CHAPTER 7: Teaching about the Holocaust in U.S. Schools

The Holocaust—the murder of nearly six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany during the Second World War—is one of the most significant events of the modern era. Accordingly, educators have been teaching about the event for over half a century, and have employed a number of different pedagogical approaches. Although the idea of teaching the Holocaust received some initial resistance, it has for the most part been, in the words of sociologist Alan Mintz (2001), “a point of moral consensus between the right and left” (p. 33). However, while Holocaust education has been a source of political consensus, it has been a forum for fierce curricular debate. In other words, while everybody may agree that the Holocaust should be taught, they cannot agree on how it should be done. For some the Holocaust should be cast in the broader context of human rights and genocide education and used to make connections to current issues and events. For others, learning about the Holocaust should be a means of moral development, interpersonal growth, and inspiring social justice. For still others, the Holocaust should be studied in its historical context and viewed as a particularly Jewish event. And then, there are those who believe it should be used to understand the particulars of past and the complexities of historical investigation. There are, of course, certain overlaps among and between various groups; but while they all believe that the teaching about the Holocaust can inspire students’ critical thinking, they disagree about the objectives and means of doing so.