,”
Drussel said. “We are just people.”
Today marks national Holocaust Remembrance Day. Utah’s official
remembrance ceremony will be held on Friday.
On Monday, about 50 Utah Armenians protested outside the
federal building in Salt Lake City seeking recognition of another
genocide. Monday was the 90th anniversary of the start of an Ottoman
Empire genocide that killed more than a million people. It has yet
to be acknowledged as a genocide by the either the United States
or Turkey.
“It definitely hurts to be forgotten,” said Yelena Ayrapetova of
Salt Lake.
Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake, said there are students in Utah’s
schools who aren’t aware of the Holocaust or other genocides.
“It is definitely a problem, in my perspective, that we have a
population growing up that doesn’t know about the Holocaust,” Litvack
said. “It’s important that we are aware, that we are raising educated
citizens who are aware of what has happened.”
While Utah has no explicit requirement to raise awareness of the
Holocaust or other genocides, the state Office of Education encourages
teachers to incorporate the lessons learned from the Nazi systematic
extermination of 6 million Jews, along with other targeted groups.
Drussel is one of a handful of teachers nationwide finishing up
a yearlong educator fellowship with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum. As part of that fellowship, she recently held a training for
about 55 teachers.
Peter Fredlake, coordinator of the Memorial Museum’s teacher fellowship
program, said up to 15 teachers a year are selected to participate
in the fellowship. So far, 210 teachers have participated since its
inception, including three from Utah.
“People who apply for this program are the cream of the crop,”
Fredlake said. “They are dedicated and know what it means to work
hard. They’re not going to stop teaching at the end of the year.”
Fredlake said Utah is one of 24 states that don’t explicitly mention
Holocaust awareness as part of the curriculum. However, he said it is
implicit in other areas, such as a mention of national socialists. Only
seven states require Holocaust awareness training, he said.
It’s critical for any education program to include context, Fredlake
said.
“One of the most common mistakes is not having a clear rationale for
why you’re teaching it,” Fredlake said. “In a U.S. government class,
part of the rationale could be, ‘I want students to understand that
democracy is a fragile thing.'” Fredlake said one of the biggest
challenges he runs into through nationwide outreach is helping teachers
understand Holocaust awareness can be included in curriculum that
meets guidelines for No Child Left Behind.
“There’s almost no language arts standard that you can’t meet and
still talk about the Holocaust,” he said.
In Utah, Robert Austin, social studies specialist at the Office of
Education, recently attended a meeting hosted by the Memorial Museum
in Denver.
Austin said his office is working to ensure teachers have the
resources they need to teach the topic of the Holocaust and genocide
appropriately.
“It’s such a horrific event in history and such an important event,
it’s absolutely vital that teachers, when they teach on topics like
this, do it using best resources,” he said.
And many Utah educators are incorporating it. Drussel has been crafting
her own Holocaust awareness curri- culum for the past decade.
In addition to her fellowship, she has toured former concentration
camps in the Czech Republic and Poland with a Holocaust survivor.
“Hearing the words of a survivor explain to me what happened when
nobody helped,” she said. “It made it more clear to me to tell kids,
‘You have to be tolerant, you have to be accepting.'”