Death and the Holocaust: The challenge to learners and the need for support

Abstract

The aim is to explore impact that learning about the Holocaust has on pupils and to consider how religious education can help to support pupils. The focus on the pupil encounter with suffering and death within the Holocaust explores the impact of this learning on pupils. Data drawn from my PhD research study, involving over 100 pupils in the United Kingdom, is used to explore the impact that the study of the Holocaust had on pupils. This covered images that pupils retained from study, aspects which they found threatening, and finally what they found difficult to understand. This encounter will be set within the context of research on children and death. The final section argues that the method and content of religious education could provide invaluable support for pupils in this encounter, and illustrates this argument with suggestions of materials that teachers could use in the classroom.

What is Existential Educational Encounter?

“…The concept of encounter has been widely used in various educational discourses, including theoretical work in curriculum studies and intercultural education in the 20 th and 21 st centuries (c.f. Sanderson, 2004;Burke, 2003;Worley, 2004). An especially popular use of the concept in educational settings happened in the beginning of 20 th century (Cantey, 1990;Deketeleare & Klehtermans, 1996;Ramsden, 1989;Roeper, 1995; see also Rudduck, 1977).…”