Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust: Avoiding Common Pedagogical Errors

College Student Reactions to Holocaust Education From the Perspective of the Theme of Complicity and Collaboration

“…This substantiates the importance of exposing college students specifically to the Holocaust. Maturation of students is associated with greater capacity for consideration of topics that are intellectually and emotionally challenging (Lindquist, 2006). Similarly, scholars of transformational learning theory suggest that it requires a certain level of cognitive development (Merriam, 2004).…”

Assessing the Impact of Holocaust Education on Adolescents’ Civic Values: Experimental Evidence from Arkansas

“…Education researchers and curriculum experts conjecture that studying the Holocaust imparts essential lessons of civic values, including justice, tolerance, and the importance of democratic liberties (Doering & Pekarik, 1996;Carrington & Short, 1997;Shiman & Fernekes, 1999;Russell, 2005;Lindquist, 2006). Russell (2005) argues that teaching about the Holocaust "helps students develop an awareness of the value of pluralism and encourages tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic society" (p. 93).…”

“…Apart from questions of methodological rigor, one of the concerns with the research into teaching the Holocaust in the classroom is that teachers seem to encounter pedagogical "pitfalls" (Lipstadt, 1995, p. 27) when implementing Holocaust education programs in the classroom. For example, several researchers note concerns that Holocaust education may be narrow or shallow, failing to establish the broad historical context in which the Holocaust took place (Schweber, 2003;Lindquist, 2006;Riley & Totten, 2002;Wieser, 2001). Lipstadt (1995) notes that teachers often lead students to make inappropriate comparisons to other human rights topics in history such as the passage of Jim Crow laws or the internment of Japanese-Americans, in which groups faced intense persecution and discrimination, but were not killed on a scale comparable to the Holocaust.…”

“…Descriptive longitudinal studies of Holocaust education in the classroom raise concerns about how the Holocaust is taught. These concerns include failing to place the Holocaust in its proper historical context (Lindquist, 2006;Russell, 2005;Totten, Holocaust education, 2012;Foster, et al, 2016), making inappropriate comparisons to other periods of history (Lipstadt, 1995), and including inaccuracies in content (Riley & Totten, 2002). An intervention such as the conference we evaluate, which features university professors, certified Holocaust museum fellows, and other experts in the field, should alleviate these concerns about Holocaust education.…”

Teaching about the Holocaust in Israel: A Pedagogical Approach Adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Education

“…There is no doubt that what happened in the Holocaust was indeed an event of unique extremity, but among the extreme elements, there are also human universal elements. That is to say, as educators cannot absolve themselves from the search for human, universal elements within this context of evil and these elements should be discussed (Lindquist, 2006).…”