Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
By Jason Stanley
Reviewed by Hank Bitten, NJCSS Executive Director
“Wars are won by teachers.” Vladimir Putin
This quote published in the Washington Post on May 7, 2024 is the opening statement in Chapter 1 of Erasing History. It is a powerful statement and thesis for this book and a compelling reason for teachers to read the arguments presented by Jason Stanley, Yale University Professor of Philosophy. There are numerous examples in this book explaining the biased perspective of American history regarding Black Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, women, children, etc. and there are examples of how history has been erased in Kenya, Palestine, India, China, and Ukraine.
Every teacher of U.S. history teaches the different views of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois to assimilate into American society at the turn of the 20th century. However, the perspective presented by Jason Stanley offers students in our classes the opportunity for a critical debate regarding two different paths towards assimilation.
“In his public writings, Washington urged Black Americans to prioritize industrial education over political education, and thus to place greater emphasis on their productive potential as workers than on their identity as democratic citizens. As Du Bois saw it, this approach served white supremacy. He counseled Black American citizens instead to seek a liberal education, whose purpose was not only to elevate the soul but also to give them skills to democratically advance their own interests.” (page 39)
Some societies and governments favor a part of their population as the dominant or protected class and discount or “erase” the contributions of other people in their state. The technological advances of artificial intelligence present new challenges for teachers as history can easily be revised from quoting textbooks, historical papers, and extremist views from the past and make them appear as valid scholarship. The increasing popularity of PraegerU is an example of how school districts, Departments of Education, and individual teachers are accepting the information and lessons provided by non-academic institutions. Teachers have a unique responsibility and position because they are trusted by students and what they say is transformed from sight and sound to memory.
Teachers will find the historiography and analysis of the concepts of nationalism, American exceptionalism, and colonialism to be helpful for the development of lesson plans in both U.S. history and world history. It is less about ‘erasing’ history than changing history or emphasizing certain historical themes while ignoring others. Curriculum designers and teachers have both power and responsibility in how lessons are structured, implemented, and assessed. One example from the book is including the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and ignoring his many contributions in the civil rights movement.
This is an important debate regarding assimilation in a society with a dominant class. A current example is the debate of how the working class earning an hourly wage without benefits can assimilate into the middle class. Is the best way to address this through subsidized education, new tax policies, or paying a living wage?
Teachers must have a strong content background in the westward movement, labor, Reconstruction, civil rights, Ukraine, Palestine, etc. to be aware of what is missing in the sources and resources they are using with students. The example below provides different points of view on the 1932-33 engineered famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine.
“The most significant of these omissions pertains to Holodomor a genocide of the Ukrainian people, in which millions of Ukrainian peasants starved to death after Stalin demanded draconian requisitions of grain from them, knowing full well that this would have devastating consequences. In Ukrainian and Russian, the term “Holodomor” consists of two parts: “famine” and “to kill” or “make someone suffer” – the closest translation is essentially “someone making others starve intentionally.” Importantly, although the word “Holodomor” and the tragedy it represents are well known throughout both countries, Russian textbooks describe the event using the generic term for “famine,” implying that Holodomor was merely a bureaucratic accident, and one that affected all of the USSR equally. In Ukrainian textbooks, it is represented as a famine that Stalin inflicted specifically upon the Ukrainians, which is considerably closer to the truth.”(pages 67-68)
Fascism is not taught is most high schools and college courses may not have provided this instruction for teachers. Fascism, socialism, Marxism, communism, and Naziism are critical movements in world history and they are complicated to teach because the are not monolithic. Professor Stanley provides five major themes that are part of a fascist education: (page 78)
National greatness
National purity
National innocence
Strict gender roles
Vilification of the left
The strategy that wins the support of people is often fear and patriotism. In the United States, the theme of national greatness is most visible with “Make America Great Again” and defining the United States as the greatest nation or what is defined as American exceptionalism. However, associating crime, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, etc. with a specific demographic group is part of the fascist goal of national purity. In Germany, it was the Aryan population. In the United States it is critical race theory, structural racism, and making white Americans feel guilty. We see the theme of strict gender roles in the directives to teach traditional roles of women and banning references to the contributions of the LGBTQ persons. The placing of blame for everything on a past president or a specific political party is another effective strategy. Teachers should be aware of these five signs and why populations embrace it.
President Trump delivered a speech in September 2020 when he introduced the White House Conference on American History. Particularly, in the 250th anniversary year of the signing of the declaration of Independence, teachers need to be aware of how President Trump understands the teaching of patriotic history.
“Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are citizen of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.” (page 81)
Erasing History dedicates three chapters to the importance of education in both preventing and promoting authoritarian rulers or advocating against democracy and for authoritarianism. Teachers of social studies, history, and literature have a responsibility to recognize bias and ignorance and to select the sources and perspectives that lead to an understanding of the American values of equality, liberty, and the rule of law.
“The dismantling of public education is backed by oligarchs and business elites alike, who see in democracy a threat to their power, and in the taxes required for public goods a threat to their wealth. Public schools are the foundational democratic public good. It is therefore perfectly logical that those who are opposed to democracy, including fascist and fascist-leaning movements, would join forces with right-wing libertarians in undermining the institution of public education entirely.” (pages 121,122)
The movement for school vouchers, criticisms of curriculum, the attack on the 1619 Project, and the emphasis on America’s greatness contribute to distrust about public schools and confuses parents.
“The goal of anti-education is not only to render a population ignorant of the nation’s history and problems but also to fracture those citizens into a multitude of different groups with no possibility of mutual understanding, and hence no possibility of mass unified action. As a consequence, anti-education renders a population apathetic – leaving the task of running the country to others, be they autocrats, plutocrats, or theocrats.” (page 133)
I found Professor Stanley’s analysis of classical education to be exceptional. The extreme right and the extreme left (and those in between) support the teaching of Greek and Roman civilizations. What I found interesting is how each side selects the leaders and documents that support their perspective of government. For example, Pericles Funeral Oration describes Athenian democracy:
“Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life fall to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition….We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing…while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.” (page 143)
While the above speech favors democracy, others look to Plato as evidence of a strong ruler with a clear authoritarian philosophy. The Greeks and Romans supported gender and racial superiority, owned slaves, favored landowners and intellectuals, and had colonies. These examples support a fascist ideology. Teachers have the responsibility to teach historical context, provide the reasons for social changes, help students to analyze how freedom is related to continuity and change over time, and an understanding of equality, reason, liberty, and power. Concepts we thought had clear definitions have become complicated.
There are more compelling insights in this book than I can comment on in a book review. Teachers of all subjects should read this book, but in particular history, social studies, and teachers of literature. Pre-service teachers also need to read and discuss this book. Let me conclude with these observations:
Critical thinking is essential.
Understanding a point of view and historical perspective are essential.
The current movement away from democracy has been part of our American history for a long time. We see it in the separate but equal policy on race, segregation laws, imperialism, xenophobia, criticisms of the New Deal, Brown v. Board of Education decision, McCarthyism, civil rights protests, Nixon’s imperial presidency, supply-side economics, and in the reaction to the decline of the United States as a world power.
Democracy ended in Athens, and in the Roman Republic. We need to understand how and why this happened.
As a teacher of history and/or social studies, you are on the front line and can expect to be criticized! Our responsibility as teachers is to include the experiences and contributions of all people – especially women, children, immigrants, people of different faiths, Black and Native Americans, laborers, individuals with disabilities, individuals who are LGBTQ, etc. Teaching history includes compassion, empathy, struggles, contributions, and the untold stories that you will discover. Erasing History is about forgotten and neglected history.
Award-winning author Laurie Lawlor’s full-color narrative nonfiction explores how this monumental, 363-mile canal was built across a daunting upstate New York landscape at a time when America had no trained engineers, no idea how to make water-proof concrete, no modern mechanical tools, and no reliable source of workers.
Many Voices takes a deep dive into how canal construction altered the environment and uprooted the Haudenosaunee from their long-standing homeland in New York.
Linking the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, the Erie Canal boosted the global economic status of New York City, expanded Westward settlement deep inside America’s farming heartland, and spiked growth in cities as varied as Chicago, Milwaukee, Toledo, Rochester, Duluth, and Toronto.
Just as today’s Internet has created a “superhighway” of purchasing possibilities and an array of political, social, cultural, and religious ideas from around the globe, the Erie Canal propelled nationwide trade and a network of new ideas — everything from abolition of slavery to promoting women’s right to vote .
Many Voices: Building Erie, the Canal that Changed America includes more than ninety photos, maps, and artwork, detailed timeline, suggestions for visiting today’s canal, complete bibliography, endnotes, and index. The book has been listed as aJunior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.
What did Sojourner Truth really say at theWoman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 28, 1851?
Historical Mystery: Read these two accounts of Truth’s speech and analyze their reliability* using the sourcing form. Then answer the question: Did Sojourner Truth really utter the famous phrase: “Ar’n’t I a woman?”
**Reliable: Historians use “reliable” to mean that a source is the most accurate or honest depiction or account of something from the past.
Version 1, written by Reporter, Marius Robinson, for Salem Anti-Slavery Bugle in June 21, 1851:
One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the Convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gestures, and listened to her strong and truthful tones…May I say a few words? Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded: “I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now…The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights give it to her and you will feel better…But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.”
Version 2, written April 23, 1863 for the New York Independent by Frances Dana Gage, who had presided over the convention:
“Well, chillen, whar dar’s so much racket dar must be som’ting out o’ kilter. I tink dat, ‘twixt the niggers of de South and de women at de Norf, all a-talking ‘bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon…Dat man over dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches…Nobody eber helps me into carriages or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place;” and, raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked, “And ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm,” and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing its tremendous muscular power, “I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man can head me—and ar’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man, (when I could get it,) and bear de lash as well—and ar’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen chillen and seen ‘em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ar’n’t I a woman?”
Version 1
Version 2
What is the document?
Context:
What event is it describing and when did that event take place?
When was the account written?
Text:
How are these two accounts similar (facts, tone, etc.)?
How are they different?
Subtext:
Who wrote the document?
Are there any clues about who the author was?
Based on your comparison of the sources, what do you think the author’s purposes might have been?
What more do you wish you knew so that you could determine which source is most reliable?
Analysis:Did Sojourner Truth really utter the famous phrase: “Ar’n’t I a woman?” Explain your answer.
History of America’s Immigration: The Background to Today’s Border and Asylum Crises
Dr. Harry Stein
Defining American: The Bureau of Naturalization’s Attempt to Standardize Citizenship Education and Inculcate ‘the Soul of America’ in Immigrants during World War 1
In this wood engraving caricaturing the Chinese Exclusion Act, a well-dress Chinese man embodying “Order” and “Industry” sits outside the Golden Gate of Liberty. The sign to his right declares “Communists, Nihilist, Socialist, Fenian & Hoodlum Welcome but no Admittance to Chinamen.”
Four Eras of U.S. Immigration History
The following is a description with vocabulary for each era. Following the four eras is a collection of data that students can use to learn more about each time period. In each era examine who came to the United States, why, and how did government policy favored or discouraged immigration.
Era #1: Populating the Continent-Colonial to 1875
Authority was with individual states, not the Federal Government. States used what was then called “state police power” to set and enforce rules. States set rules stopping the admission of convicts, free Blacks, paupers, diseased, sick or disabled persons or passengers on ships who tried to enter without the captain posting a bond on their behalf. No free person whether black, mulatto, or colored from a Caribbean country, especially Haiti, could enter some states. Haitian seamen on a ship entering Charleston, S.C., could not leave the ship. These powers were confirmed by a Supreme Court decision (Miln Decision, 1837) and the Passenger Cases decision (1849) approved state laws on bonding and taxing incoming passengers. The 1830 Indian Removal Act was another example of state police power. The movement of free Blacks within Missouri and Ohio was also regulated.
There were also federal laws in 1793, 1842 (Prigg decision), and 1850 concerning the return of runaway slaves to their owners. Legislation in 1809 prevented the importing of additional slaves from west Africa. In 1817 the Liberia colony was established and federally funded for free Black who wished to return to Africa. 13,000 did.
Federal laws permitting or excluding contract labor from China and Europe were enacted. In 1862 the Coolie importation from China was stopped under the logic that since slavery was illegal in northern states and Coolies were slaves therefore, they could not get into the USA. In 1867 contract labor was permitted from Europe. In conclusion, high, consistent demand for labor led to favorable State and federal immigration policies.
Northern European Migration from Ireland, UK, Germany, Netherlands
Era #2: Opening and Closing the Immigration Doors, 1875 – 1924
During this era, the power to legislate and enforce laws came totally to the national government. Immigration power resided in the Federal government’s ability to control commerce, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and the theory of national sovereignty critical for national security through border control. Between 1871 and 1914, 23.5 million Europeans entered. Eastern and southern Europeans joined those from Ireland, the U.K. and northern Europe. 1.7 million entered in 1907.
The country was industrializing and urbanizing. Labor demand was high. But gradually laws were established excluding some and regulating the entry of others. Many Americans wanted more immigration. Other Americans were critical of who were admitted. By 1924 the doors were almost closed to many Jews, Catholics, Hindus, and Chinese. See the Page Act (1875) and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). Research the Foran Act (1885) and the Dillingham Commission (1911).
A 1917 law aimed at South Asians, Indians, who settled in California and Washington and spoke out against British control of their homeland. This was part of a broader American nativist movement merging with white supremacy ideology, anti-communism and earlier opposition to immigrants with physical or mental disabilities. A literacy test was passed. A “barred” zone was created stopping all Asian entry except from the Philippines and Japan, already excluded by an informal 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” Mexicans were turned into temporary labor migrants. There was also the fear that if the US entered the League of Nations this could endanger national security. In 1920, 16% of the US population was foreign born. Bad foreigners = crime, immorality, and labor conflict.
A 1921 law closed loopholes in the 1917 law and established the first national origin quotas. This law fused beliefs about eugenics, racial bigotry, anti-disabilities prejudice, mixed racial marriages into a category of undesirable immigrant groups. The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) created quotas by ethnic origin. The Border Patrol created an illegal entry called a misdemeanor and felony (1929) if done twice.
The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) confined immigration mainly to northern Europe. National quotas were based on ethnic origins of the 1890 census. Through the Depression of the 1930s and World War II, immigration was severely curtailed. Following World War II, the law remained intact and parallel laws dealing with World War II refugees were created that bypassed but did not displace the 1925 Law.
In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act permitting European refugees to enter. In 1948 the law was amended permitting refugees from camps in western Germany who could not return to their former homes in Poland and the USSR to enter the USA. 332,000 arrived including 141,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors between June 1948 and December 1951.
Era #4: Broader Opening of the Doors, 1965 – Present
The 1925 law was replaced by the Hart/Cellar Act of 1965. Racial and ethnic quotas were eliminated. Numerical quotas were retained. Entrance was open to people from anywhere. The law favored family unification, preference for specific occupations, and a new side variety of visas. In 1950, the USA was 90% white with a European origin. By 2000, 50% of new immigrants were from Latin America and 27% from Asia. In 2020, the USA population was 69% European white. This law changed the racial composition and, some say, the national identity of the USA. The acrid, hot odor of 1924 bigotry and nativism returned magnified and channeled through social media. By 2020, some Americans were talking of white racial suicide and replacement theory. Politicians pointed to the loss of border control. The 9/11 Attack on America led to Islamophobia and Muslin immigration bans. Many Americans supported legal immigration and the use of work visas for both unskilled and professional work. Most wanted to stop migration but the government system to judge asylum claims became broken. Since May 2022, a 1.85 million undocumented refugees have been permitted to remain in the country following a favorable “credible fear” claim. By September 2022, 86,815 immigrants were deported and 1.7 million were approved to stay. 200,149 immigrants came to New York City.
