Re-thinking Teaching About Atrocity: Human Rights Comparative History and Critical Pedagogy

This paper will explore re-framing historic atrocity and its relationship to Holocaust and Genocide education. The origins of genocide studies and its links to Holocaust studies will be traced to discuss the impact of new scholarship and framings on genocide education in the classroom.

Educating...for what?: Engagement and Citizenry

Higgins School of the Humanities/Difficult Dialogues: Video Recording from 11/3/2011 event featuring Tom Hayden and Bob Ross "Engagement and Citizenry" Event Description: During their undergraduate years, students participate in a community that is a microcosm of society, and have the opportunity to learn about what it means to be a member of a society—a citizen—while they live it. How do we as educators (and humanists) best support and model this process? Where in our pedagogy can we enhance and develop the qualities of skillful empathy, effective analysis and motivated responsibility that good citizenship demands? Our guest for a conversation on engagement and citizenry is long-time activist Tom Hayden, who was the primary author of the Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society, which became known for its advocacy of “participatory democracy”. He is joined in conversation by Professor Bob Ross of Clark University, who participated with Hayden in the founding of SDS.

Isolated Islands? Memory of the Holocaust in Formal and Non-Formal Education. The Case Study of Post-Communist Poland

Existing studies revealed several conflicts around the memory of the Holocaust in Poland: between understanding the need to teach about the Holocaust and indifference toward anti-Jewish graffiti; a conflict around the perception of Polish help to Jews; and the competing images of Polish and Jewish suffering during World War II. Those conflicts will be addressed in the paper as reflecting educational gaps in the Polish education system (lack of bad memory). This paper will look at the consciousness of young Poles, in terms of attitudes toward Jews, the Holocaust and memory of the Holocaust. The data presented are the preliminary results of the author’s longitudinal study „Attitudes of Young Poles toward the Jews and the Holocaust”. Quantitative and qualitative studies include field studies and participant observation of educational projects in Tykocin, Treblinka, Warsaw, Lublin, Bodzentyn and Kielce. The paper will present some components of the development of education about the Holocaust in Poland. There is a need to evaluate the attempt to bring back the memory of Jewish neighbours in some of the states of Central and Eastern Europe, a process with an ongoing effort to renovate monuments, destroyed cemeteries and synagogues. The number and scope of such initiatives in Poland indicate that civic institutions and individuals are intensifying their efforts to teach their fellow citizens about the Holocaust, however their impact should be assessed in detail.