What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Collective conceptions of the Holocaust 61 Figure 3.13 Descriptions of the Holocaust given by students in Years 7 to 9. Comparison between all students and those who had not been taught about the Holocaust (percentage of students) Action 100 80 Victims 60 Cause 40 20 Perpetrators Location Timeframe Scale ■ Years 7, 8, 9: All students ■ Years 7, 8, 9: Students not taught about the Holocaust www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
62 Collective conceptions of the Holocaust people with disabilities and those that students themselves identify as ‘Gypsies’ among those who had learned about the Holocaust reflect a relatively small shift in thinking, it also indicates a potential influence of schooling. Furthermore, none of the figures presented above can tell us anything about how much each group of students actually knew or understood in relation to the words and phrases used. It would also be a mistake to over emphasise a distinction between the notion of an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ of schools. The importance of wider sociopolitical framings has been stressed throughout this chapter and, of course, schools and schoolteachers do not exist independently of these. On the contrary, the boundaries between classrooms and popular culture are inherently porous and there are, of course, very significant relationships between formal systems of education and national policy frames. The way that contemporary British society positions its relationship with the Holocaust – and with the memory of the Holocaust, as described in Chapter 1 – is therefore of considerable importance, especially given the central role routinely awarded to education in ensuring that the ‘lessons’ of the Holocaust are ‘learned’. In this respect, it is helpful to note the small but potentially significant group of 25 students who, in response to survey question 30, described their understanding of the Holocaust primarily as an act of remembrance. Some appeared to interpret the term even more specifically as a discrete day, or ‘moment’, of commemoration or reflection: [The Holocaust is] the remembrance of the millions of people who died in the nazi camps for being different (Year 10 student). Holocaust is the day when the Jews remember all the other Jews who got killed by Adolf Hitler (Year 10 student). Remembrance day of the genocide of jews (Year 11 student). It was Hitler’s discrimination against Jews. It is now used as the name of the day we remember this (Year 7 student). It is where we have a moment where we remember the jews (Year 9 student). Holocaust is a day were we think back to what Hitler did to the jews (Year 10 student). Again, the number of students articulating understandings such as these was proportionately very small and, even in this small group, some appeared to have confused ‘the Holocaust’ with remembrance of the First or Second World Wars. However, their responses arguably illustrate a wider impact upon students’ thinking that stems from collective acts of commemoration, such as Holocaust Memorial Day, and the central role often awarded to schools within these. Returning to our theoretical framework of shared schemata and social representations – and more specifically to their plastic but resistant nature – Jean-Claude Abric suggests a dominant representation may change ‘if there is a radical threat to [its] organising structure’, what he refers to as its ‘nucleus’: Change in the meaning and values attached to the peripheral elements will only lead to superficial change, but a transformation in the nucleus will change the whole nature and structure of the representation itself (quoted in Augoustinos and Innes 1990: 227). If we return to look at Figure 3.13 and allow ourselves to imagine that the lines it charts offer a figurative tracing around precisely such a nucleus, it would appear that there is very little indication of transformation or change. Nor for that matter was there evidence of significant transformation across year groups as depicted in Figure 3.3; all students irrespective of age and prior educational encounter were most likely to prioritise named victims, perpetrators and actions in their descriptions and to award much less attention to when or where the Holocaust took place. There are at least two important implications of this. The first concerns the question of why the core content of students’ collective conceptions is consistently structured in such a manner in the first place. Here we need, once again, to consider wider discursive framings and critically reflect upon the symbolic work we – as a national society – most commonly ask the Holocaust to do. If, as already suggested in Chapter 1, our encounters with this history are typically conceived in terms of opportunity, if not obligation, to learn overarching ‘lessons from the past’, then it is easy – perhaps even necessary – to allow the Holocaust to become decoupled from a specific place and time. Offering a similar interpretation, Alexander (2003: 28) contends that, as a social representation, the Holocaust has become ‘freefloating rather than situated’, ‘universal rather than particular’, ‘a traumatic event for all of humankind’. The second implication regards the way forward for teaching and learning. If it were considered important to do so, an educational intervention could clearly emphasise particular key events and turning points or specifically try to expand students’ awareness of the Holocaust’s unfolding
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CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
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What do students know and understan
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iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
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vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
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viii Foreword by Professor Yehuda B
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2 Executive summary ■■ Many stu
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Olivia Hemingway, 2014
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8 Introduction ■■ What forms of
Page 21 and 22: 10 Introduction the fate of the Jew
Page 23 and 24: 12 Introduction two reasons here in
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Page 31 and 32: 20 Introduction ■■ The chapter
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Page 35 and 36: 24 Methodology Of particular note w
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204 Considerations and recommendati
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Appendix 1: The Survey 225 Appendix
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Appendix 1: The Survey 227 How do y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 229 Word qui
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Appendix 1: The Survey 231 Explorin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 233 Do you r
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Appendix 1: The Survey 235 42. Who
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Appendix 1: The Survey 237 The Nazi
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Appendix 1: The Survey 239 64. What
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Appendix 1: The Survey 241 71. If y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 243 Returnin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 245 87. Have
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Appendix 2: Attitudinal scales used
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Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
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Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
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Appendix 4: Schools that participat
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Appendix 5: Schools that participat
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Appendix 6: Multiple regression ana
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References 259 Assmann, A. (2010)
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References 261 Carr, E.H. (1964) Wh
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References 263 Emler, N. and Ohana,
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References 265 Howitt, D. and Crame
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References 267 Levstik, L.S. (2000)
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References 269 Resnick, L.B. (1989)
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References 271 Snyder, T. (2009)
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References 273 Yeager, E., Anderson
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Centre for Holocaust Education UCL
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What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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