More Data:
From February 2021 to September 2023, Border Patrol arrested 6 million migrants who crossed the border illegally.
1.7 million immigrants were released to stay in the USA.
There were about 1,500 immigration judges and asylum officers available to decide these immigrant cases.
People apply for asylum at the border or if they are caught illegally in the country or overstay a visa. They have up to one year to apply. 800,000 applied in 2022.
It could cost $2 billion to hire more staff to eliminate the 2 million backlog of cases.
In some cities, it will take up to ten years to hear a case.
1.3 million have been told they must leave the USA. They have 90 days to do so.
Many do not leave and they disappear. There is no national ID in the United States to identify them.
Some marry Americans and become parents of children who are natural born citizens.
All of this data is used by politicians running for federal office. Some promise to clear them ‘out.’ How they will do this is not clear.
Many local officials run to Washington, D.C., seeking money to care for migrants in their cities. There is a deadlock in Washington, D.C. Many do not want to tax the many to pay for the foreign immigrants. The memory of 1924 is in the air and a chaotic border has become a drug channel.
Our laws were not designed to deal with BOTH old and new reasons for migrations. The latest reasons are climate change, corruption in many countries, and the development of the smartphone, which immediately connected migrants with friends already in the USA who send money to assist migrants in their journey. Migration used to be single men seeking jobs who would then return home. Now, it is entire families seeking a new life in the USA. Many Americans do not know what to make of it and they will vote their hopes and fears.
Teaching about the Indigenous Population of North America
Lessons by Alexandria Neely, Nicholas Zimmerman, and April Francis-Taylor
This package includes four lesson ideas with activity sheets that can be adapted for middle or high school.
The first lesson examines factors that influenced the migration and settlement of indigenous peoples across North America and different theories explaining the path of migration. The second lesson examines governance of different indigenous nations and their interaction with neighboring peoples. It also introduces the impact of geography on history and culture. Lesson three discusses the arrival of Norse Vikings and their interaction with the Mi’kmaq. Lesson four engages students in a discussion of “discovery” by European explorers.
LESSON 1: What factors influenced the migration and settlement of indigenous peoples across North America?
This lesson will be the first among three lessons covering the migration of early humans to the Americas, and their subsequent interactions between neighboring tribes and early-Europeans. Students will explore different theories about early human migration, how early humans arrived in the Americas, where they settled, and the impact of geography on their settlement and lifestyle patterns. It was believed that 13,000 years ago, early-humans traveled to the America’s via the Bering Land Bridge, a now-submerged geographical landmark that connected Northeastern Asia with Northwestern Alaska. However, in recent decades, researchers have discovered the remains of early humans in the Americas dating to 16,000 years ago possibly before access via the Bering Land Bridge was available. After collaborative research on migration theories, students will write an argumentative essay illustrating their stance on which theory best explains the evidence. Students will locate difficult vocabulary contained within the research articles and define terms. Enduring issues and unifying themes include the Impact of Environment on Humans; Population Growth; Impact of Technology.
CONTENT VOCABULARY:
Homo sapiens: Modern humans
Bering Land Bridge: Land that connected Asia and Alaska that was submerged when glaciers melted and sea levels rose.
Clovis people: Possible first human s to migrate from Asia to the Americas.
Clovis-First Theory: Belief that no humans lived in the Americas prior to approximately 13,000 years ago.
Artifact: Items made by human beings that provide clues to the past.
Migration: Movement of people across boundaries to new areas.
A. “The Kennewick Man”: On July 28, 1996, two men at Columbia Park in Kennewick, Washington, accidentally found part of a human skull on the bottom of the Columbia River, about ten feet from shore. Later searches revealed a nearly complete, ancient skeleton, now known as “The Ancient One” or “Kennewick Man.” Public interest, debate, and controversy began when independent archaeologist Dr. James Chatters, working on contract with the Benton County coroner, thought that the bones might not be Native American. He sent a piece of bone to a laboratory to be dated. The results indicated an age older than 9,000 years, making The Ancient One among the oldest and most complete skeletons found in North America. Subsequent research on the bones indicated that the skeleton is between 8,400–8,690 years old.
Questions
1. Who is the Kennewick Man?
2. Why is the discovery of the Kennewick Man significant?
3. In your opinion, how did Kennewick Man arrive in North America?
B. On the timeline of history, the Clovis people appeared out of nowhere and disappeared in the blink of an eye. Archaeologists revealed that the Clovis had a pretty short existence: They first appeared in America around 9,200 B.C. and vanished 500 years later, around 8,700 B.C. So where did the Clovis come from and where did they go? Intense investigation into clues the Clovis left behind was launched as more artifacts were discovered. The Clovis-First Theory proposes that these people arrived in North America, from Siberia, where hunter-gatherer tribes lived.
(Source: Were the Clovis the first Americans? | HowStuffWorks)
Questions
1. According to the text, how long were the Clovis people present in North America?
2. In your opinion, why did the Clovis people migrate to North America?
C. Native Americans — like all humans—are descendants of the first humans, who lived and evolved over millennia in Africa. Though it is unclear when some of the first humans left the continent, evidence suggests that their migration out of Africa occurred approximately 200,000 years ago, gradually populating parts of the middle east, Europe and Asia. The arrival of humans into North America is believed to have occurred between 45,000 to 25,000 ago, the same time other groups of humans migrated into new territories including Australia and East Asian Pacific islands. We can’t be sure of the exact reasons humans first migrated off of the African continent, but it is likely the reason was a depletion of resources like food in their regions and competition for those resources.
(Source: Homo sapiens & early human migration (article) | Khan Academy.)
Questions
1. When does the author of this article claim humans began migrating to North America?
2. Why did humans migrate out of Africa and across the globe?
3. Using the map, how do you think humans migrate to North America?
D. Beginning in the early 1800s, American scientists and naturalists began to speculate about the ways early humans arrived in the Americas. However, it wasn’t until the mid-1920s that scientists determined that towards the end of the Ice Age, the Earth experienced a long period of frigid [below-freezing] conditions. Glaciers formed in the northern region of the Earth. As more of the Earth’s water got locked up in the glaciers, sea levels dropped. In some areas it dropped up to 300 feet. The land beneath the Bering Strait, a waterway separating Asia and North America was exposed and a flat grassy treeless plain emerged. This exposed land is known as the Bering Land Bridge.
Questions
1. What impact do you think the glaciers had on early human migrations?
2. In your opinion, do you think that the Bering Land Bridge was the only way early humans could travel to the Americas?
E. Student teams will examine two other proposed explanations for human migration into North America.
The Pacific Coast Migration Model is a theory concerning the original colonization of the Americas that proposes that people entering the continents followed the Pacific coastline, hunter-gatherer-fishers traveling in boats or along the shoreline and subsisting primarily on marine resources.
The Solutrean hypothesis suggests that Neolithic fishermen and hunters from Northern Europe sailed the Atlantic in tiny boats made of animal skins 18,000 years ago and colonized the eastern United States.
Exit Ticket: What factors enabled early humans to migrate and settle in regions across North America?
LESSON 2. What types of interactions did Native Americans have with neighboring communities? Indigenous tribes in America formed complex, successful societies like the Iroquois Confederacy, and created governing structures and agreements such as the Great Law of Peace. Depending on their location, different indigenous tribes had vastly different power structures, houses, foods, and lifestyles. Students will determine central ideas; provide an accurate summary of the purpose and definition of the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederacy. Enduring issues and unifying themesincludeImpact of Environment on Humans and Power.
CONTENT VOCABULARY:
Sedentary: the practice of living in one place for a long time.
Nomadic: the movement of a person or people from one place in order to settle in another.
Iroquois Confederacy: Confederation of six tribes across upper New York that played a major role in the struggle between the French and British for control over North America.
COMPELLING QUESTIONS:
Why do you think is it important to learn about different tribes from all over what is now the United States?
Why do you think the Founding Fathers only adopted some aspects of the Great Law of Peace into their writings? Which parts did they leave out? Why do you think they did?
How does geography currently affect the way we live? How do you think it could affect us in the future?
Map of Indigenous people in the Territorial United States
Questions
Which groups on the map have you heard of before? What do you know about them?
Which groups are closest to where you live?
How could their location influence their way of life? Give examples.
How do you think these groups of people could have interacted with each other?
Iroquois Confederacy
a. “The Peacemaker story of Iroquois tradition credits the formation of the confederacy, between 1570 and 1600, to Dekanawidah (the Peacemaker), born a Huron, who is said to have persuaded Hiawatha, an Onondaga living among Mohawks, to advance “peace, civil authority, righteousness, and the great law” as sanctions for confederation. Cemented mainly by their desire to stand together against invasion, the tribes united in a common council composed of clan and village chiefs; each tribe had one vote, and unanimity was required for decisions. Under the Great Law of Peace (Gayanesshagowa), the joint jurisdiction of 50 peace chiefs, known as sachems, or hodiyahnehsonh, embraced all civil affairs at the intertribal level.”
b. “The Iroquois Confederacy established that each nation should handle their own affairs. The Great Law of Peace is a unique representational form of government, with the people in the clans having say in what information is passed upward.” (Source: Britannica)
Questions
What is the Iroquois Confederacy?
What would the benefits of a confederacy be?
What is the primary structure of the Great Law of Peace?
What historical documents remind you of the Great Law of Peace? What documents do you think could have been influenced by the Great Law of Peace?
C. Great Law of Peace
The Great Law of Peace are “teachings [that] emphasized the power of Reason, not force, to assure the three principles of the Great Law: Righteousness, Justice, and Health.” It also includes “instructions on how to treat others, directs them on how to maintain a democratic society, and expresses how Reason must prevail in order to preserve peace.” (Source: Haudenosaunee Guide for Educators)
Selected components:
16. If the conditions which arise at any future time call for an addition to or change of this law, the case shall be carefully considered and if a new beam [law] seems necessary or beneficial, the proposed change shall be voted upon and if adopted it shall be called, “Added to the Rafter.”
24. The chiefs of the League of Five Nations shall be mentors of the people for all time. The thickness of their skins shall be seven spans, which is to say that they shall be proof against anger, offensive action and criticism. Their hearts shall be full of peace and good will and their minds filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the league. With endless patience, they shall carry out their duty. Their firmness shall be tempered with a tenderness for their people.
92. If a nation, part of a nation, or more than one nation within the Five Nations should in any way endeavor [try] to destroy the Great Peace by neglect or violating its laws and resolve to dissolve the Confederacy such a nation or such nations shall be deemed guilty of treason and called enemies of the Confederacy and the Great Peace.
93. Whenever a specially important matter or a great emergency is presented before the Confederate Council and the nature of the matter affects the entire body of Five Nations threatening their utter [complete] ruin, then the Lords of the Confederacy must submit the matter to the decision of their people and the decision of the people shall affect the decision of the Confederate Council. This decision shall be a confirmation of the voice of the people.
94. The men of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning in readiness for a council of the clan. When it seems necessary for a council to be held to discuss the welfare of the clans, then the men may gather the fire. This council shall have the same rights as the council of the women.
95. The women of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning in readiness for a council of the clan. When in their opinion it seems necessary for the interest of the people they shall hold a council and their decision and recommendation shall be introduced before the Council of Lords by the War Chief for its consideration. (Source)
Questions
What do these sections tell you about the values of the Iroquois Confederacy?
How does the Great Law of Peace differentiate from more modern United States’ government documents?
What does the Great Law of Peace have in common with the ideals of more modern government?
D. Group Activity: Each group will be working on a separate area of what is now America. The groups are Plains, Northeast, Southwest, and Eastern Woodlands. The groups will look at/research images and readings and answer the sheets that go along with them. They will then participate in a “jigsaw” and fill out the rest of their charts using information from other groups representatives. On each sheet there will be a section at the top where they will write the definitions of nomadic and sedentary, this will be provided by the teacher (see Appendix A).
Plains Indians Information Sheet
“Many people think of the Plains Indians as people who traveled from place to place to find food and basic supplies. Only some of the tribes in this area lived that way. There were more than 30 different tribes who lived in the Great Plains. Like the Europeans who came to America from different countries, these tribes all had their own language, religious beliefs, customs and ways of life.”
“The Plains Indians who did travel constantly to find food hunted large animals such as bison (buffalo), deer and elk. They also gathered wild fruits, vegetables and grains on the prairie. They lived in tipis, and used horses for hunting, fighting and carrying their goods when they moved. Other tribes were farmers, who lived in one place and raised crops. They usually lived in river valleys where the soil was good.” (Source)
“Most Indigenous societies of the Great Plains practiced some form of hereditary chieftainship and recognized a head chief. In theory, the head chief presided over a council composed of war chiefs, headmen, warriors, and holy men. In practice, however, charismatic, self-made war-party
leaders often exercised the most significant authority, especially in times of crisis.” (Source)
Northeast Indians Information Sheet
The most elaborate and powerful political organization in the Northeast was that of the Iroquois Confederacy. A loose coalition of tribes, it originally comprised the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Later the Tuscarora joined as well. Indigenous traditions hold that the league was formed as a result of the efforts of the leaders Dekanawida and Hiawatha, probably during the 15th or the 16th century.”
