What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Foreword by
Professor Yehuda Bauer
Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Avraham
Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem.
‘What do students
know and understand
about the Holocaust?’
is a tremendously
impressive piece of
most detailed research.
Not only did more
than 8,000 students,
aged 11-18, take
part in an extensive
national survey, but
an astounding 244
students were also interviewed in depth by the UCL
Centre for Holocaust Education. Significant findings
result from this great effort.
Some are surprising: the extent of the students’
positive evaluation of the necessity to study the
Holocaust is, to this commentator at least, very
encouraging. The adage about Muslim children being
opposed to dealing with the Holocaust appears to
be laid to rest – nothing of the kind, apparently, or
at least, if there is any opposition, it is very marginal
indeed. The same applies to children of non-English,
backgrounds. (A side comment may be that perhaps
this augurs much better for general integration than
the media would have us believe).
The questions that are asked about Britain’s
role regarding the Jews and the Holocaust are
extremely important, and one can derive a number of
conclusions from the answers – some are contained
in the report, and one might add others from the
material that is presented. It becomes clear that
the context of the war, and how society chooses
to remember Britain’s role in it, plays an important
part in the perceptions of the students; this means
that the youngsters, not only those with a British
background, but also those who come from families
that immigrated into Britain one, two, or perhaps
more generations ago, feel that they are part of a
history in which their families may not have played
any part. The report very rightly emphasises the
need to explain the real background, which of course
brings us back to the question of the war context
that is so essential in order to understand what
happened during the Holocaust. This means British
society examining not only the positive aspects of its
national memory, but also more difficult, problematic
and uncomfortable issues. To isolate the genocide
of the Jews from that context would be a mistake.
Teaching programmes should, I believe, be adjusted
to meet this challenge and I am heartened to note
that UCL Centre for Holocaust Education is already
taking up that task.
A conclusion one may draw from the material
– and one often overlooked in education, as well
as by policy makers – is that it illuminates the
crucial importance of the wider society’s view of
the Holocaust on young people’s perceptions.
So it is no good taking the easy path of blaming
teachers or students for young people’s limited
understanding. School can have only so much
influence; and teachers themselves, of course,
represent in many ways the social context in
which the Holocaust is understood, so unless they
have had the benefit of high quality professional
development in Holocaust education, the myths
and misconceptions prevalent in wider society can
often go unchallenged in the classroom.
Schools are burdened with a large part of this
task, but they are also hampered by the place the
Holocaust is given in the curriculum. The National
Curriculum, as is clearly stated in the report, includes
school instruction on the Holocaust chiefly at Key
Stage 3, the ages of 11 to 14. At this stage, there is
no formal public examination against which learning
is assessed; teachers have to cover the Holocaust
in history, but there is no stipulation regarding
how many lessons, what should be covered or –
even – what the Holocaust was. Later, it becomes
problematic, optional, and uncertain. One does
not need to be an expert in pedagogy in order to
understand that until the age of 15-16 at the earliest,