California School District Under Fire for Holocaust-Denial Assignment

[wickerwoman]

64. +1

Yes, the school could have used a number of other topics to teach these skills and yes, the effectiveness of this assignment depends *a lot* on who is teaching it and the way it is handled, but I don't think there should be verboten topics, certainly for 13-14 year olds- they are old enough to be exposed to racism and fallacious arguments and to be walked through how to pick those kinds of arguments apart.

The advantage of using Holocaust denial is how obviously wrong the deniers are so it's an easy one to pick apart. Choosing a more subtle issue, like Hiroshima, is a much more difficult/advanced critical thinking assignment because there isn't actually a right or wrong answer.

On the other hand, they could have chosen flat earthers or people who support whale hunting or climate change deniers and gotten a similar effect.