“The Northeast culture area comprises a mosaic of temperate forests, meadows, wetlands, and waterways. The traditional diet consisted of a wide variety of cultivated, hunted, and gathered foods, including corn (maize), beans, squash, deer, fish, waterbirds, leaves, seeds, tubers, berries, roots, nuts, and maple syrup.” (Source)
“Northeastern cultures used two approaches to social organization. One was based on linguistic and cultural affiliation and comprised tribes made up of bands (for predominantly mobile groups) or villages (for more sedentary peoples). The other was based on kinship and included nuclear families, clans, and groups of clans called moieties or phratries.” (Source)
Southwest Indians Information Sheet
“Most peoples of the Southwest engaged in both farming and hunting and gathering; the degree to which a given culture relied upon domesticated or wild foods was primarily a matter of the group’s proximity to water. A number of domesticated resources were more or less ubiquitous throughout the culture area, including corn (maize), beans, squash, cotton, turkeys, and dogs. During the period of Spanish colonization, horses, burros, and sheep were added to the agricultural repertoire, as were new varieties of beans, plus wheat, melons, apricots, [and] peaches.” (Source)
“For those groups that raised crops, the male line was somewhat privileged as fields were commonly passed from father to son. Most couples chose to reside near the husband’s family (patrilocality), and clan membership was patrilineal. In general women were responsible for most domestic tasks, such as food preparation and child-rearing, while male tasks included the clearing of fields and hunting.” (Source)
“Among the Navajo the preferred house form was the hogan, a circular lodge made of logs or stone and covered with a roof of earth; some hogans also had earth-berm walls. Among the Apache, the wickiup and tepee were used.” (Source)
Upland settlements “included dome-shaped houses with walls and roofs of wattle-and-daub or thatch. The groups that relied on ephemeral streams divided their time between summer settlements near their crops and dry-season camps at higher elevations where fresh water and game were more readily available. Summer residences were usually dome-shaped and built of thatch, while lean-tos and windbreaks served as shelter during the rest of the year.” (Source)
Southern Woodlands “Indians” Information Sheet
“The importance of corn in the Southeast cannot be overemphasized. It provided a high yield of nutritious food with a minimal expenditure of labour; further, corn, beans, and squash were easily dried and stored for later consumption. This reliable food base freed people for lengthy hunting, trading, and war expeditions. It also enabled a complex civil-religious hierarchy in which political, priestly, and sometimes hereditary offices and privileges coincided.” (Source)
“Most of the region teemed with wild game: deer, black bears, a forest-dwelling subspecies of bison, elks, beavers, squirrels, rabbits, otters, and raccoons. In Florida, turtles and alligators played an important part in subsistence. Wild turkeys were the principal fowl taken, but partridges, quail, and seasonal flights of pigeons, ducks, and geese also contributed to the diet. The feathers of eagles, hawks, swans, and cranes were highly valued for ornamentation, and in some tribes a special status was reserved for an eagle hunter.” (Source)
“In general, settlements were semi-permanent and located near rich alluvial soil or, in the lower Mississippi region, near natural levees. Such land was easily tilled, possessed adequate drainage, and enjoyed renewable productivity.” (Source)
“In much of the region, people built circular, conical-roofed winter “hot houses” that were sealed tight except for an entryway and smoke hole. Summer dwellings tended to be rectangular, gabled, thatch-roofed structures made from a framework of upright poles.” (Source)
LESSON 3. How did Native Americans, like the Mi’kmaq, interact with foreign societies, like the Norse?
The Norse arrived North America, but their settlements disappeared. Evidence suggests that Norse Viking, Leif Eriksson, traveled to North America in 1000 A.D, roughly 500 years before other European explorers. Students investigate how, why, and where the Norse settled in North America. Students interpret the interactions between the Norse and the Mi’kmaq. It is believed that the Norse voyage to the new continent was the result of climatic fluctuations that forced settlers to seek new lands in an effort to survive and prosper. Upon their arrival to Newfoundland, evidence from the Greenlander Saga suggests that Norse Vikings encountered the Native American tribe, The Mi’kmaq, periodically engaging in limited trade with them, before the two groups engaged in conflict leading some researchers to speculate this was a cause of their disappearance. Students will examine how the physical environment and natural resources of North America influenced the development of the first human settlements and the culture of Native Americans as well as impacted on early European settlements. Students will research and write a 250-word argumentative short-essay, in which they introduce factors they believe influenced the disappearance of the Norse Vikings. Enduring issues and unifying themes include Impact of the Environment, Trade, Technology, and Conflict on human societies.
CONTENT VOCABULARY:
Norse– Settlers, traders, farmers, and seafarers who originated in Scandinavia.
Viking – Norse warriors and seafarers.
Vinland– An area of coastal North America explored by Vikings.
L’Anse aux Meadows – Remains of an 11th-century Viking settlement in Newfoundland
Mi’kmaq- Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, native to the areas of Canada’s Atlantic Provinces.
The Viking Compass
Vikings did not have much material to work with other than wood and animal hair, to make it across the oceans, but they apparently didn’t require much more than that to get to where they were going and make it back again. In 1948 a (partial) wooden artifact was found in Greenland (called the Uunartoq disk), which was assumed to be some form of compass. Only representing a portion of a wheel or ‘disk,’ the partial device had notches carved around the perimeter and scratch marks at a few distinct intervals across the face. (Source)
Questions:
According to the text, what was needed, in order to use the “Viking Compass”?
Why is a compass important when traveling long distances across the ocean?
How might the discovery of this artifact change how we understand European Exploration of the Americas?
Evidence that the Norse reached North America
According to the “Saga of the Greenlanders”, Vikings became the first European to sight mainland North America when a Viking merchant, headed for Greenland, was blown westward off course about 985. Further, about 1000, Leif Eriksson, a notorious viking leader, is reported to have led an expedition in search of the land sighted by the viking merchant, and found an icy barren land he called Helluland (“Land of Flat Rocks”) before eventually traveling south and finding Vinland (“Land of Wine”).The narratives of exploration of a place that sounded like Maine, Rhode Island, or Atlantic Canada were thought to be just stories, until 1960, when Helge Ingstad, a Norwegian explorer, and archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, were led by a local man to a site on the northern tip of Newfoundland island. At L’Anse aux Meadows, they discovered the remains of a Viking encampment that they were able to date to the year 1000 — That’s almost 500 years before the Europeans landed in the Americas! (Source)
Questions
Who led the Viking expedition to North America?
How long before Columbus, did the Vikings arrive in North America?
Do you think that it is fair to say that the Vikings discovered North America? Explain.
C. The Norse meet the Mi’kmaq
The Mi’kmaq are among the original inhabitants of the Atlantic region in Canada, and inhabited the coastal areas of Gaspé and the Maritime Provinces east of the Saint John River. This traditional territory is known as Mi’gma’gi (Mi’kma’ki) and is made up of seven districts. Mi’kmaq people have occupied their traditional territory, Mi’gma’gi, centuries before the arrival of the Vikings. Today, the remaining members of the Mi’kmaq community continue to occupy this area, as well as settlements in Newfoundland and New England, especially Boston. While it is not entirely clear, as to how the Mi’kmaq and the Vikings interacted, historical accounts of their interactions have suggested that the Mi’kmaq not only engaged in trade with the Vikings, but they also found themselves engaged in conflict with one another as well.
Going further, researchers have since discovered that the Mi’kmaq had developed oral histories that speak of a Mi’kmaq woman’s ancient premonition [dream] that people would arrive in Mi’gma’gi on floating islands, and a legendary spirit who traveled across the ocean to find “blue-eyed people.” Since the story’s discovery, many individuals have regarded its existence as a foretelling of the arrival of Europeans.
Questions:
What areas of the present-day United States and Canada did the Mi’kmaq people inhabit?
How might the “ancient premonition” [ancient dream] of “blue-eyed people” arriving in North America help us understand how Native Americans viewed and interacted with European explorers?
D. Unknown American Holiday: Leif Erikson Day Leif Erikson was likely born in Iceland around 970 or 980 AD, and was the son of infamous Norse chieftain, Erik the Red. Leif, much like his father, was a true Viking from the start, and began sailing with his crew across present-day western Europe and parts of Scandinavia. Nevertheless, the story begins with Leif traveling to present-day Greenland. It was on this journey in approximately 999 AD, that Leif Erikson and his crew would be blown off-course, to a location they named “Vinland,” meaning “Land of Wine.” While at first it would appear that Erikson found something other than North America, the descriptions of the surrounding area and its inhabitants have led researchers to believe that Erikson is writing about his arrival in North America. In 2024, President Joseph Biden declared October 9th Leif Erikson Day. (Source)
Questions:
When did Leif Erikson arrive in North America?
In your opinion, why does Leif Erikson Day have less recognition than Columbus Day?
E. Group Activity—Investigate the Disappearance the Newfoundland Norse Settlement
Instructions: In groups of three or four, students will be tasked with investigating the possible reasons for the Norse Vikings’ mysterious disappearance from their North American settlement.
Station #1: Climate Change
There was a time centuries ago that settlements in cold northern lands grew little by little with the arrival of new inhabitants. Up to the 15th Century, the territories we now know as Greenland and Newfoundland in North America, reached population sizes of around 2,000. From then on, these lands began to depopulate. Early research said the exodus was due to many problems, but temperature change has often been cited as an explanation for the end of the Vikings. According to this theory, the Nordics arrived in the North during a period that was more or less warm, where they could survive until temperatures fell during a period known as, the Little Ice Age.
Now, new research by the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst concludes that summers were increasingly warm and dry in Greenland and Newfoundland during the time the Nordic settlements were abandoned. Thus, the trigger for the disappearance of the Vikings could have been drought. Source:Climate history: Why did the Vikings disappear from northern lands?].
Questions
1. What other regions did the Vikings visit?
2. How did climate impact the survival of the Vikings in North America?
3. What climate event occurred that made it more difficult for Vikings to live in North America?
The settlement at L”Anse aux Meadows was only in use for roughly twenty years or so. It’s estimated that the Vinland settlements lasted the same amount of time.While scholars do not know why the Vikings abandoned the settlements so quickly, there are several theories. Hostile relations with the natives surely did not help matters. Though their iron tools aided them in battle, the natives dramatically outnumbered the Vikings who only numbered at most in the low hundreds. In an early encounter, one of the viking chieftains that lead the group of norse settlers in Newfoundland, Leif Eiriksson, is recorded to have been “struck by an arrow”. It would later be determined through these records —The Vinland Sagas—that his injuries would prove fatal. While it is not clear what tribes attacked the Vikings during their stay, evidence suggests that it was likely a number of Inuit tribes, including the Mi’kmaq. That being said, due to the increased amount of conflict between the Vikings and Native tribes, the Vikings dubbed their enemies Skraelings, which historians believe translates as either “barbarian” or “foreigner” in the old Norse tongue. It could have also meant “weak” or “sickly” or even “false friend”.
Questions
According to the document, how long were the Vikings in North America?
How did conflict with the Native Americans impact the Vikings living in North America?
Why do you think the Vikings were attacked by Native Americans?
When the Vikings explored south of Newfoundland, in an area they named “Vínland” (which translates as “Wine Land”), they were more interested in finding natural resources they could exploit. However, Kevin P. Smith, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institute who specializes in the Vikings, had a somewhat different opinion. He said that Norse texts indicate that some Vikings believed it offered “opportunities for ‘second sons’ of the chieftain who had established the Greenland colony to carve out their own areas where they could be leaders/chiefs rather than second sons.
Be that as it may, there is a leading theory that presumes the Vikings had abandoned the settlement largely due to its decline in economic importance. For instance, Medieval Europe had coveted [desired] walrus ivory leading to the market’s expansion across the North Atlantic. As such, and by the time the Vikings had sailed to and settled in North America, a series of large walrus colonies had already been established in Northern Greenland, which researchers speculate, ultimately diminished the economic significance of the North American settlement. Going further, many researchers have also speculated that the abandonment of the settlement was also influenced by the nature of walrus tusk hunting; It was dangerous, time consuming, and expensive.
Questions
Using the text, define the term “Vinland.”
Why was the settlement in North America important for the Vikings?
What economic factors influenced the Vikings to abandon their settlement in North America? Explain.
Another important question is why the Norse failed to settle permanently in North America. How was it that they could survive in Greenland for 500 years, but could not establish themselves in Vinland, with its richer resources and better climate? Vinland was a remote place, and voyaging there was risky and uncertain, as we know from the sagas. In the early 11th century, the Greenland settlements were still young and did not have the population nor the wealth to support a new colony in North America. Additionally, there was also little incentive, in that the economy which developed in Greenland did not need expansion to America. There might have been some incentive later in the history of the Greenland settlements, but by that time — the13th and 14th centuries — the inhabitants were preoccupied with their own survival and would not have had the resources or the interest to create a new colony. Greenland was a fragile colony, incapable of sustaining itself as climatic, economic, and political conditions deteriorated. According to Thomas McGovern, a leading authority on Norse expansion to North America, “Greenland simply did not produce enough people or riches to act as a successful base for sustained colonization attempts, and Norse Greenlanders may have seen little immediate benefit in expanding in Vinland.”
Questions
How did the Norse colony at Greenland impact the settlement in North America?
Why did the Norse colony in Greenland begin to collapse?
What happened during the 13th and 14th centuries that prevented Vikings from settling in North America?
LESSON 4. How did interactions among Native Americans and outsiders challenge our understanding of early exploration and the “discovery” of America? It is still debated how and when early humans arrived in North America. Eventually a number of Native American tribes existed across the modern-day United States and the Americas. The laws and alliances, like the Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peace, made by Native Americans between themselves and outsiders may have contributed to the founding documents of the United States. This lesson is a Socratic Seminar. Students will have collaborative discussions, work civilly and democratically to evaluate diverse perspectives about how early humans migrated to the Americas, the significance of the Great Law of Peace on American law, and the dangers of leaving groups of people out when learning about history. Enduring Issues will be discussed in this lesson include Power and the Impact of Immigration.
VOCABULARY REVIEW MATCHING ACTIVITY
The Bering Land Bridge Clovis First Theory Solutrean Hypothesis Trans-Pacific Migration Theory The Great Law of Peace Artifact Migration Clovis People Nomadic Sedentary Confederacy Iroquois Confederacy Saga of the Greenlanders Mi’kmaq Plains tribes Northeastern tribes Southwestern tribes Southern Woodlands tribes
A. An ancient culture of North America that lived between 10,000 and 9,000 BCE B. The first humans to reach the Americas migrated from Asia by traveling across the Pacific Ocean C. Nomadic people who resided largely in the western plains D. Source on Norse colonization of North America E. Group of people joined together for a common purpose F. The practice of living in one place for a long time G. People who move from one place in order to settle in another H. Indigenous people of what is now Canada and Nova Scotia I. Art, tools, and clothing made by people of any time and place J. Sedentary people of Alaska and Northwestern California K. Sedentary people who resided largely near the Atlantic Ocean L. Oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy M. Communities who move from one place to another N. Confederation governed by the Great Law of Peace O. Land bridge connecting Asia to North America P. Hunters considered the first people to arrive in the Americas Q. Belief that early Europeans arrived in the Americas R. People who resided in present day New Mexico and Arizona
COMPELLING QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
Who should be called the “first Americans?” Should anyone?
What could be the consequences of designating one group of people as the “first” be?
Why would it be important to recognize all of the different groups you learned about? What could happen if we do not mention them?
What is the danger of forgetting or leaving out groups of people from history? Is there any?
Which theory of migration do you think is most plausible?
Why do people migrate? Have the motives for migration changed from then to now? How so?
How do we make welcoming communities for those who migrate?
How has your understanding of Indigenous American history and the “discovery” of America changed?
How did interactions among Native Americans and outsiders challenge our understanding of early exploration and the “discovery” of America?
Cori Sternstein, Dominick Pursino and April Francis-Taylor
Problem: The NYS Social Studies Standards have failed to recognize the issue of genocide, despite it being a large part of our global community today, and much of the 20th century. Teachers are also often very limited in how much they are able to address such a topic due to its severity.
Purpose: The purpose of this unit is to allow students the opportunity to learn about the history of genocide around the world during the 20th century and prepare them to become agents of change.
Unit Compelling Question
How could our understanding of human rights violations in the 20th century help us to understand the word “genocide” as well as attempts by resisters to stop it?
Unit Supporting Questions
1. How did the word “genocide” change how the world responds to mass violence?
2. How did the Cambodian Genocide fit the UN definition of genocide?
3. How did the Rwandan Genocide change the international community’s approach to addressing genocide?
4. How did attempts for resistance against the perpetrators of genocide instill the need for legislative change?
New York State Social Studies Framework
10.5e Human atrocities and mass murders occurred in this time period. Students will examine the atrocities against the Armenians; examine the Ukrainian Holodomor and examine the Holocaust.
