What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Considerations and recommendations
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and of British history. However, even the most critical
of these students did not appear to readily question
the notion that the history of the Holocaust ‘shows
the British in a positive light’.
Developing critical faculties and
confronting difficult and profound
questions
It is important to end this section by bringing together
some of the most vital issues in relation to teaching
and learning about the Holocaust. Throughout
this report emphasis has been placed on the
importance of improving students’ knowledge and
understanding of the Holocaust so they can begin
to make deeper and more profound meaning of it. In
this respect it is imperative that educators provide
opportunities for students to deal with some of the
most complex and difficult questions exposed by a
study of the Holocaust.
With this in mind, it is worth contemplating the
suggestion made by Zygmunt Bauman (1989: 152)
that ‘the most frightening news brought about the
Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators
was not the likelihood that “this” could be done to
us, but the idea that we could do it’. Here, Bauman
points towards an educational necessity: to teach
and learn about the Holocaust in ways which
sensitively and responsibly support students in
confronting dark, stark, challenging realities.
Not only do ‘we live today in a world which
contains a holocaust as a possibility’ (Bauman 2000:
3), but we cannot escape what Bauman (2000: 11)
calls the ‘most terrifying and still most topical aspect
of the “Holocaust experience”’ – namely:
that in our society, people who are neither morally
corrupt nor prejudiced may still participate with
vigour and dedication in the destruction of targeted
categories of human beings, and that their
participation does not call for the mobilization of
their moral or any other convictions.
Facing these truths is no easy task. It requires
students to effectively ‘look’ at what Lawrence
Langer (1995a: 3) calls the ‘naked and ugly
face’ of the ‘disaster’. Yet, however difficult and
unpalatable such an exercise may be, if we are to
better understand how and why genocide happens,
it is unavoidable. To do so requires thoughtful
pedagogy, founded on the principles of authentic
learning and underwritten by a rejection of presentist,
instrumentalised approaches to history.
Developing students’ critical faculties must also
lie at the heart of any such endeavour. Broadening
and deepening students’ substantive knowledge
is clearly central to realising this, as is the
enhancement of relevant conceptual frameworks.
However, both advances must be coupled with
helping students to think more purposefully
and profoundly about the nature of knowledge.
Enhancing young people’s metacognitive skills
in this way – enabling them to understand how
they ‘know’ what they know – becomes only more
crucial as the Holocaust recedes further from lived
experience and students become increasingly
reliant on variously mediated accounts. It could
also provide an important basis from which
students might be better able to determine
how best to interpret and derive meaning from
multiple forms of representation, including popular
fictionalised accounts.
Critical thinking of the kind outlined here is
paramount if teaching and learning about the
Holocaust are to be student-centred. Since this
approach is grounded in enquiry, it seeks to cultivate
an analytical approach within students – one which
they can apply to all and any sources they encounter,
whether historical or contemporary. This requires
skilful teaching aimed at responding to and facilitating
student learning, but also supporting the development
of their emotional literacy.
Educational strategies that work towards these
objectives do not seek to use the Holocaust as a
vehicle to achieve social or moral aims. Instead, they:
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focus on ensuring students’ knowledge and
understanding takes better account of the
complexities of that genocide
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seek to aid young people in becoming reflective
learners, able to contemplate the challenges
posed by the Holocaust with independent thought
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aim at ensuring students acquire the levels of
reflexivity necessary to act on the unsettling
ramifications that the Holocaust has for humanity.
The need for an approach to Holocaust education
that is reconnected to teaching and learning
in these ways is well illustrated throughout this
research report. In response, the UCL Centre for
Holocaust Education has produced a series of
programmes and resources that help teachers and
their students address many of the issues raised
here. The Centre’s approach places emphasis on
the importance of robust content knowledge, key
conceptual frameworks, age-appropriate resources,
pedagogical innovation and active, thought-provoking
enquiry. Above all it seeks to confront the myths
and misconceptions so dominant in our culture
and compel teachers and students to engage in
a meaningful and profound understanding of the
Holocaust.
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust