I think it's great that this school, in this area, was making a genuine effort to diversify and educate their children about the dangers of intolerance and hatred. There are legitimate Holocaust deniers out there in the world, a disturbing thought, and it's very important for us to educate the next generation about the horrors that these ELEVEN million people went through and did not survive.
I definitely see the draw to make the Holocaust the example with which you teach about intolerance. It's steeped in history and very well documented, thanks to the Germans. You also have this charismatic leader who actually tried to EXTERMINATE an entire race of people- systematically and with the support of his constituents. Hitler is clearly evil and the Holocaust is a distinct tale of good vs evil.
While I applaud this school for making a conscious effort to broaden their scope and limit their own prejudices, I think this movie highlighted where the work for this town should have really started. Intolerance didn't just occur 50 something years ago on a completely different continent and America isn't the champion of ending it. It happened here at that same time in our own camps, it sways in the trees in the summers in the South, and it waits for us in the line at airport security. Our own government makes its own laws with its own prejudices and we follow along.
The first issue I had with this project was the number. 6 million. 6. What about the other 5 million victims of Hitler's systematic extermination? Why don't they warrant a paper clip celebrating and remembering their lives? Now whoever watches this video will say that in the end, Whitwell did end up putting 11 million paper clips in their memorial, almost begrudgingly. For the gays and gypsies. And Catholics. While their tale doesn't seem quite as tragic as sewing a star on your shirt, it does have similar ending. Some 5 million endings. The people in Whitwell seem okay to talk about and celebrate the lives of the Jews that were lost but why not the others? Why not the homosexuals? Is that because they feel those deaths were justified? I honestly don't believe that. I bet though that talking about the treatment of homosexuals in that time would have these young children come to believe that homosexuals are also people who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. And that thought might carry over into their everyday life, say when it comes to voting for gay rights here in present day? Afterall, we are educating this children so that they can change the world. Lets make sure they change it into one that fits our current prejudices.
The second issue I had with this is why go so far away and so long ago for intolerance and hate when there's shining examples not too far from where you live. The answer to that is probably the simplest. It's easier to teach about the dangers of intolerance and hatred through the Holocaust because of the clear evillness of the whole ordeal. Hitler was evil and the Americans came in and liberated the people suffering in the camps. We are the heroes! Lets congratulate ourselves on being the world leader on leading the world in goodness and light! God bless the USA!
There may have been a hint of sarcasm in there, did you catch it? While here in the good ol U. S. of A, we didn't round up and murder 11 million people as part of genetic cleansing, but we did round up people who simply LOOKED to be of a certain race. (Fun fact: google how many people died in the Holocaust and then google how many people died in Japanese internment camps. You will get giant large numbers right at the top of the page for the Holocaust victims and there's not even a number mentioned on the Japanese internment camp wikipedia page) There's a clear gap in knowledge because we want to sweep our disgusting history under the rug. I'm guilty of this as well. I don't know how many camps there were here in the US, how many people were put in them, or even really read anything about them. But I've read several books on the Holocaust and have been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. as well as a concentration camp outside of Berlin (which does have a fascinating history of being a Soviet Camp after WWII was over. More info can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenhausen_concentration_camp).
What about an even more glaring part of history that they could have taught the children about oppression and intolerance: the Civil Rights movement in the 60's in the South, Jim Crow, the Civil War and all those fun little years in between. White America in recent years, I feel, has been moving towards this victimhood, the problems with being the oppressors and having to feel guilty all the time.
"Hey, that stuff happened in the past and we're like real sorry it happened and all but can we just forget about and move on? I mean it totally doesn't happen anymore, I mean black people get scholarships that I can't get. Imagine if we had a whites only scholarship- people would flip. It's reverse racism!!"(If I ever hear someone say that, I'm just going to straight punch them in their fucking face. Because they are so fucking dumb and deserve to be punched in their fucking face.)
I think the problem with teaching the children about the part of history that these adults actually took part in is how personal it could be. That it might show these teachers and administrators in a not so positive light, that these people may not actually think that ALL people are created equal. That the color of your skin does reflect the content of your character. I think that some of the benefits of doing a project that focuses on an intense and awkward part of Southern history is the growth that could come from it. This is a tangible issue that these kids face every day, why not impact them on that level? Why not change the way they view blacks in the south? Could educating the kids on the much more recent and relevant issue of the Civil Right movement challenge the kids to take that idea and apply it to other more current things happening, like gay rights, immigration reform, and racial profiling?
I do think it's important to teach our children about the Holocaust and I do appreciate the impact it had on the people of Whitwell's lives- these people were clearly touched and moved by the devastation of 6 million Jews. I hope it really did effect their assistant principal like he said, that he's going to strive to be less racist so maybe his children won't be too. That's definitely a step in the right direction.
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