10.10c HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS: Since the Holocaust, human rights violations have generated worldwide attention and concern. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights has provided a set of principles to guide efforts to protect threatened and has served as a lens through which historical occurrences of oppression can be evaluated.
Social Emotional Learning Competencies (SEL)
Social Awareness: “The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes taking others’ perspectives, recognizing strengths in others, demonstrating empathy and compassion, showing concern for the feelings of others, identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones, recognizing situational demands and opportunities, and understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior. (Principle 2)
NYS CR-S Framework Strategies
High Expectations and Rigorous Instruction (CR-S Education Framework 27)
Critical Examination of Power Structures (Supporting Questions 2 and 3)
Ongoing Professional Learning and Support (CR-S Education Framework 28)
Curriculum and instruction is aligned with the histories, languages, and experiences of traditionally marginalized voices.
Provide opportunities for students to critically examine topics of power and privilege. These can be planned project-based learning initiatives (Fostering High Expectations and Rigorous Instruction)
Summative Task
Students will be paired up and will create a PowerPoint presentation about one of the genocides that we did not discuss in class. They will incorporate what they have learned about the definitions of genocides, the attempts and interventions to stop these genocides, along with pictures.
Taking Informed Action
How do these genocides still impact various people around the world today?
There are still various human rights violations occurring in the world today, such as the Uighurs in China and Rohingya in Myanmar. Students visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum online (https://www.ushmm.org/ ) or a local exhibit such as the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center in Glen Cove, New York or the South Jersey Esther Raab Holocaust Museum and Goodwin Education Center to explore the recent instances of genocide in our world today as inspiration for their PowerPoints.
Discussion
Prior to the creation of the word genocide, different groups around the world were targeted, usually on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or race. The creation of the word gave the international community a platform to act, allowing for those guilty of committing genocide to be punished. Despite the creation of means for the prevention of genocide, these events still continued to occur all over the world during the 20th century, and even into the 21st century. Genocide and related acts are often left out of news reports or are often breezed over in an effort to shield the world from the severity.
Who is Raphael Lemkin?
Directions: Read the passage below and answer the questions.
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined the term “genocide” in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe as a response to the atrocities of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. He believed the international community needed a specific term and legal framework to address the targeted destruction of groups. Before World War II, the word “genocide” didn’t exist, leaving atrocities like those in Armenia and the Soviet Union without clear legal consequences. During World War I, the Allied Powers referred to the Ottoman Empire’s actions against Armenians as “crimes against humanity,” but terms like “massacre” and “extermination” lacked the moral weight of “genocide.” Later, similar acts were often called “ethnic cleansing,” though not legally defined.
After the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 used the term genocide, but it wasn’t yet legally recognized. In 1948, thanks to Lemkin’s efforts, the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, officially making genocide an international crime. Lemkin became known as the “Father of the Genocide Convention.” That same year, the UN also adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, affirming the dignity and equal rights of all people, and laying the foundation for legal frameworks to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities.
Questions:
Who was Raphael Lemkin?
Why did Armenia and the Soviet Union go partly unnoticed?
How does defining atrocities as “massacres” or “exterminations” negatively impact the victims of these acts?
What were the impacts of Lemkin’s efforts?
How do you think Lemkin’s efforts may have impacted genocides in the future?
Prepared by the Queens, New York Public Library and the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management
Every facet of the United States has been affected by the labor and inventions of African Americans. Discover some of the men and women who created the inventions that improved daily life, fought for fair wages, safety, equal rights, and justice for Black workers. These are just some of the important milestones in the history of Black Labor in America. To learn more, visit your local library during Black History Month—and beyond!
1500s-1865: Transatlantic Slave Trade through the American Civil War
1500s: Transatlantic Slave Trade
The largest oceanic forced migration in history, the Transatlantic Slave Trade began in the late 1500s when over 12.5 million African men, women and children were removed from the continent and transported to the Americas, Brazil and the Caribbean to work on plantations and live their lives in servitude. As a result, many slave rebellions erupted throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, constituting some of the first organizing and labor-related actions in the Americas.
1739: Traditional African drumming is banned
Enslaved Africans were prohibited from playing traditional drums, as European enslavers feared that drumming could facilitate communication across fields, uplift weary spirits, comment on oppressive masters, and incite rebellions. In response, Black people developed alternative forms of musical expression, such as hand clapping and percussive stomping, which became the foundation of work songs and spirituals. These musical forms later evolved into genres like the blues and jazz and are integral to today’s African American music.
c.1763-c.1826: Artist Joshua Johnson
Recognized as one of the earliest professional African American artists, Johnson was born into slavery near Baltimore around 1763 and gained his freedom in 1782. He described himself as a “self-taught genius” and painted portraits of families, children, and prominent residents of Maryland.
1786: The Tignon Law
This Louisiana law was enacted to regulate the appearance of free women of color to “establish public order and proper standards of morality,” and subjection to undesirability. Women were prohibited from going outdoors without wrapping their natural hair with a Tignon cloth. As a symbol of rebellion, Black women reappropriated Tignon production into a major fashion statement, form of self-expression and business by embellishing the headscarves with decorative fabrics, feathers and jewels.
1859: Author Harriet E. Wilson
Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is considered the first novel by an African American woman. It gave insight into the supposed “Free North,” challenging the idea that the North was a safe have providing peace and equality for African Americans
1865: 13th Amendment Outlaws Slavery
The official end to slavery was perhaps the greatest labor victory in U.S. history. Yet the struggle for equal rights and fair wages was far from over; the same year that Congress adopted the 13th Amendment, the white supremacist terrorist organization and hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed.
1865-1900: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
1865-1877: Reconstruction
In the decade following the Civil War, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to help African Americans with food, housing, education, political rights and negotiating labor agreements. This period is thought to be one of expanding freedom for the formerly enslaved but in the South they were subjected to violence and new forms of mistreatment.
1872: Frederick Douglass
Douglass was elected president of the “Colored” National Labor Union, and his The New National Era became the union’s official newspaper. Douglass was one of America’s most important champions of equality and the right to organize a union.
1880s: Knights of Labor
The St. Paul Minnesota Trades & Labor Assembly was founded with the assistance of the Knights of Labor Assembly in1883. The Knights of Labor were known for their inclusiveness for accepting women and African American members, however they also supported the Chinese Exclusion Act.
1883: Lucy Parsons (c. 1851 – 1942)
Lucy Parsons and her husband, Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned anarchist, founded the International Working People’s Association. In 1886, they led the city’s first May Day parade, which called for an eight-hour workday.
1900s-1950s
1901: Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington, a major voice for economic self-reliance and racial uplift, publishes his autobiography discussing his life and thoughts on race relations.
1905-1960: The Great Migration
In the first half of the 20th century, a mass migration of more than six million Black people took place from the South to the North. Many left to escape overt Southern racism, only to encounter racial tensions in the North as whites viewed them as a threat to their jobs. The Migration Series is a group of paintings by African American painter Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) which depicts the migration of African Americans to the Northern U.S. from the South. It was completed in 1941 and was conceived as a single work rather than individual paintings. Lawrence wrote captions for each of the sixty paintings. Viewed in its entirety, the series creates a narrative in images and words that tells the story of the Great Migration.
1909: National Training School for Women and Girls
Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) was a suffragist, educator and organizer, as well as a mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked to integrate labor reform into the movement for voting rights. Burroughs established the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909 to combat labor exploitation through education, helping to improve working conditions and expand career pathways for Black women. She also launched the National Association of Wage Earners in 1921, a labor union for Black domestic workers.
1910s-1930s: The Harlem Renaissance
A period of flourishing of African American art, literature, and performance art saw the rise of iconic figures like author Langston Hughes, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, pianist Duke Ellington, and vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays.
1910: The Foster Photoplay Company
William D. Foster founds the first film production company established by an African American. It features all African American casts. The Railroad Porter (circa 1913) was the first film produced and directed by an African American.
1917: East St. Louis Race Riot
During World War I, thousands of Blacks moved to the St. Louis area to work in factories fueling the war effort. When the largely white workforce at the Aluminum Ore Company went on strike, hundreds of Blacks were hired as strikebreakers. Tensions erupted, and thousands of whites, many of them union members, attacked African Americans and set fire to their homes. Between 100 and 200 Blacks are estimated to have been killed and were 6,000 left homeless.
1919: Red Summer
Racial tensions were inflamed during the September 1919 Steel Strike, when workers shut down half of the nation’s steel production in an effort to form a union. Bosses replaced them with some 40,000 African American and Mexican American strikebreakers, an action made possible by AFL unions that excluded people of color from union jobs and membership.
1921: Tulsa Race Massacre (May 31-June 1, 1921)
The Tulsa Race Massacre was a 1921 attack on Tulsa’s Greenwood District, an affluent African American community whose thriving business and residential areas were known as “Black Wall Street.” In response to a May 31 newspaper report of alleged black-on-white crime, white rioters looted and burned Greenwood in the early hours of June 1. The governor of Oklahoma declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived and detained all Black Tulsans not already interned. About 6,000 Black people were imprisoned, some for as long as eight days. In the end, 35 city blocks lay in ruins, more than 800 people were injured, and as many as 300 people may have died. The Massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories until the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission convened in 1997 to investigate the event. Today, memorials, historical exhibits, and documentaries are some of the ways that the Massacre has been acknowledged and the history of “Black Wall Street” kept alive.
1925: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
The first labor organization led by African Americans to receive a charter from the American Federation of Labor. African American porters performed essential passenger services on the railroads’ Pullman sleeper cars and the union played a key role in promoting their rights. In the summer of 1925, A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) met with porters from the Chicago-based Pullman Palace Car Company. The mostly Black Pullman workforce were paid lower wages than white railway workers and faced harsh conditions and long working hours. Randolph worked with these workers to form and organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. When the union was finally recognized in 1935, it became the first predominantly Black labor union in the nation. As the union’s founder and first president, A. Philip Randolph became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement.
1930s: The Great Depression
African Americans primarily worked as sharecroppers on white-owned land, and tenant farmers in the south. They continued migrating to the north in search of better opportunities, but due to racism, they often found work as domestics, in factories, and as seasonal traveling migrant farmers. New Deal programs provided some relief, but they still faced unequal access to programs like the Works Progress Administration due to racial segregation and violence.
1934: Dora Lee Jones (1890-1972)
Jones helped found the Domestic Workers Union (DWU) in Harlem in 1934 in defiance of New York City’s “slave markets,” as they were known. With few options during the Depression, Black women would gather daily in the morning at certain locations and wait for white middle-class women to hire them, typically for low wages. The DWU eventually affiliated with the predecessor to today’s Service Employees International Union.
1940s: Women Fill Wartime jobs
During World War II, African American women contributed significantly to the war effort by taking on industrial factory jobs and working in shipyards and other war production facilities. Referred to as “Black Rosie’s.” They worked as welders, machinists, assemblers and more. They also served in the military as nurses, in the Women’s Army Corps, and in the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, responsible for clearing the backlog of overseas mail.
1941: Fair Employment Practices Committee
Under pressure from labor leader A. Philip Randolph, who planned a march of 250,000 Black workers in Washington, D.C., to demand jobs, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. The order banned racial discrimination in any defense industry receiving federal contracts and led to more employment opportunities for African Americans.
1944: Admission to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen Union. African Americans who maintained railroad locomotive engines had to sue the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen all the way to the Supreme Court to gain admission to the union in 1944.
1945: Maida Springer Kemp (1910-2005)
Kemp worked as a labor organizer in the garment industry and became the first Black woman to represent the U.S. labor movement overseas when she visited post-war Britain on a 1945 labor exchange trip. She went on to spend many years liaising between American and African labor leaders as a member of the AFL-CIO and became affectionately known as “Mama Maida” for her work. Throughout her life, she advocated for civil rights and women’s rights in America and internationally.
1946: Operation Dixie
Encouraged by massive growth in union membership (including African Americans) during the 1930s and 1940s, the Operation Dixie campaign launched an effort to organize the largely non-union Southern region’s textile industry and strengthen the power of unions across the United States. Spearheaded by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in concert with civil rights organizations, the campaign covered 12 states. Operation Dixie failed because of racial barriers, employer opposition and anti-Communist sentiment that labeled anyone who spoke out as an agitator. In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act was enacted, allowing states to adopt so-called “Right to Work” laws that limited union power.
1948: Zelda Wynn Valdes (1905-2001)
Fashion and costume designer Zelda Wynn Valdes was the first Black designer to open her own shop and business on Broadway in New York City. Her designs were worn by entertainers including Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Mae West, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, and Sarah Vaughan.
1950s-2000s
1950s: Post-War Era
Despite some gains during World War II, African Americans still experienced high unemployment rates compared to white workers and faced significant barriers to upward mobility in the workforce. Labor was largely confined to low-wage, segregated jobs, primarily in service industries like domestic work, with limited access to skilled trades and significant discrimination within unions. These struggles fueled the developing Civil Rights movement and pushed for greater labor equality.
1953: Clara Day (c.1923-2015)
As a clerk at Montgomery Ward, she resented the segregation of white and Black employees, which led her to push for change. Clara Day first began organizing co-workers at Montgomery Ward in 1953 and went on to hold several roles in the Teamsters Local 743. She also helped found the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the Teamsters National Black Caucus. A passionate advocate for labor, civil rights and women’s rights, she helped bring attention to issues like pay equity and sexual harassment.
1954: Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926-2012)
In 1954, Norma Merrick Sklarek became the first Black woman to become a licensed architect in New York. Her projects included the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Japan in 1976 and the Terminal One station at the Los Angeles International Airport in 1984.
1950s-1970s: The Era of Social Movements. The three decades after World War Il saw the emergence of many movements in American society for equal rights, most notably the Civil Rights Movement. One milestone for this movement was passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a landmark civil rights and labor law in the U.S., outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
1950s-1970s: Social Movements
During the Civil Rights Movement, African American artists like Nina Simone, and Harry Belafonte used their music and performances to advocate for social change. One significant event happened when Eartha Kitt was invited to Lady Bird Johnson’s “Women Doers Luncheon” in 1968. During the event, Kitt publicly spoke out against the Vietnam War and criticized several of President Johnson’s policies, consequentially derailing her U.S. career for more than a decade.
1963: Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) and Anna Arnold Hedgeman (1899-1990) Plan the March on Washington
While the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made headlines with his “I Have a Dream” speech, it was Rustin who worked closely with the labor movement behind the scenes, planning and organizing the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. As an openly gay man, Rustin’s crucial role in the March on Washington was often diminished and forgotten. As a member of the executive council of the AFL-CIO and a founder of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, Rustin fought against racism and discrimination in the labor movement. Hedgeman was a civil rights activist, educator and writer who helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She was a lifelong advocate for equal opportunity and employment.
1968: Poor People’s Campaign
This multiracial campaign, launched by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, recognized that civil rights alone did not lift up African Americans. The campaign called for guaranteed, universal basic income, full employment and affordable housing. Dr. King said, “But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty, nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”
1968: Memphis Sanitation Strike
African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), went on strike to obtain better wages and safety on the job, winning major contract gains. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the strike’s most influential supporter, was assassinated on April 4 as he was leaving his hotel room to address striking workers. Today, AFSCME produces the I AM STORY podcast, which follows the history of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike as told by those who experienced it firsthand.
1969: League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW)
Established in Detroit, Michigan, the LRBW united several revolutionary union movements across the auto industry and other sectors. A significant influential Black Power group, the LRBW had a tremendous influence on the left wing of the labor movement. Their activism played a pivotal role at the intersection of race and class in the ‘post-civil rights’ era.
1970: Melnea Cass (1896-1978)
Known as the ‘First Lady of Roxbury,’ community organizer and activist Melnea Cass helped provide social services, professional training and labor rights education that empowered Boston’s most vulnerable workers. One of many examples is a program she co-created that provided childcare for working mothers. Her advocacy helped achieve a major legislative victory in 1970 when Massachusetts passed the nation’s first state-level minimum wage protections for domestic workers since the Great Depression.
1970s: Workforce and Unemployment
By 1970, about nine million African American men and women were part of the workforce in the United States. This workforce included the steel, metal fabricating, meatpacking, retail, railroading, medical services and communications industries, numbering one third to one half of basic blue-collar workers. Yet, at that time, the African American unemployment rate was still two to three times more than that of whites.
1970: Dorothy Bolden (1923-2005)
Future president Jimmy Carter presents a Maids Day Proclamation to Dorothy Bolden. Dorothy Bolden began helping her mother with domestic work at age 9. She was proud of her work, but also knew how hard it could be and wanted domestic workers to be respected as part of the labor force. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., her next-door neighbor, encouraged her to take action. In 1968, she founded the National Domestic Workers Union, helping organize workers on a scale never seen before in the United States. The union taught workers how to bargain for higher wages, vacation time and more. She also required that all members register to vote, helping to give workers a stronger voice both on the job and in Georgia policy.
1979: Wage Decline Begins
Hourly wages for many American workers stagnated or dropped beginning in 1979, except for a period of strong across-the-board wage growth in the late 1990s. Researchers have found a correlation between the decline of unions and lower wages, and between lower wages and a growth in economic and social inequality, resulting in African Americans and Latino workers facing greater wage stagnation than white workers.
1980s: Declines and Milestones
During the 1980s, African American labor continued to face significant challenges including high unemployment rates, disproportionate job displacement due to industrial decline, and the widening wage gap compared to white workers. Particularly impacted were African American women, and blue-collar African American workers who relied heavily on shrinking union jobs during this period. Despite this, some progress was made with an increased Black union membership among men, affecting barriers to full equality in the workforce due to earlier civil rights movements.
1990: Hattie Canty (1933-2012)
Hattie Canty lived in Nevada and worked several jobs as a maid, a school janitor, and eventually a room attendant on the Las Vegas Strip. She became active in her union, was elected to the executive board of the Culinary Workers Union (CWU) in 1984 and became union president in 1990. She was the first Black woman and the first room attendant elected to this position in CWU. During her tenure, she brought together workers from several nations, helped push forward racial justice within the industry and her union, and founded the Culinary Training Academy, which helps people of color obtain better jobs in the hospitality industry.
1990: Americans with Disabilities Act
Inspired by the Civil Rights Act, and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibiting discrimination against all people living with developmental and physical disabilities in the workplace, transportation, public accommodations, state and local government services and telecommunications.
Recent History
2008: Smithfield Packing Plant Workers
Smithfield workers join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). After 16 years of organizing by African American, Latino, and Native American workers, the Smithfield Packing Plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina finally succeeded in joining the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. Despite years of intimidation, violence, and illegal firings by the company’s management, the new local union was chartered as UFCW Local 1208. Today, there is a mural of civil rights leaders on the wall of the union hall.
2008: Barack Obama (1961- )
Barack Obama was elected to the first of his two terms as the 44th President of the United States becoming the first African American president in U.S. history. During his first two years in office, he signed many landmark bills into law, including his very first piece of legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which impacted the labor movement. Obama also reduced the unemployment rate to the lowest it had been in more than eleven years.
2012: #BlackLivesMatter
Formed after the 2012 murder of a young African American man in Florida, Trayvon Martin, the Black Lives Matter movement grew as protests mounted against other killings, including the 2020 slaying of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In several communities, labor unions have built ties with #BLM chapters to address chronic issues of dehumanization, inequality, and exploitation.
Telling School Tales: Rural School History Research
Casey Thomas Jakubowski
In 1998, my first teaching position in Little Valley Central School District in Cattaraugus County New York, as a social studies instructor led to a career exploring the nooks and hollows of educational history across the Empire State (Jakubowski, 2020; 2023). The former school district is part of the Appalachian region of New York State, which includes 14 counties from Lake Erie to the Catskills. This district was undertaking an annexation study, or school district reorganization attempt in my first year. I knew nothing of these events, and was unaware that there was a nearly 100 year history of rural school reform focusing on creating more urban-like schools in rural areas (Jakubowski, 2020). The first major community activity surrounding a reorganization, or merger is the Boards of Education voting to undergo a study. After the districts are presented with the study, the Board then votes to accept the study. If this passes both boards, it is sent to the community in a non binding, or advisory vote (straw). When the straw vote passed in both Cattaraugus and Little Valley, people began to protest outside the school every morning and evening, to “save the panthers” or to “save the heart of LV” as I remember the sign read. My students were pulled from extracurriculars by their parents in order to protest the potential merging of the two districts, Cattaraugus to the north, and Little Valley, a one building K-12 district with just under 300 students. When the “binding vote” happened that year, and the Cattaraugus community defeated the proposed measure, we wondered, “What next?”
I left the district that fall, to move to central New York, and once again, a school centralization impacted my life. A family member’s teaching position was abolished, because the five year moratorium had expired. After a few resignations and retirements, the family member was once again employed. This is an all too unfortunate reality across Appalachia’s schools, as decreasing population, and wealth decline usually results in less money for school budgets, and personnel. I was once again wondering “What next?” This time, I used a Masters level research paper (unpublished, 2004)[1] to begin to pursue what has been a twenty-year scholarly chase through the rural, upstate, and state education department policy of recommending schools which are, according to the 1947 and 1958 Master Plan for School District Reorganization, too small to produce efficient, or effective programming for their children[2]). I also learned that New York State’s policy towards rural districts is as Fulkerson & Thomas (2019) describe it “urban normative” or the urban areas are the norm, and should be promoted as an ideal form of local government.[3] So I dug deep, and researched cases of successfully undertaken and defeated centralizations, or consolidations, or mergers, or reorganizations.[4] The history of why so many reorganizations failed post 1960 became an obsession. I learned from my pursuit of the 20th and 21st century of educational history of New York two major tracks: most educational historians write on the early period (founding of New York as a colony to just after World War I) and second, the state’s citizens have experienced some major fights with the state bureaucratic system in Albany over really basic issues of democracy, local control, and what citizenship means.
Telling tales out of school, as the title implies is often thought of as a negative, and uncivilized approach, yet I view these two tales, about Kiantone and Morganville, as critical, and very necessary to explain some of the basic urban rural divide of New York State, and further the rural anger deployed at government, which observers believe is current, but is actually rooted in Post World War II actions by the the State Education Department.[5]
The State of New York has, as Tracy Steffes writes in her seminal work, been interested since the late 1800s in “reforming” rural schools through strategic aid packages to develop longer terms and more “professional” schools in rural areas.[6] Thomas Mauhs-Pugh described how the local school governing boards were once held as exemplars, because they created “12,000 little republics” that taught governing principles at the local level.[7] Benjamin Justice combed the archive to discover how religious governing practices amongst local Board of Education members often resulted in appeals to the State Education Department.[8] Heffernan’s article on the conflict between State Education Department expectations for school facilities and local board’s realities describe how dissonance started in the early 20th century between the professionals and the public.[9] Chiles’ work on Progressive era school reform describes how Gov. Smith undertook school reform in rural areas as a signature effort among his governorship, and later presidential aspirations.[10] Loveland’s dissertation on the transition between the State Superintendent for Education to the University of the State of New York’s Commissioner of Education and President is a landmark in describing how the first three leaders at the newly created State Education Department had created a policy of rural school reform[11]. As Parkerson & Parkerson wrote in the crucial book on rurals school reform, the “ABCs” or Assessment, bureaucracy and consolidation, have haunted, especially in New York, rural schools who try to survive in the midst of population decline, decreasing wealth, and state policy which relies on a long standing deficit narrative, which Biddle & Azano expose as more than 100 years old.[12]
Having learned about the New York Master Plan for School District Reorganization (which is still in effect in 2023) I began to explore areas close to where I was living at the time, namely Genesee County, and discovered a huge gap in my understanding of the creation of the present day accepted “Central School Districts.” Many New Yorkers take for granted these post-Depression era created districts, many of which did not assume final form until the midst of the Cold War. These often hyphenated schools recall a vague history, or “mystic chords of memory” as Kammen would call it,[13] of the past, prior to the baby boomers (post World War II) entering school and gaining an affiliation as members of those relatively newly created schools. As Osterude describes in a profound work on the Broome County area, identity, and affinity moved from community to the newly created school districts, often built outside of town, and the social hub of the area.[14] Yet I know from my own experience (auto ethnographic history?)[15] the process must not have been smooth, or why would perfectly rational people hold so closely to an identity or mascot, as much of the national research claimed was the reason centralizations/ consolidations/ mergers are defeated?
Seeking to understand school history, as Carol Kammen, or David Kyvig[16] calls “nearby history” led me to the Genesee County Archives, where I discovered the Morganville Question. At the bottom of the Byron Bergen Central School District 1958 Master Plan entry was a footnote, which caught my attention:
By alteration of boundary, effective Sept. 17, 1951, all of the property in the Town of Stafford, formerly C2 Stafford, was transferred from CS 1 Byron to CS 1 Le Roy. (p. 301).[17]
After meeting with the Genesee County historian, and reading the records from the New York State Archive on the town of Stafford, I went to the town historian, and museum and learned a bit about this “school tale.”[18]
Stafford 2, Morganville, was one of the wealthier common schools in the area. A community with a pottery manufacturing center, and a two room schoolhouse, the community provided a grade 1-6 education to their children. In a tuition agreement very common until the creation of centralized school districts, and the birth of a semi modern high school in each C.S.D, Morganville partnered with South Byron by sending their secondary students for instruction. When the Centralization petition was launched, the Stafford 2 district residents overwhelmingly voted no, and wanted to maintain their two room schoolhouse, and independence. In records, memos, telegrams, and newspaper reports of the time period, the fight between Morganville (Stafford 2) and SED heated up, and became a back and forth with the end result of the community locking the South Byron Board of Education employee teacher out of the building. The parents refused to send their children.[19] The local school district superintendent, who is a field based representative of the commissioner of education, was on the side of the Stafford 2 (Morganville) representatives.
The archival records in Genesee county, and the State Archives in Albany record the back and forth memos and telegrams of the bureaucracy and the local residents trying to enter into a positive, less public solution. What became the clue to a second quest was a note on one of the memos from senior SED officials to the bureau and the local superintendent: “We do not need another Kiantone.”[20] More on Kiantone below.
What finally concluded the “Morganville question” was a bit of bureaucracy, and the intervention of a neighboring district. LeRoy, a larger village in Genesee County, had a well developed secondary school, as befitting an Erie Canal town home to the creators of Jell-o. The leaders of LeRoy offered free transportation and free tuition for schooling to any family in Stafford 2 who could transport their children to the boundary line. Using this subtle recruiting technique, the narrative from Morganville changed from “independent” to “LeRoy” as their demands for a school centralization destination. In one of the communications between the Morganville leaders and SED, the justification given for the break in the previous relationship with South Byron was the expectation of a better quality of secondary education for children at the LeRoy schools. South Byron was, in the opinion of the Morganville leaders, too small and not robust enough.[21]
The bureaucratic support arrived in the form of the New York State Thruway Authority, and its construction of the mainline branch from Buffalo to Rochester. The layout of the Eisenhower Interstate system, a divided, limited access highway modeled on the autobahn, was a technology and transportation revolution in the United States post World War II. As the Morganville community and the State were seeking a solution to the “question” of where would the children attend school, the Thruway authority indicated that the disruption caused by construction of the thruway and the needed overpass bridges for state and local routes would be a long term logistical problem for Morganville Children to attend South Byron. The authority provided the State Education Department face saving “cover” to move Morganville (Stafford 2) student population to LeRoy. The Morganville residents celebrated a win, and the State Education Department reaffirmed that the Master Plan was a voluntary policy, and the districts presented in the plan were recommended[22].
This situation was very different than just five years prior, where the Kiantone community south of Jamestown, in the Northern Appalachian region, experienced the wrath of State Education Department, while participating in a “farmers rebellion” that brought to the fore questions of democracy, local self determination and the international questions of communism, and totalitarianism post World War II.
Just south of Jamestown, of the “outlying” urban areas of New York State in the mid 1800s, Kiantone was a farming community along the Kiantone creek, with early settlers engaging in what Fox calls resource clearance in the areas of lumbering and then farming. The Kiantone residents erected seven Common Schools as part of the State enabling legislation. As Jamestown to the north, the residents began a long term tuitioning partnership with the secondary academy in Jamestown. Through World War I, and then World War II, the region provided significant material and manpower, and as a local furniture manufacturing hub in Buffalo, became a large urban center devoted to consumer products, and then the war efforts. At the Fenton- Chautauqua County historical society, the story of Kiantone is well known, and is a special area to the research people, because it represents the hypocrisy of national policy and local actions.[23]
During World War II, the Rapp-Coudert commission was charged by the New York state Legislature with rooting out communists among college professors in New York City. It also became the leading committee examining how to create a more efficient and effective public school system, with a focus on rural districts. After the New York State Board of Regents inquiry into the condition of public schools in the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, the report concluded that rural schools were extremely inefficient, and ineffective. Prior to the centralization movements of the 1930s-1970s, New York was home to a large number of smaller common schools, offering grades 1-6, and or tuitioning children out to neighboring districts. The Master Plan for School District Reorganization reported that in 1930, there were over 10,000 districts in New York State. By 1945, there were just over 5,000 (today, there are just under 700). At the secondary or 7-12 levels, parents would send children to villages based or academies for a secondary education focused on the Board of Regents curriculum and end of course exams introduced just after the Civil War, as Beadie describes. The Rapp Coudert commission established minimums to ensure efficient and effective spending on public education in the state. The commission, under the guise of a voluntary or recommended reorganization plan of 1947 (p. 18) created an organized plan to ensure that proposed districts would meet minimums in grades 1-6 and 7-12. Those minimums include 1500 dollars for elementary programming and 1800 for secondary expenditures. The minimums for pupil enrollment recommended at least 1000 students in a district.[24] As these recommendations emerged during the World War II era (1941-1945) the final report and “Master Plan” was released in 1947.[25] As the Master Plan was established, residents in each proposed district could submit to the local District superintendent of schools a request to begin the centralization process. Kiantone, with its long standing relationship to Jamestown, had been included in the Frewsburg Central School District proposed area. After some initial negotiations, one of the Kiantone schools was moved to Jamestown,[26] but the rest were included with Frewsburg.
