What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Recommendations

Info

Encountering representations of the Holocaust 75 Figure 4.2 Student responses to survey question 70, ‘Can you remember what year group you were in when you first learned about the Holocaust in school?’ (percentage of students) Percentage of students 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 28.5 Before year 7 16.8 Year 7 21.9 Year 8 23.2 Year 9 3.5 Year 10 or 11 0.6 Year 12 or 13 5.5 Don’t know Figure 4.3 Student responses to survey question 71, ‘If you have learned about the Holocaust in school, which subjects have you learned about it in?’ (percentage of students) Percentage of students 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 History Religious education English School assembly Citizenship or PSHE Drama Subject However, as was emphasised in Chapter 3, schools are not the only places in which young people encounter representations of the Holocaust. Of the 600+ students in Years 7 and 8 who did not think they had learned about the subject at school, approximately 74 per cent of Year 7s and 81 per cent of Year 8s were familiar with the term ‘Holocaust’ or with the history it denotes (figures are approximate here as only students who completed the survey electronically were asked if they recognised a short explanation of the term). It might then be argued that postponing formal taught content of the Holocaust until students are judged to have reached an appropriate maturity will do little to prevent – or ‘protect’ – younger students from encountering this difficult history. It is also instructive to examine the subject discipline in which the Holocaust is first introduced to students in a school context. Students who reported in the survey that they had already learned about the Holocaust at school were also asked to indicate the curriculum context in which this had taken place. As Figure 4.3 shows, 86.1 per cent of these students across all year groups had learned about the Holocaust in history, 37.5 per cent in religious education, 27.0 per cent in English and 26.2 per cent in school assemblies. This is broadly consistent with the findings of the 2009 teacher study in which teachers reported that history was, by some margin, the most common subject in which they taught about the Holocaust, followed by religious education, English, citizenship and PSHE (Pettigrew et al. 2009). Figure 4.4 investigates this pattern in a little more detail, presenting the responses to survey question 71 – about the subject in which they learned about the Holocaust – given by three separate groups of students in Years 7, 8 and 9 who each reported that they had learned about the Holocaust for the first time during their current academic year (so, the Year 7s learning in that year, the Year 8s in that year, etc). The figures suggest that it is only in Year 8 and beyond that history becomes the predominant subject in which teaching and learning about the Holocaust takes place. Indeed, in Year 7, only just over a third of the students who had learned about the Holocaust in school for the first time that year had done so in history. A majority had been introduced to the Holocaust in a subject other than history. Figure 4.4 also suggests that, within the school subject of English, teaching about the Holocaust is more likely www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
76 Encountering representations of the Holocaust Figure 4.4 Subjects in which students in Years 7, 8 and 9 say they learned about the Holocaust for the first time during that academic year (percentage of students) Percentage of students 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 History Religious education English Subject School assembly Citizenship or PSHE Drama ■ Year 7 (n=135) ■ Year 8 (n=245) ■ Year 9 (n=671) to take place in Year 8 than in either Year 7 or Year 9. Encounters with the Holocaust outside the classroom Students were also asked if they had heard about the Holocaust outside of school. Here 66.1 per cent who completed the survey suggested that they had, while only 24.1 percent said they had not and 9.8 per cent said they were unsure. As Figure 4.5 demonstrates, there was a very clear and steady increase by year group in the proportion of students who report that they learned about the Holocaust outside of formal schooling. As mentioned above, among students in Years 7 and 8 who did not think they had been taught about the Holocaust at school, approximately 74 per cent and 81 per cent, respectively, were nonetheless familiar with either the word itself or with the history it is used to describe. Interestingly, only 39.9 per cent of the same group of Year 7 students and 46.7 per cent of the Year 8 students reported that they had consciously identified learning about the Holocaust outside of school. This appears to suggest that a significant proportion of students in both year groups were familiar with the Holocaust without consciously having learned or even heard about it either inside or outside of school. This picture of wide, and in some cases subliminal, cultural exposure to the subject was reiterated in several focus-group interviews. Here, students regularly suggested that the Holocaust had become part of a common stock of widely shared knowledge and that some form of Holocaust consciousness was pervasive in everyday life: Stephanie: I think even if it’s not in the curriculum people still learn about it, it’s like just one of those things […] And there’s TV shows and things with Anne Frank and all these different… Shannon: People know without even realising that they’ve learned it. Stan: Yeah. Daisy: It’s like 9/11, you weren’t really told about, you just know that it happened. You don’t have a lesson on that or anything (Year 13, SE2). Laboni: I think it’s … it’s so mainstream nowadays with the Holocaust, isn’t it? Faiha: Yeah (Year 12, LON8, emphasis added). In the survey, students were also asked to identify whether or not they had ever read any books about the Holocaust or watched any films or television programmes related to this history. As Figures 4.6 and 4.7 show, while 38.2 per cent of all Year 7 students reported that they had read books about the subject, this was true of 61.7 per cent of those in Year 13. And while 54.8 per cent of all Year 7 students had seen films or television programmes about the Holocaust, in Year 13 this figure was 92.4 per cent. In answering these questions, students were not asked to differentiate between books read or films and television programmes watched within school as opposed to those they had watched or read elsewhere. However, Figures 4.8 and 4.9 detail the responses given to these same two questions among only those students who did not remember ever having learned about the Holocaust in school. From this data, it is possible to infer that at least 23.2 per cent of the students in Year 7 and 21.6 per cent of those in Year 8 had read books about the
Page 1 and 2:
CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
Page 3 and 4:
What do students know and understan
Page 5 and 6:
iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
Page 7 and 8:
vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
Page 9 and 10:
viii Foreword by Professor Yehuda B
Page 11 and 12:
x
Page 13 and 14:
2 Executive summary ■■ Many stu
Page 15 and 16:
4
Page 17 and 18:
Olivia Hemingway, 2014
Page 19 and 20:
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
Page 25 and 26:
14 Introduction Figure 1.1 Variatio
Page 27 and 28:
16 Introduction Holocaust are never
Page 29 and 30:
18 Introduction ■■ the inclusio
Page 31 and 32:
20 Introduction ■■ The chapter
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36: 24 Methodology Of particular note w
Page 37 and 38: 26 Methodology were asked questions
Page 39 and 40: 28 Methodology Vocabulary test We e
Page 41 and 42: 30 Methodology Table 2.2 Breakdown
Page 43 and 44: 32 Methodology Focus group details
Page 45 and 46: 34 Methodology How were the focus-g
Page 47 and 48: Olivia Hemingway, 2014
Page 49 and 50: 38 Collective conceptions of the Ho
Page 83 and 84: 72 Encountering representations of
Page 85: 74 Encountering representations of
Page 113 and 114: 102 Preface often socially construc
Page 115 and 116: Emile Holba, 2014
Page 117 and 118: 106 Who were the victims? students
Page 119 and 120: 108 Who were the victims? Figure 5.
Page 121 and 122: 110 Who were the victims? statement
Page 123 and 124: 112 Who were the victims? first ins
Page 125 and 126: 114 Who were the victims? shipped o
Page 127 and 128: 116 Who were the victims? With the
Page 129 and 130: 118 Who were the victims? the war,
Page 131 and 132: 120 Who were the victims? (Longeric
Page 133 and 134: 122 Who were the victims? many of J
Page 135 and 136: 124 Who were the victims? First Wor
Page 137 and 138:
126 Who were the victims? asking
Page 139 and 140:
128 Who were the victims? unending
Page 141 and 142:
130 Who were the victims? different
Page 143 and 144:
132 Who were the victims? the Nazi
Page 145 and 146:
134 Who were the victims? and Read
Page 147 and 148:
136 Who were the victims? many stud
Page 149 and 150:
Emile Holba, 2014
Page 151 and 152:
140 Who were the perpetrators and w
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159 and 160:
Page 161 and 162:
Page 163 and 164:
Page 165 and 166:
Page 167 and 168:
Page 169 and 170:
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Emile Holba, 2014
Page 183 and 184:
172 When and where did the Holocaus
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Page 189 and 190:
Page 191 and 192:
Page 193 and 194:
Page 195 and 196:
Page 197 and 198:
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
Page 203 and 204:
Page 205 and 206:
Page 207 and 208:
Page 209 and 210:
Page 211 and 212:
Page 213 and 214:
Page 215 and 216:
204 Considerations and recommendati
Page 217 and 218:
Page 219 and 220:
Page 221 and 222:
Page 223 and 224:
Page 225 and 226:
Page 227 and 228:
Page 229 and 230:
Page 231 and 232:
Page 233 and 234:
Page 236 and 237:
Appendix 1: The Survey 225 Appendix
Page 238 and 239:
Appendix 1: The Survey 227 How do y
Page 240 and 241:
Appendix 1: The Survey 229 Word qui
Page 242 and 243:
Appendix 1: The Survey 231 Explorin
Page 244 and 245:
Appendix 1: The Survey 233 Do you r
Page 246 and 247:
Appendix 1: The Survey 235 42. Who
Page 248 and 249:
Appendix 1: The Survey 237 The Nazi
Page 250 and 251:
Appendix 1: The Survey 239 64. What
Page 252 and 253:
Appendix 1: The Survey 241 71. If y
Page 254 and 255:
Appendix 1: The Survey 243 Returnin
Page 256 and 257:
Appendix 1: The Survey 245 87. Have
Page 258 and 259:
Appendix 2: Attitudinal scales used
Page 260 and 261:
Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
Page 262 and 263:
Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
Page 264 and 265:
Appendix 4: Schools that participat
Page 266 and 267:
Appendix 5: Schools that participat
Page 268 and 269:
Appendix 6: Multiple regression ana
Page 270 and 271:
References 259 Assmann, A. (2010)
Page 272 and 273:
References 261 Carr, E.H. (1964) Wh
Page 274 and 275:
References 263 Emler, N. and Ohana,
Page 276 and 277:
References 265 Howitt, D. and Crame
Page 278 and 279:
References 267 Levstik, L.S. (2000)
Page 280 and 281:
References 269 Resnick, L.B. (1989)
Page 282 and 283:
References 271 Snyder, T. (2009)
Page 284 and 285:
References 273 Yeager, E., Anderson
Page 286:
Centre for Holocaust Education UCL
show all

What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?