Possible Applications of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Hawaii Social Studies Content Standards
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 "About the Standards": The Social Studies standards will require focusing on open ended problems and issues. they will require that teachers use multiple materials that provide different interpretation and perspectives and a curriculum that emphasizes major concepts, effective strategies, and encourages depth of study.
An introduction to the history standards for grades 6-12: The study of history should not rest solely on the knowledge of facts, dates, and places. Effective historical understanding requires students to engage in historical thinking. At the same time, history consists of real people and events, the accurate knowledge of which is crucial to proper historical understanding. Modes of historical thinking should therefore take place within a solid framework of actual historical events and developments.

A unit on the Holocaust precisely fits what is expressed in the sentences above.


History Content Standards:
Change, continuity, causality: 1
Students employ chronology to understand change and/or continuity and cause and/or effect 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 from the first racial laws of the Nazi regime to the death centers of the 1940s. If a teacher centers in on an individual's story in the Holocaust, the context of that story in time is a must. Cause and effect is to be observed carefully with sweeping statements avoided.


Historical Empathy: 2
Students learn to judge the past on its own terms and use that knowledge to understand present day issues, problems, and decision making.

    The Holocaust is a major part of events of the world, United States, and Delaware in the twentieth century. The leading into the events of mass murder and the consequences of mass murder are to be understood. Example: The attitude of the United States government to the anti-Semitism before 1939; the inactions and actions of the United States government during the war; the migration of survivors to the United States and to Israel in the post war period. Understanding American actions in the world (such as Israel, Bosnia, Kosovo) in the 1990s in light of the Holocaust can be studied.


Historical Inquiry: 3
Students use the tools and methods of historians to transform learning from memorizing historical data to "doing history."
and
Historical Perspectives and interpretations: 4
Students explain historical events with multiple interpretations rather than explanations that point to historical linearity or inevitability.

    Primary and secondary sources are abundant for the teacher to guide the student toward. Stories of survivors, documents, historians analysis, can lead the student to study interpretations and to make interpretations. Example: How have historians in Israel and historians in the United States over the decades differed on how the Holocaust has affected the post war world.
Introduction to the Civics and Government Content Standards: Students need not only to acquire a body of knowledge about civic life, politics, and government, they also need to acquire relevant skills and to have the disposition to engage in civic participation. They need opportunities in and out of the classroom to experience democracy and all that it entails. After all, the formal documents upon which the nation was founded, contain the premise that citizens will be active--socially an politically.
    Rather than listing the Civics and Government Content Standards the following is offered in response to the introduction:
   Study of the Holocaust in grades 9-12 is the study of the antithesis of these standards set by Hawaii in civics and government. Students need to realize what can happen when the people of a nation are not free. Holocaust studies can motivate a student to realize the importance of understanding the principles and ideals of the American government; the responsibilities, rights and privileges of citizenship. Holocaust studies can motivate a student to participate fully as a citizen of a free society.
Introduction to the Cultural Anthropology Content Standards: The study of culture is more than holidays and food, costumes and crafts. I prepares students to think about culture as a system of beliefs, traditions, etc., and to use that knowledge to celebrate diversity and unity and to develop empathy fro people and things different.
    Rather than listing the Cultural Anthropology Content Standard the following is offered in response to the introduction:
   The opportunity exist that while studying the Holocaust for the teacher to take the student into a study of the East European Jewish culture that existed before 1939 and no longer exist today. All standards listed would be covered in this study.


Introduction to the Geography Content Standards: Geography is more than memorizing states and their capitols. Geographic understandings require that students learn the skills and inquiry methods of geographers to observe patterns, associations, relationships, and spatial order. Geography must be learned within the contexts of home, school, community, society, and the work world.
    Rather than listing the Geography Content Standards the following is offered in response to the introduction:

   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. Most of the listed geography content standards would be covered with a study of the Holocaust.


Introduction to the Economic Content Standards: A better understanding of economics enables people to comprehend the forces that affect them every day and helped them identify and evaluate the consequences of private decisions and public policies. Economics should and can be interwoven in all subject areas for economic decisions are the basis for human activity.
    Rather than listing the Economic Content Standards the following is offered as a response to the introduction:

   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 transportation to death camps are to be faced. The economics of the death camps themselves serves an example of what happens when civilized morals become warped.