Trustees of the Common Schools, and residents, vigorously opposed this arrangement, and felt, at the minimum, two major negatives precluded their inclusion with Frewsburg. First, the long relationship with Jamestown was primary. Second, the program in Jamestown was far superior to Frewsburg offerings. The Common School trustees in Kiantone refused to turn the key to the school over, and in August of 1948, the attorney for the Frewsburg Central School, accompanied by a “Phalanx” of New York State Troopers “crashed into a human barricade “ (Jamestown Post Journal, August 24, 1948).[27] A scuffle resulted, with a World War I veteran, who was waving an American Flag, pushed to the ground. In the ensuing media coverage, comparisons with John Paul Jones, a demand for the House Un American Activities Committee to investigate, and a comparison to the totalitarianism of the USSR and Germany were published. Investigations were launched by the American Legion and the New York State Grange into the incident, and then the State Education Department’s response. Deputy Commissioner Jeru, interviewed by the Post Journal, was rather harsh, and described the residents of Kiantone as self-serving, and neglectful of their children’s future.[28] Commissioner of Education Franscis Trow Spaulding, in speeches, referenced troublemakers in rural areas, who did not see the bigger picture of centralization and the need to create more and better training opportunities[29]. Mrs. Potter, of the area, an Albany Normal School trained librarian, became the spokesperson for the community, and led statewide hearings, rallies, and pressures which resulted in some seismic shifts to state law and policy. First, the Kiantone residents created a private school, and the State Appeals court in Buffalo ruled that private, non organization sponsored schools were legal. This legalized schools unaffiliated with formal organizations, such as religious groups to operate. Second the process was altered (after Morganville) so that a majority of voters in the individual, in existence schools were needed to authorize the centralization or consolidation. This home rule precedent was crucial in the slowing down of enabling consolidations.[30]
The story does not end here, as many districts in the Northern Appalachian Region area of New York have experienced this pressure to reorganize, centralize, or consolidate. In every county, districts have faced pressure to examine consolidation. The ongoing drumbeat of efficiency, and effectiveness from the State policy and political leadership is often matched by local and regional media opinions that “bigger is better.” Yet in large urban districts, “smaller is successful” has been supported by politicians, philanthropists, and others. Why this dissonance? As Fulkerson & Thomas have pointed out, the schema of many policy makers supposes that urban is normal, cities are the way, and rural isn’t worth support or investment.
These two examples of school district reorganization, whose stories exist in local archives, which to this point, have not been extensively researched, help fill a research gap into the rural rage and distrust of state officials. The two examples provide a demonstrable dissonance between the words, deeds, and actions of the United States government towards democracy overseas, and the internal state government downplaying local communities concerns that their rights were violated and should be subjected to state level bureaucratic planning. No wonder rural residents in New York view state government promises as fleeting and empty.[31]
I would, in this short essay, recommend that scholars, students, and the curious examine these smaller, more local archives as sources of interesting, compelling, and frankly subaltern histories that do not mirror the narrative which explains the creation of our now taken for granted local governing structures.
References
Primary Archives:
Fenton Historical Society of Chautauqua County. Kiantone history files. Jamestown, NY
Genesee County historical society. Local history files. Batavia, NY.
New York State Archives. Education Department Bureau of School District Organization. File B0477. Albany, NY.
Secondary sources:
Biddle, Catharine, and Amy Price Azano. “Constructing and reconstructing the “rural school problem” a century of rural education research.” Review of Research in Education 40, no. 1 (2016): 298-325.
Chiles, Robert. “SCHOOL REFORM AS PROGRESSIVE STATECRAFT: EDUCATION POLICY IN NEW YORK UNDER GOVERNOR ALFRED E. SMITH, 1919–1928.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15, no. 4 (2016): 379-398.
Fulkerson, G. & A. Thomas. Urban normativity. Lexington, 2019.
Heffernan, Karen M. ““Much more chewing”: a case study of resistance to school reform in rural New York during the early twentieth century.” Paedagogica Historica (2021): 1-19.
Jakubowski, C. Rural school consolidation: A case study. Unpublished seminar paper, SUNY Binghamton, 2004.
Jakubowski, C. Hidden Resistance. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, SUNY Albany, 2019.
Jakubowski, C. School Consolidation. New York State Archives Magazine 20.1, 2020.
Jakubowski, C. A Cog in the Machine. Alexandra, VA: Edumatch, 2021.
Jakubowski, C. Rural Education History: State Policy Meets Local Implementation.Lexington, 2023.
Jakubowski, C. Schooling for a Fight. Lexington Press (expected publication 2025).
Justice, Benjamin. The war that wasn’t: Religious conflict and compromise in the common schools of New York state, 1865-1900. SUNY Press, 2009.
Kammen, Carol. On doing local history. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Kammen, Michael. Mystic chords of memory: The transformation of tradition in American culture. Vintage, 2011.
Loveland, Fred Gerald. Victor M. Rice and Andrew S. Draper: the origins of educational centralization in rural New York State. State University of New York at Buffalo, 1993.
Mauhs-Pugh, Thomas J. “12,000 Little Republics: Civic Apprenticeship and the Cult of Efficiency.” New York History 86, no. 3 (2005): 251-287.
New York State. Master Plan for School District Reorganization. Albany, 1947
New York State. Master Plan for School Districts Reorganization. Second Ed. Albany, 1958.
Osterud, Nancy Grey. Putting the Barn Before the House. Cornell University Press, 2012.
Parkerson, Donald, and Jo Ann Parkerson. Assessment, bureaucracy, and consolidation: The issues facing schools today. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Spaulding, Francis Trow. Addresses and Papers of Francis Trow Spaulding ,President of the University of the State of New York and Commissioner of Education from July 1, 1946-March 25, 1950. University of the State of New York, State Education Department, 1967.
Steffes, Tracy L. “Solving the “rural school problem”: New state aid, standards, and supervision of local schools, 1900–1933.” History of Education Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2008): 181-220.
[1] Jakubowski, 2004 (SUNY Binghamton, History Department Masters presentations).
Since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, there has been an increased interest in helping K-12 students understand the historical background and context of the current violence in Israel/Palestine that has now escalated to a war in Lebanon and the possibility of a regional war involving Syria, Yemen, and Iran. On October 20, 2023, The Office of the Texas Governor encouraged schools to use a list of resources shared by the Texas Education Agency “to increase awareness and understanding of the Israel-Hamas war and root causes of conflict in the region” (Office of the Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, 2023). First in a list of four resources hyperlinked to the press release is a document from the Institute of Curriculum Studies (ICS) titled “Support for Classroom Discussion on the Hamas-Israel War,” which in turn includes a link to ICS’s curriculum, “Teaching the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Using Primary Sources.”
The Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) is not new to teacher training. Founded in 2005, their website states that 18,000 teachers have engaged in their workshops, and that all 50 states and D.C. are represented within ICS’s pool of participants. The reach of ICS’s influence in secondary school instruction is further facilitated through cooperation with the National Council of Social Studies and many of their state affiliates and local districts, including New York Department of Education; North Carolina Department of Public Instruction; Iowa Department of Education, among many others (ICS, 2024). ICS published its “Teaching the History of the Arab Israeli Conflict Using Primary Sources” in 2022 and has promoted the curriculum as an effective tool for teachers to help students understand the history of the conflict. In addition to the curriculum, which is accessible for free online and includes worksheets and graphic organizers for students (2022a), ICS offers workshops, both online and in-person in collaboration with public school districts across the country (2024). However, key aspects of ICS’s curriculum are misaligned with standards for the study of history and geography and are not conducive to helping students understand the root causes of Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, nor Israel’s widely condemned response. This curriculum, by providing students with insufficient context and inaccurate information, primes students to uncritically condone and support Israel’s ongoing settler colonial violence and dispossession, and contributes to the dissemination of racist, Islamophobic tropes.
Misalignment with C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards
By using standard curriculum formatting and creating materials and activities that can be easily implemented for class instruction, ICS’s curriculum looks like a credible curriculum, and thus may seem like a legitimate tool for teaching about Israel/Palestine. ICS claims that their curriculum is “guided by, and…in alignment with, state and national standards” (ICS, 2018b). The organization points to the Frameworks in the C3 Framework for Social Studies as supposed guiding principles for the creation of their curricular resources, “with a particular focus on Dimension 2: History and “Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” (ICS, 2018b).The National Council for the Social Studies states that the C3 Framework was developed “for states to upgrade their state social studies standards” and “for practitioners…to strengthen their social studies programs” (2013). ICS claims to specifically and particularly align with two Dimensions within the framework: “History” and “Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” (ICS 2018b). While ICS does not claim to address “Geography,” its substantial use of (political) maps requires attention to the desired learning outcomes of that Dimension as well. An analysis of the ICS curriculum compared to the learning outcomes outlined in the C3 Framework demonstrates the curriculum’s failure to meet standards for social studies education. This article will highlight specific ways in which the ICS curriculum is misaligned with the C3 Framework’s learning outcomes, and will include resources that, had they been included in the curriculum, would meet the expressed skills standards and learning outcomes. The C3 Framework includes learning outcomes which are used as a basis of the critique of ICS’s curriculum.
C3 Framework Learning Outcomes (achieved by end of Grade 12) (National Council for Social Studies, 2013, pp. 42-49) Dimension 1: History Change, Continuity, and Context “Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.” Perspectives “Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during historical eras.” “Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.” Historical Sources and Evidence “Analyze the relationship between historical sources and the secondary interpretations made from them.” “Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specific historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place or origin, intended audience, and purpose” “Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.” “Critique the appropriateness of the historical sources used in a secondary interpretation.” Causation and Argumentation “Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.” “Distinguish between long-term causes and triggering events in developing a historical argument.” “Integrate evidence from multiple relevant historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument about the past” “Critique the central argument in secondary works of history on related topics in multiple media in terms of their historical accuracy.” Dimension 2: Geography Human-Environment Interaction “Evaluate how political and economic decisions through time have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics of various places and regions.” Evaluate the impact of human settlement activities on the environmental and cultural characteristics of specific places and regions.” Human Population “Evaluate the impact of economic activities and political decisions on spatial patterns within and among urban, suburban, and rural regions.” Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources & Using Evidence Gathering and Evaluating Sources “Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the source to guide the selection.”
ICS’s selection and framing of primary source material is misaligned with several learning outcomes outlined within the C3 Framework’s Dimension 2: History. ICS limits the sources provided to official governmental and intragovernmental documents and fails to provide citations for the background information that frames each of the sources and provides the overarching narrative of the curriculum. In this way, ICS fails to provide students with the opportunity to adequately strengthen skills pertaining to the study of history. Furthermore, through their narrow selection of sources, ICS fails to model the effective evaluation of sources and use of evidence for students, as outlined in Dimension 3 of the C3 Framework.
Through its failure to adequately address skills mandates as outlined in the C3 Framework, ICS dangerously misrepresents the historical context and multiple perspectives that are necessary for helping students understand the context of Hamas’s October 7 attack. In order for ICS to meet those standards, it would need to include significantly more primary sources and provide more accurate context. The ICS curriculum implies that Zionist settlers accepted Palestinians as deserving of national sovereignty in their own right and that it was solely Palestinians who rejected Jewish neighbors, beginning with the UN Partition Plan of 1947 (ICS, 2018a). The curriculum emphasizes this implication by providing inaccurate and incomplete information, insufficient, misleading and oversimplified context, and a single perspective of events. Furthermore, it is not grounded in the skills or learning outcomes outlined within the C3 framework, to which ICS claims to adhere.
Inaccurate & Incomplete Information
ICS provides inaccurate and incomplete information within the curriculum, particularly when it comes to the perspectives and experiences of Palestinians. Two serious issues that contribute to this lack of accurate and complete information are the lack of Palestinian-authored sources. Only one source written by a Palestinian is included in the entire curriculum–the Declaration of the State of Palestine (1988), in the final lesson (2022f). The Palestinians are only represented in the curriculum long after decades of representing themselves under the British Mandate. In this way, the designers of the ICS curriculum de-historicize and choose to frame Palestinian “nationalist aspirations” in a document that is comparable to the Israeli Declaration of Independence included in Lesson 4 (2022e). This factually inaccurate portrayal of the inception of the First Intifada misrepresents the most important aspects of the Intifada; namely, that it was a largely nonviolent series of protests and economic boycotts of Israel that were predominantly organized by women, eventually involved the support of Israeli peace organizations and was as much of a surprise to the PLO as it was to the Israeli occupation (Bacha, 2017).
To address the lack of Palestinian perspectives within the curriculum, primary sources that deal with the Palestinian experience of the Nakba should be included to provide an insight into the Palestinian perspective of the 1948 war, particularly given that the Nakba is widely viewed as ongoing to the present day in the context of continued settlement expansion. The Nakba Archive (2002) is a collection of oral history testimony from Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and provides valuable context for both the Declaration of the Establishment of Israel document and the Arab League Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine, which is the second primary source included in ICS’s Lesson 4 (2022e). Additional incorporation of photographs or videos from the UNRWA Film & Photo Archive, which provides audio and visual documentation of Palestinian refugees since 1948 would provide additional insight into the lived experience of Palestinians during the Nakba and counter the lack of visual representation of Palestinians within the curriculum (UNRWA, 2016).
The inclusion of a wider variety of primary sources such as film, photographs, and posters would provide students with a more accurate representation of the First Intifada and would align with the C3 Framework’s stated learning outcomes. It would also provide insight into the rise of more violent tactics employed by Palestinians since the Second Intifada that would better contextualize the Hamas attack on October 7. ICS states, in framing the First Intifada at the beginning of Lesson 5, that “Palestinians attacked Israelis with improvised weapons and firearms supplied by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which organized much of the uprising” (2022f). This factually inaccurate portrayal of the inception of the First Intifada misrepresents the most important aspects of the Intifada. By inaccurately portraying the First Intifada, ICS legitimizes Israel’s violent response to the uprising and lacks context that would help students understand the cause-and-effect relationship between Israeli military and settler violence and the use of violent tactics by some members and groups of the Palestinian resistance.
Lack of Context
Building on the issues that stem from the lack of accurate and complete information, the lack of sufficient context further strengthens ICS’s implication that Palestinians have only been antagonistic aggressors to Israel and their Jewish neighbors. In Lesson 1 of the curriculum (2022b), the excerpt from Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State” (1896) lacks contextualization regarding the existing Palestinian population and their historical ties to the land ignoring the settler colonial nature of Zionism and its impact on the indigenous population of Palestine (ICS, 2022b). In Lesson 3, there is a major gap in source material from May 1948 to June 1967 (ICS, 2022d). This gap leads to a total lack of context for the inception of the 1967 war, as well as the experience of Palestinians in the years between 1948 and 1967. This lack of context makes it impossible for students to investigate Palestinian perspectives and understand cause-and-effect relationships between historical events.
The excerpt from “The Jewish State” highlights Herzl’s concerns about antisemitism across Europe, proposing the establishment of a Jewish state as a solution. The document reflects the persecution faced by Jews in Europe and their quest for a sovereign homeland. However, the document lacks contextualization regarding the existing Palestinian population and their historical ties to the land ignoring the settler colonial nature of Zionism and its impact on the indigenous population of Palestine (see Table 1 2a & 6a). It also omits Herzl’s recognition of the need for support from the Great Powers for the successful establishment of a Jewish state.
