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Possible Applications of a Unit on the Holocaust to Georgia's Quality Core Curriculum Standards Grades 9-12 |
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| A Color Key: Blue: A link to the USHMM teacher’s guide web page. Black: Directly quoting a state’s social studies standard. Red: The correlation of studying the Holocaust to the standards. Brown: Other information. |
If a secondary teacher would decide to teach a unit on the Holocaust, it would be highly recommended to first read "Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust" created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum which can be found at <http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/> | |
From the "Introduction to Social Studies Quality Core Curriculum K 12":
The primary purpose of Social Studies education in Georgia schools is to help
students become productive and responsible citizens. The Social Studies curriculum
enables students to develop the ability to make informed decisions that balance
concern for individual interests and the public good in a culturally diverse
and interdependent world.
A unit on the Holocaust would address and stress the concept that government is under the watchful eye of the citizen. Students would witness what happens to a society that does not hold this value. Student would see in action a society that subordinates the individual totally to the interest, warped as it was in Nazi Germany, of the state.
Continuing the "Introduction....":
Exemplary Social Studies instruction provides opportunities for students to
acquire knowledge, reflect upon and use that knowledge, and gain a better understanding
of self and others. The Social Studies program includes the study of geography,
history, political science, economics, behavioral sciences, and the humanities.
Study of the Holocaust in the 9-12 level makes use of all disciplines listed. Different disciplines can be stressed according to the course that utilizes a study of the Holocaust.
Continuing the "Introduction....":
Knowledge (what students need to know about various social sciences
and related disciplines), skills (what students should be able to do
with acquired knowledge and skills), and values (mandated by the State
Legislature in 1991) are the three major elements that comprise the Social Studies
guidelines as established by state and national organizations. Social Studies
instruction should be meaningful, integrative across teaching and learning,
value-based and challenging. Through such a process students will develop the
necessary knowledge, skills and values of a committed , competent citizen
who participates in the civic affairs of the community and nation.
Bold type is added in above paragraph.
Knowledge, skills, and values in geography--cultural and physical:
A look at the anti-Semitism within this nation and in Europe before 1939 is to be compared and studied. The actions of a government and society that carried out genocide is to be studied. The consequences of the mass murders in the post 1945 world is to be realized: from the founding of the United Nations, to the Declaration of Human Rights, to the center of Jewish culture no longer in East Europe, but now in Israel and the United States.
In a study of the Holocaust the basic tenets of Christianity and Judaism should be understood. These both are part of the history of the Holocaust as a student studies the issue of anti-Semitism.
Music and the arts of the perpetrators and victims can help students understand the cultures of the people of Europe at the time of the Holocaust.
Analysis of Nazi racial doctrine and how it moved from racial laws to the "final solution" is to be made.
The shift of the center of Jewish culture from eastern Europe to Israel and the United States as a result of the Holocaust is to be understood.
Holocaust studies require the knowledge of and use of maps: the chronology of war fronts, the location of the various types of camps, the transportation systems, etc. The maps of camps are needed to understand how they operated and for what purpose. The maps of ghettos are needed to understand the events that occurred in the ghettos. The Holocaust created unnatural environments. Students will become aware of how humans modified and responded to the horrors they faced: racial laws, ghettos, camps.
Knowledge, skills, and values in history:
In Holocaust studies, a complete understanding of the chronology of events is an absolute must. One must take the student back to the origins of anti-Semitism, the development of racial theories in all corners of the world including the United States. The time line of events in the 1930s and 1940s is to be completely understood.
If a teacher centers in on an individual's story in the Holocaust, the context of that story in time is a must. If a teacher assigns research to a specific person or event, the context of the time is to be understood.
The Holocaust is one of the major events of the modern period that has had its effects on the world and the United States. The event must be fully analyzed to comprehend that effect from what it did to the culture of the Jewish peoples, to the culture of Europe, to the impact on the United States.
In the study of the Holocaust, multiple sources are available that the teacher can make available for the student. Questions of how and why, questions of interpretation such as who did what, who knew what when, questions of reactions of victims, etc. all can be formulated with the vast availability of primary sources and secondary sources that range from personal testimony of survivors, to photographic archives, to diaries and memoirs, to the records of the period, to the arts and literature, to historians interpretations.
