What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Who were the victims?
many of Jews in all of Europe were killed during the
Holocaust?’ Figure 5.6 captures responses sorted
according to age.
At first glance these results appear positive:
after all, across the age range, the majority of all
respondents (52.9 per cent) selected the most
historically accurate choice. However, closer
inspection reveals a more complicated picture. For
example, of the 3,958 students who answered six
million, 1,161 indicated their response was either a
guess or made with some uncertainty. When added
to the fact that a third of all students also massively
underestimated the total number killed, these
findings take on considerable importance.
When filtered by age the mixed nature of these
results continues. For instance, that just 31.6 per
cent of Year 7 students (11 to 12 year olds) selected
the most historically accurate answer could at once
be said to be impressive and unsurprising, given that
the majority would not have studied the Holocaust in
history lessons at this age. The same might be said
of the 53.5 per cent of Year 9 students, since some
of these had not begun their studies at the time of
the survey.
However, the results among these younger
students are concerning when we recall that
students encounter the Holocaust in other subjects
outside of school history and may well participate in
whole-school initiatives such as Holocaust Memorial
Day commemorations. Moreover, so pervasive is
the Holocaust in Britain’s contemporary culture it
is reasonable to expect that more 13 to 14 year
olds would be familiar with the figure of six million,
regardless of whether the subject had been formally
studied. That said, the data suggested that even
among students who had theoretically learned about
the Holocaust (the 15 to 18 year olds) just under 20
per cent still believed that only one or two million
were murdered.
Focus groups with younger students (11 to 16
year olds) provided further illumination. Many visibly
struggled to provide a precise figure. Of those who
did, responses ranged from two million to six million,
although this latter figure was invariably delivered
with an inquisitive tone. More often than not,
students would speak vaguely in terms of ‘millions’
or simply ‘a lot’. On one occasion, a group of Year
10 history students disagreed over a member of
their group’s over-estimation of the total number of
Jews killed. Asked if they would put any key factual
information of a mind-map of ‘the Holocaust’, the
following exchange ensued:
Tom: Oh it is 60 million.
Daniel: Six million.
Tom: No, 60 million.
Daniel: There is definitely a six and a million in it.
Six million Jews.
Tom: No, but wasn’t it 60 million in total?
Daniel: Something like that like for the whole war.
Tom: But then not all the people who died in the
Second World War were like part of the Holocaust. (NE1)
To their credit, these students demonstrated an
uncommon attempt to position anti-Jewish policy
within the context of the war, although this example
is arguably most illustrative of the misunderstandings
which can occur when contextual understanding is
coupled with absent or insecure content knowledge.
This is an especially valuable reminder, given the
general finding that older students tend to have a
Figure 5.6 Student responses to survey question 46, ‘Approximately how many Jews in all of Europe were
killed during the Holocaust?’ (percentage by year group)
Percentage of students
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
25,000 100,000 1 million 2 million 6 million 20 million
■ Year 7 ■ Year 8 ■ Year 9 ■ Year 10 ■ Year 11 ■ Year 12 ■ Year 13