The gap in source material and information on events that occurred between May 14/15, 1948 and the June 1967 war conveys an inaccurate and incomplete depiction of the experience of Palestinians in the months and years after the creation of the state of Israel. This erasure functions in service of the curriculum’s portrayal of Palestinians as exclusively antagonistic and unwilling participants in peacebuilding. Of course, the entirety of “The Jewish State” (Herzl, 1896) is too long of a document to present to 6th-12th grade students, the target audience of ICS’s curriculum; however, the excerpt excludes text that highlights important context for the document (see Table 1 2b & 3d). An aspect of early Zionism that is also apparent in Herzl’s text but excluded from ICS’s excerpt is that multiple locations were considered for the Jewish state. Herzl highlights Palestine and Argentina (Argentine in the text). The selection of Palestine or Argentina for the Jewish state would be left to the Powers and Jewish consensus, “we shall take what is given us, and what is selected by Jewish public opinion” (American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946). Herzl mentions “the present possessors of the land” in reference to either or both Palestinians and Argentinians already living in areas proposed for the Jewish state, demonstrating his awareness that there were people living in both areas prior to Zionist colonization. By adding a few sentences to the excerpt, ICS could better contextualize the document regarding the existing Palestinian population, the settler colonial nature of Zionism, and the role of European imperialism’s support for the foundation of the Jewish state. Palestinian nationalism shifted away from “Arab/Ottoman” to “Palestinian/Arab” in the context of “watershed events” that included the British control of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration (Khalidi, 1997/2010). The ICS curriculum frames nationalism as only legitimately developing pre-World War I, which severely misrepresents the historical contexts in which Palestinian nationalism developed (see 1a, 4a & 4b). Herzl expresses the need for Great Power intervention for the Zionist project to be reified: “Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the [Jewish] Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land” (American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946). Herzl further elaborates on the necessity of Great Power subscription to the Zionist project, “The Society of Jews… [will put] itself under the protectorate of the European Powers.” Herzl’s document demonstrates an amenability to the colonial mandate system that eventually came into effect after the ratification of the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1922.
Another useful addition to the collection of primary sources that would provide much-needed context for the time during May 1948 and June 1967 are the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) and UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967). UN General Assembly Resolution 194 Article III (1948) codifies the right of return for Palestinian refugees who wish “to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors” and “that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property.” UN Resolution Security Council 242 (1967) of the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” i.e. the 1967 war. and reaffirms the importance of “a just settlement of the refugee problem.” The Israeli unwillingness to honor this right of return coupled with the continuous expansion of settlements since 1967 and continued occupation of the West Bank (and Golan Heights) are major obstacles to peace that are completely ignored by the ICS curriculum.
Single Perspective
The ICS curriculum privileges Great Power perspectives, from which Zionism as a political project was birthed, without providing sufficient information on their imperial context. This serves to legitimize the Great Power intervention in the region beginning after World War I, and the expansion of Israeli settlements since 1967, without providing sufficient information to nuance or question this perspective.
By relying heavily on primary source documents that advance only the Great Power colonial perspective such as the Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot Agreement, and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, ICS’s curriculum presents the colonial project and interventions advanced by the authors of these documents as legitimate, without giving students the resources or information to question the right or authority of the Great Powers to undermine the sovereignty of people living within the region following the end of World War I. This legitimization of the Great Power’s imperial project in the region after World War I contributes to the portrayal of Palestinians as antagonistic and unwilling to work towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Additionally, the curriculum developers’ decision to use only political maps (themselves crafted by ICS) that do not align with internationally recognized borders and disputed territories, rather than demographic and land use maps, fail to provide information that is essential to understanding Palestinians’ perspectives. ICS’s curriculum completely ignores the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, confiscation of land, demolition of homes, and displacement of civilians, avoiding any discussion of numerous UN resolutions and United States foreign policy over time. By depicting political boundaries that have resulted from military occupation as if they were incontrovertible facts, the maps erase the issue of territorial annexations that have not been recognized under international law. The illegal settlements in the West Bank are legitimized in the video at the beginning of Lesson 4 (ICS, 2019). They are described as “in locations chosen for their strategic security value,” though there is no explanation of what that “value” might be. The video further states that “the number of settlements remained sparse until the late 1970s. They would become a major issue in later negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” The illegal settlements and settlement expansion are not mentioned again in the curriculum, despite the fact that settlement expansion and settler violence, along with the right of return for Palestinian refugees, are two of the primary concerns in negotiations with Israelis. Furthermore, settlements have been deemed illegal in successive judgements in institutions of international law, human rights and justice (Amnesty International, 2019).
A primary source that would provide useful insight into the perspectives of people living within Palestine contemporaneous with the other sources included by ICS is the Resolution of the General Syrian Congress at Damascus, which was ratified on July 2, 1919. The congress was composed of members from all regions of Ottoman Greater Syria who described themselves as “provided with credentials and authorizations by the inhabitants of our various districts, Moslems, Christians, and Jews” (1919). The resolution provides important insight into how Arab nationalism was shifting as a result of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Of the ten points included in the resolution, five include important context for several of the primary sources included in ICS’s curriculum, namely the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the British Mandate for Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. Point three is a protest against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations; the Congress unanimously rejected the institution of a mandate. Point six addresses the issue of Zionism. It states, “We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine” and that “our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common rights and assume the common responsibilities.” The Congress was not opposed to the millennia-long presence of Jewish people in the land of Greater Syria, but soundly opposed to the Zionist settler colonial project, an important distinction left out of the ICS curriculum. Point eight of the resolution rejects the separation of Greater Syria into Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, as was outlined in the Sykes-Picot agreement. Finally, point ten calls for the annulment of “these conventions and agreements” whose aim is establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine in light of “President Wilson’s condemnation of secret treaties,” seemingly a direct response to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration.
The inclusion of demographic and land-use maps would provide needed information to contextualize Palestinian resistance, particularly to settlement expansion since 1967. Alex McDonald of the Texas Coalition for Human Rights, in a video lesson titled “Letting Maps Tell the Story” (2020), is a valuable resource for educators seeking to help students employ geographic studies skills to examine the geopolitical context of the conflict. Additionally, the inclusion of UN Resolution 2334 (2016) would provide useful information on the ways in which Israel’s settlement expansion continues to make a two-state solution unviable. This would provide students valuable information on the Palestinian perspectives of Israel’s policy of expansion, and additional context for discussing causes and effects. The ICS curriculum developers chose to use only politically contested maps, rather than the very demographic and land use maps that would illuminate the situation under the Mandate before 1948, and which indeed formed the basis for the UN Partition Plan. For the period after 1948, land use, demographic information, and water resource maps would better align with the C3 Framework and provide context for discussing causes and effects.
Conclusion
Not only is the curriculum misaligned with standards for skill development in history and social studies, but it also fails in its expressed objectives. The stated goal of ICS’s curriculum, entitled “Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict” is that “students will become more knowledgeable global citizens and gain confidence in following current world issues” (2022a). Under the FAQ section of the ICS website, under the drop-down menu titled “What is ICS’s commitment to accuracy and balance?” the organization states that “accuracy is a value in itself. At a time when public discourse in America is becoming less committed to accuracy and facts, we think it is all the more important that we study historical documents and ground our understanding of history in them” (2018b). ICS’s curriculum, by providing students with insufficient context and inaccurate information across all five lessons, primes students to uncritically condone and support Israel’s ongoing settler colonial violence and dispossession rather than helping them become “more informed global citizens” (2022a). It fails to meet both its own professed goals and standards for social studies education and skills acquisition. This curriculum prevents students from engaging with the full historical context of the current situation and implicitly claims that the exclusion and erasure of Palestinian voices is an acceptable form of “accuracy.”
References
American Zionist Emergency Council. (1946). Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Jewish
General Syrian Congress (1919 July 2). The resolution of the General Syrian Congress at Damascus proclaims Arab sovereignty over greater Syria (July 2, 1919). In A.F. Khater (Ed.), Sources in the History of the Modern Middle East, 2nd edition (2011) (pp. 158-160). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Institute for Curriculum Services. (2018a, June 4). ICS Episode 3: A place to belong. Vimeo. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://vimeo.com/273382658.
Institute for Curriculum Services. (2019, September 9). ICS Episode 4: War and Peace. Vimeo. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://vimeo.com/358927133.
Given the often-contentious nature of the subject discussed in the article above, editors for Teaching Social Studies solicited comments from teachers and preservice educators. Those responses are below.
Alysse Ginsburg, Uniondale (NY) High School: I am a 12th grade history teacher with 25 years of classroom teaching experience. The editors asked me to respond to this essay in 250-500 words. Of course, I can’t possibly respond thoughtfully or comprehensively to a 5,000 word essay in the allotted space, but I do have a few thoughts to share. Prior to reading the essay, I had not used ICS materials in my classroom. A colleague with experience using them had good things to say, so I investigated further. As a history teacher, I believe it is important to carefully examine the sources of content I might bring into my classroom to be sure they are accurate and align with standards and best practices. Here are a few things I concluded about ICS’s lessons:
The lessons on the Arab-Israeli conflict align well with both the New York Social Studies Framework and New Jersey’s Learning Standards for Social Studies (which are similar to the C3 Framework).
ICS’s lessons rely on primary sources representing different parties. For example, in the lesson on Jewish and Arab nationalism, I noticed the inclusion of primary sources from a mainstream Zionist thinker and a mainstream Arab nationalist thinker and documents from both the first Zionist Congress and the first Arab Congress. The number of sources provided seemed balanced and appropriate for the available time a teacher would have to teach the lesson.
ICS has been around for almost 20 years and has professional development partners in many state and local education agencies; 21,000 teachers have elected to participate in ICS programs; and ICS is a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium Member.
I was honestly reluctant to submit this response without knowing even more, so I had a call with ICS and asked them to address some of the author’s comments directly. In addition to patiently answering my questions, they said they looked forward to seeing the essay (and even speaking to the writer) so they could understand her concerns and consider improvements, as they often do with teacher input. For example, they told me that they recently updated one of their PD sessions to further clarify the specific reasons why Palestinians and Arabs were opposed to the United Nations Partition plan. I’m an educator who believes in a growth mindset, so this pleased me. Though I had very limited space and time to respond to the essay, I was impressed by what I saw and heard from ICS, and I encourage you to look at their lessons and materials and judge for yourself. My main critique, which I told them, was that they should modify their materials for students at different reading levels. They said they were working on it.
Dianne Pari, former social studies chair, Floral Park (NY) High School: As an educator with experience as a social studies teacher, department chairperson, and currently a supervisor of student teachers, I have observed a growing hesitation among today’s teachers to address the Arab-Israeli conflict in the classroom. Many shy away from student questions about the current situation. Why? There are many complex reasons, but it cannot be overlooked that in today’s politically charged climate, even the most neutral or fact-based responses can be misconstrued, criticized, or politicized. There have been cases where educators have faced backlash from parents and school administrations simply for presenting information that challenges students’ or families’ existing beliefs or biases.
This makes it imperative that curriculum materials on this topic are balanced, historically accurate, and free of bias. I support Chloe Daikh’s assertion that the ICS curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” lacks this balance, particularly in its limited inclusion of Palestinian voices and perspectives. Such omissions can unintentionally perpetuate a one-sided narrative, portraying Palestinians predominantly as aggressors and Israelis solely as defenders for example. The Daikh article provides a detailed evaluation of the ICS curriculum, and I agree with her conclusions. Unfortunately, she, nor the ISC, touch upon the issue I raised earlier, that teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict is so polarizing today, that it is often being avoided altogether.
If I were teaching this topic today, I would begin with two foundational lessons to establish historical context, especially of previous conflicts, and then transition to an analysis of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. To ensure a broad and balanced understanding, I would incorporate a range of news sources, including major American outlets and international media such as Al Jazeera that offer valuable resources for classroom discussion. Online, Al Jazeera provides “Israel-Gaza War in Maps and Charts: Live Tracker” (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker).
Students must be provided with balanced, credible, and comprehensive resources that foster critical thinking and informed discussion—especially when addressing complex and emotionally charged global issues such as this one and more importantly, teachers must be supported by school administrators when their lessons are challenged.
John Staudt, The Wheatly School, East Williston, NY: As a teacher and a historian, I largely agree with Chole Daihk’s analysis of the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict.” There are several significant methodological and historiographical shortcomings, including biases that teachers should explore with students when teaching controversial topics.
The ICS prioritizes using state-centric sources while overlooking everyday experiences of the people most impacted by the actions of state characters. It leaves out numerous critical primary sources – most egregiously – from Palestinian voices and perspectives. The exclusive inclusion of mostly official documents is a prime example of what the scholar Edward Said called “textual imperialism.” Textual imperialism is a form of revisionist history written from the perspectives of the victors, while overshadowing the personal experiences of those who lost and suffered the most. (Said, 1993) By excluding Palestinian literature before the 1988 Declaration, the ICS distorts the history of Palestinian nationalism and erases decades of Arab political activism.
The exclusion of nineteen-years of actions, words and events between 1948 to 1967, reveals a broad gap in the literature and obscures crucial historical information including, among other things, evolution of early resistance movements, the formation of Palestinian political consciousness and the fate of Palestinian refugees. These omissions inevitably distort historically crucial links and obscures important continuities underlying present-day controversies and conflicts. These significant oversights also distort the First Intifada as PLO-initiated violence which minimizes its original non-violent, civic nature.
The geographic mapping options Daikh makes note of demonstrate significant bias. By incorporating political maps that legitimize military occupation, the curriculum normalizes settlements that are recognized as illegal under international law. When coupled with the absence of sources featuring Palestinian perspectives this further exacerbates the historical revisionism in the curriculum. By excluding alternative demographic and land-use maps, students do not grasp the circumstances — displacement, resource distribution, fragmentation — underlying Palestinian perspectives and reasons for resistance.
The ICC’s narrative makes Palestinian activism appear violently aggressive, while misinterpreting Israeli policy as almost entirely defensive. A good example of the problem is the exclusion of Israeli historian Ilan Pappé’s “1948 paradigm.” Pappe challenges the mainstream Israeli narrative of the 1948 war as a struggle for independence, instead arguing it was a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing to expel and displace Palestinians — a perspective he claims has been suppressed in historical discourse. The ICC approach further obscures the structural, settler-colonialism of the Israeli-Arab conflict (Pappé, 2006). I think it is significant to mention that Pappé was born in Israel after the 1948 war and is a Jew whose parents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Pappé teaches in Great Britain after he was pressured to resign his position at the University of Haifa because of his confrontational views of official Israeli government policies.
As teachers, our goal is to provide students with a range of materials to analyze so they can reach conclusions based on evidence and share with colleagues in respectful conversations. By utilizing selected sources focusing on mostly one perspective of this deeply complicated issue, the ICC’s approach reenforces historical and geographical biases and does a disservice to students and the general public who are interested in learning more about this and other controversial topics. To counter these tendencies, historians and social studies teachers must employ meticulous attention to detail and incorporate perspectives that challenge an educator’s own arguments instead of following preordained interpretive templates.