The teacher who teaches a unit on the Holocaust has an opportunity to make the period of that time come alive with the real stories of people who survived, who did not survive, who were victims, who were rescuers, who were bystanders. The resources are readily available and multiple. The best is a survivor to speak with students if one willing to present to students is available. Both written and video sources are plentiful.
The horror of the Holocaust is an example of science and technology gone wrong. This is to be compared to the hopes for science, and technology. Example: The technological, industrial mindset of the Nazis is to be viewed by the student as it led to the industrialized murder factories located in eastern Europe.
Knowledge, skills, and values in economics:
Some examples in studying the Holocaust and Europe of World War II: Students are faced with the economics of the Nazi regime and their wartime production. This included mass use of slave labor. Questions of transportation of war supplies and human transportations to death camps are to be faced. The economics of the ghettos and the death camps themselves serves as an example of what happens when civilized morals become warped. The policies of governments in the post World War I, Versailles Treaty era can show students how the economy in Germany led to the rise of Hitler .
Knowledge, skills, and values in civics and government:
The Holocaust can be incorporated into a study of government in order to demonstrate how the development of public policy can become directed to genocidal ends when dissent and debate are silenced.
Inclusion of Holocaust studies in a government or a history course helps students compare governmental systems, study the process of how a state can degenerate from a democracy into a totalitarian state, examine how the development of public policy can lead to genocidal ends, examine the role of Nazi bureaucracy in implementing policies of murder and annihilation, examine the role of various individuals in the rise and fall of a totalitarian government, and recognize that among the legacies of the Holocaust have been the creation of Human Rights organizations and declarations.
Inclusion of a study of the Holocaust into a U.S. history or a U.S. government course can encourage students to:
•examine the dilemmas that arise when foreign policy goals are narrowly defined, as solely in terms of the national interest, denying the validity of universal moral and human priorities. •understand what happens when parliamentary democratic institutions fail.
•examine the responses of governmental and non-governmental organizations in the United States to the plight of Holocaust victims.
•explore the role of American soldiers in liberating victims from Nazi concentration camps and killing centers.
•examine the key role played by the U.S. in bringing Nazi perpetrators to trial at Nuremberg and in other war crimes trials.
•understand the consequences of mass murder. Example: The attitude of the United States government to the anti-Semitism before 1939; the inaction and actions of the United States government during the war; the immigration of survivors to the United States in the post war period.
American Government--
2. Topic: Authoritiarn Government and Democratic Government
Standard: Differentiates between authoritarian and democratic
governmental systems.
16.Topic: Propaganda Bias
Standard: assesses the influence of propaganda and media
bias in the formation of public opinion.
38.Topic: Rights vs. Freedom
Standard: Discusses the conflict between individual/group
rights and absolute/limited freedoms.
Civics/ Citizenship--
1. Topic: Government
Standard: Defines government and lists the characteristics
of a state.
2. Topic: Democratic Heritage
Standard: Identifies basic beliefs and values of the democratic
heritage.
Economics--
1. Topic: Scarcity Opportunity Cost
Standard: Defines and applies the concepts of scarcity,
decision-making, choice, and opportunity.
2. Topic: Supply and Demand
Standard: Relates the concept of supply and demand to
scarcity.
United States History--
33.Topic: Global Conflict
Standard: Analyzes the causes and results of America's
participation in World War II.
World History--
21. Topic: Impact of Ideas (Fascism/Nazism) Individuals and History (Hitler)
Standard: discusses the totalitarian regimes by comparing
and contrasting fascism and communism.
22. Topic: Conflict Individuals and History (Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt)
Standard: Traces and analyzes the causes and effects of
World War II
23. Topic: Human Rights
Standard: Analyzes the phenomenon of genocide in
the 20th century: Armenian, Nazi Holocaust, and ethnic cleansing (Balkan, African,
Asian).
Every one of the 38 Core Social Studies Skills would be utilized and reinforced in a student's study of the Holocaust.