Considering the Moral Complexity of Adolescents in Divided Societies

This paper focuses on adolescents who live in divided societies and how they navigate those divisions as they develop as civic actors. The study sites are Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the United States. In each setting we collected surveys, conducted focus groups with teachers and students, and followed students through the 9th and 10th grades in a case study classroom. In all locales, the students used materials from Facing History and Ourselves, and their teachers had participated in workshops on using those materials. In this paper we follow a case study student from the United States who provides a particularly complex look at issues of division and ethical civic development. The student, Pete, is a white immigrant from South Africa, studying in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial school in the United States. He confronts his South African legacies in the context of a foreign school system, which is working to help U.S. students confront their own legacies. Across two, one-semester, citizenship classes, Pete shows us the tension between an academic stance and a moral/emotional stance. When moral dilemmas become complex for him, he begins to lose his ability to judge. Teacher support and guidance is critical to help students like Pete learn to hold their moral ground, while understanding why others act as they do.

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.

Panel One: Formal Education and Non-formal Education

Format: 5 minute introduction, 15 min per speaker, 70 min discussion Moderator: Johanna Vollhardt, Clark University

Panel Four: Politics and Policy

Format: 5 minute introduction, 15 min per speaker, 70 minute discussion Moderator: Shelly Tenenbaum, Clark University

Panel Five: Looking ahead

Format: 5 minute introduction , 7 min per speaker, 1 hour discussion Moderator: Ken MacLean, Clark University Debόrah Dwork, Strassler Center, Clark UniversityThomas Kühne, Strassler Center, Clark UniversityTaner Akçam, Strassler Center, Clark University

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.

Panel Three: Challenges and Best Practice

Format: 5 minute introduction, 15 min per speaker, 70 minute discussion Moderator: Raphael Rogers, Clark University

Panel Two: Content Orientation versus Civic Education

Format: 5 minute introduction, 15 min per speaker, 70 minute discussion Moderator: Eric DeMeulenaere, Clark University