Translating globalization theories into educational research: thoughts on recent shifts in Holocaust education (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Process of the Universalization of Holocaust Education: Problems and Challenges
Contemporary Jewry, 2017
This article discusses the process of the universalization of Holocaust education and sets its conceptual and educational framework, highlighting its pedagogical challenges and hazards. It explores the phenomenon of the universalization of Holocaust education as a means to combat racism and to analyze how a particularistic educational issue has become the subject of global, universalistic concern. Through reviewing current literature, it argues that the complexity of this approach needs to be considered, particularly with the increasing violence and xenophobia in the world. Drawing on the paradigm of the Holocaust, this universal approach to anti-racist education to promote peace and harmony globally within civil society has been promoted as a way of countering prejudice. However, there are pitfalls to seeking universal lessons from a particularistic event. These challenges can be addressed to advance anti-racist education using the Holocaust as a case study and thus developing a reflective culture of remembrance.
The Olga Lengyel Institute and Intercultural Institute Timisoara, 2022
This Handbook was inspired by the work with thousands of teachers in Europe, carried out by The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI), together with its partners in 10 European countries, over the last 10 years. The interdisciplinary approach that we propose in this handbook combines the approaches and methods of Holocaust education, human rights education and intercultural education, with the aim to guide students to learn about the past, understand the way in which the past is connected with the present and contribute to the development of democratic and intercultural societies in which every individual can live a life of dignity. This interdisciplinary methodology uses the lens of human rights to help teachers and students understand how an event like the Holocaust was possible, how the propaganda functioned and how the rights of Jewish people – and people belonging to other groups – were taken away progressively. At the same time, through the lens of the Holocaust, we can understand that today we need to take action when human rights are violated or at risk of being violated for members of any group living in our societies. This methodology develops students’ critical thinking and their ability to challenge populist messages that are becoming prevalent in European societies and elsewhere in the world. It raises their awareness about the unfair treatment of various groups in their society and about the need to take action. In this handbook, teachers can find: a rationale for an interdisciplinary approach combining Holocaust education, human rights education and intercultural education; an explanation of the ways in which this interdisciplinary approach can lead to the development of competences for democratic culture; an overview of the methodologies which are best suited for an interdisciplinary approach; a set of educational activities that can be used by the teachers with their students; as well as recommendations for further reading.
PROSPECTS, 2010
This article examines Holocaust education in secondary school social science textbooks around the world since 1970, using data coded from 465 textbooks from 69 countries. It finds that books and countries more connected to world society and with an accompanying emphasis on human rights, diversity in society and a depiction of international, rather than national, society are more likely to discuss the Holocaust. Additionally, textbooks from Western countries contain more discussion of the Holocaust, although the rate is increasing in Eastern European and other non-Western countries, suggesting eventual convergence. We also find a shift in the nature of discussion, from a historical event to a violation of human rights or crime against humanity. These findings broadly support the arguments of neo-institutional theories that the social and cultural realms of the contemporary world are increasingly globalized and that notions of human rights are a central feature of world society.
Teaching History, 2010
In this powerfully argued article Paul Salmons focuses directly on the distinctive contribution that a historical approach to the study of the Holocaust makes to young people’s education. Not only does he question the adequacy of objectives focused on eliciting purely emotional responses; he issues a strong warning that turning to the Holocaust in search of universal moral lessons – ‘lessons’ that merely confirm what we already believe – risks serious distortion of the past. Citing widespread use of the Holocaust as a rhetorical device, Salmons’ contention is that failure to engage with its historical and highly complex reality in fact leaves young people open to manipulation and coercion from those who would use the past to push their own social or political agendas. What he offers here is not merely a justification for the Holocaust’s position as a compulsory element of the school history curriculum – but a fundamental defence of the place of history in school.
2021
This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides found in curricula, textbooks and pupils’ writings in twenty-two countries in Europe and in Turkey. It focuses on conceptualisations of events, protagonists, effects and aftereffects of the events, the timescale and spatial scale ascribed to them, the points of view of implied readers and authors, and the causes of the Holocaust and of other instances of extreme violence. This supplementary material is based on data collected in 2016 and 2017 and is representative not of national historical understandings, but of understandings expressed in specific places at a specific time.