What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Encountering representations of the Holocaust
79
Figure 4.10 Student responses to survey question 75, ‘If you have read any books on the Holocaust,
please tick all those you have read’ (percentage by year group)
100
90
80
Percentage of students
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Year 7 Year 8 Year 9 Year 10 Year 11 Year 12 Year 13
■ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas ■ Hana’s Suitcase ■ The Diary of Anne Frank ■ School textbook ■ Other
What value do students place upon
learning about the Holocaust in school?
As described in Chapter 1, the teachers who took
part in the Centre’s 2009 study reported very high
levels of positivity and commitment towards teaching
about the Holocaust (Pettigrew et al. 2009). But
what of their students? How do they feel about
encountering this challenging subject within their
classrooms? If, as suggested by some student
comments, many perceive that ‘the Holocaust is
mainstream’ – already omnipresent throughout
public life – do they consider that its position within
the secondary school curriculum is justified? And if,
as this research and the earlier study with teachers
suggests, students are likely to encounter the subject
on multiple occasions throughout their school
career – potentially from primary school onwards –
is there any evidence that some at least might be
experiencing any form of ‘Holocaust fatigue’?
This notion of ‘fatigue’ is now relatively well
established and implies a weariness or indifference
resulting from possible overexposure to or saturation
by the Holocaust (Schweber 2006; Bensoussan
2013). But in recent years, some academics and a
number of public commentators have gone further in
suggesting that particular groups of students might
actively object or even be hostile to any form of curricular
exposure to the Holocaust (for example, Jikeli
2013, 2015; Rutland 2010; Short 2008, 2012, 2013).
In 2007, the Historical Association produced
an empirical report about teaching emotive and
controversial history (Historical Association 2007).
While the report itself was largely uncontentious, the
words of a small number of teachers at just two of
the schools visited by researchers were seized upon
in national and international media commentary to
support inflammatory and alarmist headlines such
as this one in the Daily Mail: ‘Teachers drop the
Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims’ (Clark 2007b).
Although the stories behind such headlines have
since been widely and resoundingly discredited (see,
for example, BBC 2008), discussion – and in some
quarters concern – around Muslim students’ level of
engagement with this history continues in the
present day.
We were clear that the research design should
not in any way imply tacit acceptance of this position
and, instead, wanted to interrogate the speculation
empirically. In this context it is useful to note that
over 1,000 students in the total survey sample self-
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust