How should schools handle controversial/fringe topics? (Re the school with Holocaust debate essay)

[alp227]

The Rialto, CA school district got in trouble for an assignment that was an "essay on whether the Holocaust occurred or was 'merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain.'"

Quite despicable, because this assignment gives false credence to a widely discredited side of an issue.

I think if educators want students to debate issues, try better topics such as affirmative action, same-sex marriage, or taxation.

However, in today's misinformation-saturated media environment where everyone and their dog has an outlet (social media or message boards or talk radio) to weigh in on current events, it's important to teach the young to filter the truth from the B.S. The question though is acknowledging the existence of stupid ideas without asserting those ideas have any crumb of credibility.

While children should learn to cite evidence to back up their POV's, the problem is...again...that cranks of all persuasions have exploited their critics' demand for evidence by devoting entire media outlets to their stupidity. Which is why for instance you see sites like WorldNetDaily devoted to stretching everything to claim that Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he wasn't really born in the US, or all sorts of conspiracy dreck online like Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. And the Christian author David Barton has devoted his career to pushing a revisionist type of history that claims that the Founding Fathers wanted a Christian-based law for the USA; his work is so shoddy his own publisher stopped printing a book of his.

The Internet has decreased the stigma attached to cranky POV's that are divorced from reality so much that getting to the truth is an uphill battle.

[HockeyMom]

1. Years ago a Holocaust survivor came to my daughter's school

Ok, that was about 20 years ago and how many are still alive today? That certainly made an impact on the kids. She showed them her ID number burned into her arm.

It never happened?

[Brigid]

2. Some idiots still try to say that.

When the concentration camps were finally discovered near the end of WWII and reported to Eisenhower, he ordered all reporters and everyone else to bring their cameras, notebooks, etc. He wanted all the documentation possible, as if for some reason he had a feeling that later on some would try to deny it all.

[HockeyMom]

3. My FIL was with the unit that liberated Buchenwald

He lived with the horror of that in his nightmares for decades. Only his wife knew about it. He never even told my husband. I feel honored that he opened up to me one day about it, but it was horrific just listening for him about it. I suppose he wanted to spare his own children, but when I did tell my husband, he was shocked. We are not Jewish, but my husband's family are German/Americans and my FIL took that very personally. I will never forget what he said, "The blood of those monsters runs through my veins".

I have told my own children what he witnessed. Hopefully, they will pass it on to their own children. This is the only way for survivors, and witnessess, to remember what happened so it never happens again.

[dilby]

4. How about there is no debate in regards to the Holocaust.

It is a historical fact, do people hold debates on if 2+2=4? Leave debates for theories, philosophy and art.

[Crunchy Frog]

8. +1000.

[dem in texas]

5. There are plenty of things to debate about the Holocaust

Such as why didn't the Pope and all the leaders of the great churches of Europe make their voices heard in protest when they knew what was going on. Why wasn't there media coverage about it, it was not a secret. People in all the countries near the camps knew what happening. Why wasn't it reported more?

[Crunchy Frog]

9. Why didn't the United States take refugees?

A major blot on FDR's presidency, sad to say.

[MH1]

6. It was supposed to be an assignment to develop students' ability to critically review sources.

One would expect that the teacher would shoot down all the stupid crackpot denial theories, in the process of teaching students how to evaluate sources for credibility.

At first glance it seems like an AWFUL choice, and no wonder people are offended.

But, I saw that the ADL looked into this and found that there was no intention to teach Holocaust denial, but rather the opposite. However it is too sensitive for so many people - understandably so - that it's probably a good idea not to go there at all.

But I got to thinking about this, and here is what I want to know: what topic should be used? Climate change? 9/11 trutherism? Birtherism?

Almost anything you pick, someone will be offended, if only when you kick their pet conspiracy theory to the curb.

I suspect the Holocaust was chosen as one that would be very easy to debunk any of the crapola out there. A low bar for the students to clear, as it were, and in the process they would learn important history.

Ah well, maybe they can use the moon landing.

[Crunchy Frog]

10. Absolutely the wrong subject.

Too much potential for students to get the wrong idea that it actually is debatable. Too many victims and too many people still hurting.

If you want to get into that type of debate, a good subject would be the conspiracy theory that the Moon landing was faked. No victims there, and no practical harm if someone comes away from the debate believing the conspiracy theory.

[MH1]

11. True, and the moon landing was the one I came up with, too.

I absolutely agree that the Holocaust was the wrong topic. But I don't think people should be demonized for what was apparently an innocent, if stupid and insensitive, mistake. And what troubles me is that some headline-only readers get the idea that the school was teaching Holocaust denial ... or worse that it is somehow part of Common Core (which has its own problems but that isn't one of them).

[cali]

12. How about the civil war? world war I? world war 2? whether the roman empire existed.

fucking moronic is fucking moronic.

[LadyHawkAZ]

7. I think they should restrict debate to topics that are actually debatable

The fact that the Holocaust happened is just that: a fact. There is no room for debate.

[Behind the Aegis]

14. BINGO!

[Warren DeMontague]

15. Yeah. It's not like there's a shortage.

What's funny is if they really put a dubious fucking proposition up there, like "argue whether or not trickle-down economics actually helps poor people", the right wing would have a shitfit.

[NuclearDem]

13. In the case of the Holocaust

It's best to explain that it did happen, and to explain denial of it comes from Antisemitism and hate.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. I think they should have debated whether pedophile priests really molested all those boys.

And did the Massacre of Sand Creek really happen or was that just Native American propaganda?

And the Irish potato famine, when the UK was supposed to have continued exporting food from Ireland even as people were starving---maybe it is all a drunken bar tale invented by the Irish for sympathy.

If they work hard, they could train some pretty clever plaintiffs attorneys.