I found this story really thought-provoking - and encouraging. It asserts - on the basis of evidence from a US national social studies educators' conference and testimonies from schools in California - that increasing numbers of US teachers are including the study of 'genocide' on their curriculum. The aim is to cover not only the origins of genocide, but also strategies to prevent and solve genocidal practices - with case studies ranging from the holocaust to Armenia, Rwanda and Darfur. Not easy lessons. But perhaps just what schools should be teaching in the 21st century... namely, how to prevent (and when needed solve) some of the big challenges affecting people now, right across the planet. Wtih children equipped to debate these difficult issues today, we may see a global community better equipped to address them in future.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
A very positive story and one that I hope educational authorities in the UK will feel inspired by also. These types of lessons are so important in that they teach about respect for one another and acceptance of difference. Also these lessons would raise important questions about the responsibility our own countries have on a world stage. Perhaps a subject to teach alongside the history of slavery and racism but also current issues such as world trade and immigration?
Holocaust and genocide studies have featured in UK university programmes for some time. The difficult question is: at what age do you introduce these topics into the school curriculum? Taking up sibling's point, I think that they follow from issues about respect, responsibility and acceptance of difference. You can't teach these topics too early, but I think man's inhumanity to man needs to wait until kids have the awareness to put atrocity into a wider moral context.
I agree, Harry. These are high school kids - mid to late teens, in other words. The idea being that this is the age at which acceptance of difference (or, conversely, peer pressure to conform) is uppermost in young people's minds - so, I think the theory is that this is a good point at which to tap into awareness of difference and discuss what happens when persecution on the basis of difference is taken to extremes.
But I suspect that, even if taught well, this is still very difficult subject matter for the teens concerned. I recall studying nuclear war (!) at school during my teens and being extremely upset by it. Perhaps it wasn't taught that well...!
Post a Comment