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No Budget for the Holocaust
Huffington Post
02/06/2013
By Tyler Moss
My favorite class from high school is being cut.
There are few courses that I remember fondly. Whether disillusioned
geriatric teachers or bland curriculums revolving around standardized
testing goals are to blame is up for debate. But I was devastated to
see the following message posted on Facebook the other day by one of
the best teachers I've ever had:
Well I figured I better share here... after 7 years of teaching so
many amazing students the Holocaust and Genocide Studies course, the
class isn't going to be offered anymore. This is due primarily to
budget cuts and tough choices made by administration (struggling with
funding choices)... I thank you for an amazing 7 years sharing my
passion with each of you. It's been an amazing honor!
He then implored students to write him letters documenting their
positive experiences in the course as a last-ditch effort to petition
the district. I was devastated -- this was one of the only classes in
high school that actually asked me to engage with it beyond the basic
book report or Powerpoint presentation. Thus I wrote the following
letter:
To Whom It May Concern,
I'm a professional magazine writer and editor living in Cincinnati,
Ohio, and was enrolled in the class Holocaust and Genocide Studies in
Fall 2006. It recently came to my attention that this course is to be
cut from the school curriculum, which compelled me to write in and
insist that you reconsider.
It's no secret that public school funding doesn't exactly grow on
trees, but if you're looking to cut classes, I beg that you leave
Holocaust and Genocide Studies unscathed. Nearly 90 percent of the
courses I took in high school were survey classes that could barely
afford to spend more than a day on any major topic, which means that
hardly any of the material was actually retained. In freshman history,
we covered topics like the Industrial Revolution and the Great
Depression in the span of two or three days. I remember being asked to
practice rote memorization of acronyms of New Deal programs instated
by the FDR Administration, and today I can barely recall a single one.
But I can still tell you how many Jewish people were murdered by the
Nazis during the Holocaust (6 million). I can still tell you the name
of the man who coined the term genocide (Raphael Lemkin) and when
(1944). I can even recall the name of the Cambodian dictator and
leader of the Khmer Rouge who slaughtered his own people in the late
70s (Pol Pot). But more than that, I remember discussing the nature of
prejudice and the precarious social conditions that drive one group to
slaughter another. I can still visualize the images of emaciated
children behind chain-link fences, and the symbolic significance of a
20-foot high stack of abandoned shoes. I recall engaging in passionate
debates over the omnipotence paradox, and contemplating Hannah
Arendt's phrase 'the banality of evil' from her book Eichmann in
Jerusalem -- a text so rich and dense that I didn't revisit it again
until studying journalism as a graduate student at Northwestern
University.
Why do I remember so much? Because Holocaust and Genocide Studies is a
course that inherently intertwines education with empathy. You have no
idea how much being emotionally invested in the material can actively
engage a student in his or her own education. Not only were the
photographs, readings, videos and lectures both powerful and
provocative, but the class itself inspires students to be more than
just a passive observer in history. By bearing witness to the horrors
of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the
class becomes more than just a semester-long high school course or a
letter on a report card. We're fulfilling a duty as first-world
citizens living in a post-Holocaust era: to remember what happened. To
Never Forget.
I sure as hell haven't.
Sincerely,
Tyler Moss
Unfortunately, it sounds like what the district really needs to keep
this course afloat is cash, and these letters are only printed on
computer paper, not blank checks. Regardless of the fate of Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, let this episode stand as yet another tragedy in
the tome of public education funding.
Follow Tyler Moss on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@tjmoss11
Huffington Post
02/06/2013
By Tyler Moss
My favorite class from high school is being cut.
There are few courses that I remember fondly. Whether disillusioned
geriatric teachers or bland curriculums revolving around standardized
testing goals are to blame is up for debate. But I was devastated to
see the following message posted on Facebook the other day by one of
the best teachers I've ever had:
Well I figured I better share here... after 7 years of teaching so
many amazing students the Holocaust and Genocide Studies course, the
class isn't going to be offered anymore. This is due primarily to
budget cuts and tough choices made by administration (struggling with
funding choices)... I thank you for an amazing 7 years sharing my
passion with each of you. It's been an amazing honor!
He then implored students to write him letters documenting their
positive experiences in the course as a last-ditch effort to petition
the district. I was devastated -- this was one of the only classes in
high school that actually asked me to engage with it beyond the basic
book report or Powerpoint presentation. Thus I wrote the following
letter:
To Whom It May Concern,
I'm a professional magazine writer and editor living in Cincinnati,
Ohio, and was enrolled in the class Holocaust and Genocide Studies in
Fall 2006. It recently came to my attention that this course is to be
cut from the school curriculum, which compelled me to write in and
insist that you reconsider.
It's no secret that public school funding doesn't exactly grow on
trees, but if you're looking to cut classes, I beg that you leave
Holocaust and Genocide Studies unscathed. Nearly 90 percent of the
courses I took in high school were survey classes that could barely
afford to spend more than a day on any major topic, which means that
hardly any of the material was actually retained. In freshman history,
we covered topics like the Industrial Revolution and the Great
Depression in the span of two or three days. I remember being asked to
practice rote memorization of acronyms of New Deal programs instated
by the FDR Administration, and today I can barely recall a single one.
But I can still tell you how many Jewish people were murdered by the
Nazis during the Holocaust (6 million). I can still tell you the name
of the man who coined the term genocide (Raphael Lemkin) and when
(1944). I can even recall the name of the Cambodian dictator and
leader of the Khmer Rouge who slaughtered his own people in the late
70s (Pol Pot). But more than that, I remember discussing the nature of
prejudice and the precarious social conditions that drive one group to
slaughter another. I can still visualize the images of emaciated
children behind chain-link fences, and the symbolic significance of a
20-foot high stack of abandoned shoes. I recall engaging in passionate
debates over the omnipotence paradox, and contemplating Hannah
Arendt's phrase 'the banality of evil' from her book Eichmann in
Jerusalem -- a text so rich and dense that I didn't revisit it again
until studying journalism as a graduate student at Northwestern
University.
Why do I remember so much? Because Holocaust and Genocide Studies is a
course that inherently intertwines education with empathy. You have no
idea how much being emotionally invested in the material can actively
engage a student in his or her own education. Not only were the
photographs, readings, videos and lectures both powerful and
provocative, but the class itself inspires students to be more than
just a passive observer in history. By bearing witness to the horrors
of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the
class becomes more than just a semester-long high school course or a
letter on a report card. We're fulfilling a duty as first-world
citizens living in a post-Holocaust era: to remember what happened. To
Never Forget.
I sure as hell haven't.
Sincerely,
Tyler Moss
Unfortunately, it sounds like what the district really needs to keep
this course afloat is cash, and these letters are only printed on
computer paper, not blank checks. Regardless of the fate of Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, let this episode stand as yet another tragedy in
the tome of public education funding.
Follow Tyler Moss on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@tjmoss11