Erin Smyth, Social Studies Education Student, Hofstra University: As a graduate student pursuing a degree in secondary social studies education, I was asked to review the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) curriculum on the Arab-Israeli conflict alongside Chloe Daikh’s critique of it. On the whole, I agree with Daikh’s analysis. The ICS curriculum fails to provide a complete historical account of the conflict. It leaves out essential historical events and excludes sources from individuals, particularly Palestinians, directly affected by the conflict. This omission hinders students from developing a nuanced understanding of a complex historical issue.
My biggest issue with the ICS curriculum is the absence of Palestinian-authored sources. Aside from the one late inclusion in the curriculum which Daikh notes, the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, there are no primary sources that focus on Palestinian perspectives, even though the curriculum repeatedly includes Zionist and Israeli sources. This imbalance results in a distorted narrative which is evident in the way the Nakba is covered. The curriculum gives little attention to the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 and omits oral histories, failing to convey how the Nakba is experienced by generations of Palestinians. As a result, students are denied the opportunity to understand one of the long-lasting impacts of the conflict on Palestinians.
These omissions not only negatively impact students’ ability to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, but shape how they understand power, legitimacy, and justice in history. The inclusion of oral histories and more balanced source material is crucial. Without doing so, students cannot fully understand the causes and consequences of the conflict, nor can they evaluate historical claims with the critical thinking skills the C3 Framework demands.
As a future educator, I believe I have a responsibility to teach with integrity and eliminate bias in order to give my students the most complete understanding of history I can. That means resisting overly sanitized or one-sided curricula and ensuring my classroom is a space where multiple narratives are included and analyzed. The ICS curriculum, in its current form, does not meet that standard.
Teaching the Unteachable: The Holocaust and Kids These Days
Ari Mandel
The Holocaust is one of the most daunting subjects for teachers to tackle, and it grows more challenging as its survivors and their direct memories fade away. Educational approaches to this profoundly significant chapter of history are constantly evolving, often revealing critical issues about how the Holocaust is presented, the consequences of universalizing its lessons, and the need to balance meaningful engagement with the risk of trivialization or desensitization. While Holocaust education remains an indispensable part of modern curricula, current instructional methods sometimes risk diluting its impact by reducing it to an oversimplified lesson on intolerance, rather than treating it as a distinct historical catastrophe shaped by complex historical, social, and political dynamics.
This paper argues that effective Holocaust education requires maintaining a delicate balance between universal lessons and historical specificity while addressing ongoing issues in its presentation. It examines how educational approaches sometimes fall short in emphasizing the Holocaust’s unique characteristics, critiques the risks of trivialization, and underscores the importance of thoughtful engagement. It argues for interdisciplinary and experiential methods to ensure students engage deeply and critically with this critical subject, fostering both historical and moral awareness.
Andy Pearce writes in The Shapes of Holocaust Education in the Early Twenty-First Century (2022)[1] that despite the increase in Holocaust education, many adults today still have an incomplete or even incorrect understanding of what happened. This is a major paradox – Holocaust education is more widespread than ever, with school programs, museums, documentaries, and memorials, yet people’s understanding of the event seems to be declining. Pearce argues that this may be because we are putting too much focus on quantity over quality. Simply adding more content about the Holocaust – more books, more films, more commemorations – does not necessarily lead to deeper understanding. Instead, there needs to be a shift toward more thoughtful engagement that encourages students to question, reflect, and truly understand the gravity and complexity of what happened.
One of the biggest issues in Holocaust education today is the tendency to universalize it – to present the Holocaust as a symbol of general human suffering or to draw broad lessons about human rights and tolerance. While it is true that the Holocaust contains important universal lessons about prejudice, hate, and what can happen when these go unchecked, there is a risk in oversimplifying it. Historian Peter Novick, in The Holocaust in American Life[2] (2000), argues that the Holocaust has become a “moral and ideological Rorschach test,” meaning that people tend to see in it whatever they want to see, often using it to support their political or social agendas. This way of looking at the Holocaust can make it lose its specificity – the particular historical, ideological, and cultural circumstances that led to this genocide. When we use the Holocaust as a general metaphor for evil or intolerance, we can easily lose sight of the particular factors that allowed it to happen in the first place: the racial theories, the bureaucracy, the complicity of ordinary people, and the very specific political and social context of post-WWI Europe. Without focusing on these details, students may struggle to understand how an advanced, seemingly “civilized” society could systematically plan and execute the murder of six million Jews and millions of other innocent people.
Arthur Chapman, in Learning Lessons of the Holocaust[3](2020), also critiques this trend of framing the Holocaust mainly in terms of human rights or as an example of intolerance. He argues that while connecting the Holocaust to other events or to broader human rights issues can make it feel more relevant to students, it can also obscure what made the Holocaust unique. The Holocaust was not just another example of prejudice – it was a carefully planned and executed genocide, driven by specific racial ideologies, supported by modern technologies, and enabled by the collaboration or indifference of millions of people across Europe. When educators draw too many parallels between the Holocaust and other historical atrocities or present it as just another case of human cruelty, they risk minimizing the specific dangers posed by antisemitism.
Edward Rothstein[4] makes a similar point in his critique of the Museum of Tolerance, where he argues that mixing the Holocaust with contemporary issues like bullying or discrimination creates an oversimplified narrative. When the Holocaust is used as a kind of shorthand for any and all forms of prejudice, we end up losing the specificity of what actually happened, and why it happened. This is not to say that the Holocaust does not have broader lessons – it absolutely does – but those lessons need to be rooted in a deep understanding of the historical facts and circumstances.
Another major problem in Holocaust education is that students often come away with a focus on the perpetrators – on Hitler, the Nazis, and the details of how the genocide was carried out – while the voices and experiences of the victims are sometimes lost in the process. It is crucial to remember that the six million Jews who were murdered were not just numbers. They were individuals, each with a story, a family, hopes, dreams, and a culture that was nearly erased. Jewish communities in Europe were diverse, vibrant centers of culture, religion, art, and intellectual life. Yiddish literature, theater, music, religious study – these were all thriving before the war. Thousands of towns and cities were emptied either partially or entirely, and an entire way of life that had evolved over centuries was violently destroyed. When we reduce the Holocaust to numbers or see it only in terms of evil perpetrators, we risk losing sight of what was really lost – the human beings, the families, and the incredible cultural richness that was almost entirely wiped out. By focusing on the stories of individuals – children whose lives were cut short, artists whose work was lost, religious leaders whose wisdom was extinguished – we can help students understand the profound human cost of the Holocaust.
Teaching the Holocaust effectively also means addressing what made this genocide possible. How could it happen? How could so many people be complicit, either actively or passively? How did a modern, industrialized country like Germany become a place where millions of innocent people were murdered in cold blood? These questions are not easy to answer, but they are essential if students are to truly understand the Holocaust. One key factor was the long history of antisemitism in Europe, which paved the way for the Nazi ideology to take root. Antisemitism was not new – it had been part of European society for centuries, and the Nazis were able to exploit existing prejudices and fears. They used modern technology – propaganda, the radio, the press – to spread their hateful ideology and to dehumanize Jews in the eyes of the German public. Bureaucracy also played a huge role. The Holocaust was, to a large extent, a “bureaucratic genocide,” carried out not by a handful of madmen but by thousands of ordinary clerks, railway workers, policemen, and soldiers, each of whom played a small role in the killing machine.
Historiographical debates surrounding the Holocaust add another layer of complexity to the topic. Two of the most prominent debates are the functionalist versus intentionalist interpretations and the Historikerstreit (“historians’ dispute”) of the 1980s. Functionalists argue that the Holocaust evolved gradually and was not the result of a single, premeditated plan by Adolf Hitler. They emphasize the chaotic and improvised nature of Nazi governance, suggesting that local initiatives and bureaucratic momentum led to the escalation of genocidal policies. Historians such as Hans Mommsen and Martin Broszat represent this view, arguing that Hitler’s role, while significant, was not one of a micromanager dictating every step of the Final Solution.
Intentionalists, on the other hand, maintain that the Holocaust was a deliberate plan masterminded by Hitler from the beginning. This perspective emphasizes Hitler’s ideological obsession with antisemitism, as seen in Mein Kampf and his public speeches, where he frequently referred to the “annihilation of the Jews.” Intentionalist historians, such as Lucy Dawidowicz and Eberhard Jäckel, argue that the Holocaust was the culmination of a long-standing plan to eliminate Europe’s Jewish population. These contrasting views shape how we understand the Holocaust – whether as the result of a chaotic and disorganized regime or as the fulfillment of a clear and unchanging ideological mission.
The Historikerstreit further complicated Holocaust historiography by raising questions about how the Holocaust should be contextualized within broader histories of violence and genocide. German historian Ernst Nolte argued that the Holocaust was not unique but part of a larger pattern of twentieth-century atrocities, including Soviet gulags. Nolte’s views sparked intense backlash, with critics like Jürgen Habermas accusing him of relativizing Nazi crimes and diminishing the Holocaust’s moral and historical significance. The debate highlighted deep divisions among historians over how to approach the Holocaust – as an event that stands apart or as one atrocity among many in an age of ideological conflict.
Understanding these debates is critical for educators because they influence how the Holocaust is taught in classrooms. Should the Holocaust be presented as the inevitable result of Hitler’s ideological hatred, or as a complex process driven by bureaucratic chaos and opportunism? Should it be contextualized within global histories of genocide, or treated as a unique event? These questions shape the narratives students encounter and affect how they interpret the Holocaust’s causes, consequences, and lessons.
In recent years, there has been a troubling rise in Holocaust denial and distortion. Surveys by the Claims Conference reveal that many young people are unaware of basic facts about the Holocaust, such as what Auschwitz was or even the number of Jews killed. This lack of knowledge makes students more susceptible to denialist arguments and misinformation. To combat this, it is crucial to teach students not just what happened during the Holocaust but also how we know what we know. Holocaust denial is not just about denying facts, it is about undermining the credibility of survivors, historians, and the very idea of historical evidence. Teaching students how historians verify facts, how we know what happened, and why it matters is essential. This means incorporating lessons on media literacy, primary and secondary sources, teaching students how to critically evaluate evidence, and showing them why denialist arguments are false. This is especially important in the age of social media, where misinformation can spread so quickly and where conspiracy theories thrive.
Jeffrey Glanz[5], in Ten Suggestions for Teaching the Holocaust (1999), advocates for “hands-on” and “minds-on” learning, emphasizing that students should actively engage with the material through reflective analysis rather than passive learning. Educators must focus on the specific aspects of the Holocaust – its historical context, the entrenched antisemitism that enabled it, and the societal structures that allowed it to happen. Holocaust education should go beyond simply transmitting historical facts, encouraging students to critically engage with how systemic hatred, conspiracy theories, and scapegoating can lead to mass violence. By framing antisemitism as the “oldest and most dangerous conspiracy theory,” educators can help students understand the deep roots of this prejudice and its persistence throughout history.
James Joyce once said, “In the particular is contained the universal.” We don’t need to tell students that the lesson of the Holocaust is not to be a bully – they will come to that conclusion themselves if they are given a deep understanding of what happened. The power of Holocaust education lies in the details – the particular stories of individuals, the specific historical circumstances, the choices people made. If students understand these details, they will understand the broader lessons.
Another key aspect of effective Holocaust education is the use of interdisciplinary methods. The Holocaust is not just a historical event – it is also a deeply moral, psychological, and cultural one. Literature, like the works of Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl or Elie Wiesel, can help students understand the emotional and personal aspects of the Holocaust in a way that pure history might not be able to. These personal accounts give a face to the victims, allowing students to see them not as numbers but as people. Psychology can help explain how ordinary people became complicit in such an atrocity. Studies on obedience, such as those by Stanley Milgram, show how people can be influenced to do things they would not normally do. Philosophy and ethics also play a crucial role in Holocaust education. Discussions about moral responsibility, the nature of evil, and the role of individual agency allow students to grapple with the ethical questions raised by the Holocaust. Was it possible for perpetrators to refuse to participate? What motivated bystanders to remain silent? These questions encourage students to think deeply about moral choices and about the factors that influence human behavior.
Experiential learning – such as visiting Holocaust museums, listening to survivor testimonies, or using virtual reality to explore historical sites – can also make a big difference. These experiences bring history to life and make it more immediate and real. Survivor testimonies, whether read, watched, or listened to, are incredibly powerful. They humanize the history and help students connect to it on an emotional level. They help students see the Holocaust not as an abstract historical event but as something that happened to real people, people like them.
The challenges of teaching the Holocaust in high school revolve around maintaining historical specificity while making the content accessible and impactful for students. The risks of universalizing the Holocaust, of losing its specificity, or of overwhelming students with its horrors, require a thoughtful approach. By using interdisciplinary methods, encouraging critical thinking, and providing meaningful engagement, educators can ensure that Holocaust education respects the memory of the victims and provides students with the understanding they need to recognize and combat hatred and bigotry today, equipping them with a nuanced understanding of one of history’s darkest chapters. Ultimately, the goal is to empower students not only with historical knowledge but also with the intellectual tools needed to recognize and combat the forms of hatred and bigotry that continue to threaten society today.
The stakes for Holocaust education could not be higher. In an era of rising antisemitism, misinformation, and historical revisionism, ensuring that students have a deep, critical, and empathetic understanding of the Holocaust is crucial. This means moving beyond superficial narratives and creating a learning environment that respects the complexity of history and honors the memory of those who suffered. Through thoughtful, reflective, and innovative approaches, educators can play a key role in ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust continue to resonate with future generations, fostering a commitment to justice, human dignity, and the prevention of future atrocities.
References
Aly, G. (2014). Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Metropolitan Books.
Chapman, A. (2015). Learning lessons of the Holocaust. UCL Press.
Cole, T. (1999). Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; how history is bought, packaged, and sold. Routledge.
Dawidowicz, L. S. (1975). The war against the Jews: 1933–1945. Bantam Books.
Feinberg, S., & Totten, S. (Eds.). (2009). Essentials of Holocaust education: Fundamental issues and approaches. Routledge.
Glanz, J. (1995). Ten suggestions for teaching the Holocaust. The Social Studies, 86(3), 111–113.
Habermas, J. (1989). A kind of settlement of damages: The Historikerstreit and the past that will not pass. New German Critique, (44), 25–39. https://doi.org/10.2307/488496
Mommsen, H. (1986). The realization of the unthinkable: The “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in the Third Reich. Contemporary European History, 1(1), 7–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777300000045
Novick, P. (1999). The Holocaust in American life. Houghton Mifflin.
Slezkine, Y. (2004). The Jewish century. Princeton University Press.
Stone, D. (2010). Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press.
[1] Pearce, A. (2020). Challenges, issues and controversies: The shapes of ‘Holocaust education’ in the early twenty-first century. In A. Pearce, S. Foster, & A. Pettigrew (Eds.), Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies (pp. 1–27). UCL Press. doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15d7zpf.7
[2] Novick, P. (2000). The Holocaust in American life. Mariner Books.
[3] Chapman, A. (2020). Learning the lessons of the Holocaust: A critical exploration. In S. Foster, A. Pearce, & A. Pettigrew (Eds.), Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies (pp. 50–73). UCL Press. doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15d7zpf.9
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