Geoffrey Short

University of Hertfordshire | UH · School of Education (G.A.Short2@herts.ac.uk)

The benefits and dangers of teaching about the Holocaust in both secondary and primary schools

Holocaust education in England and Wales received a major boost in 1990 when, as part of the National Curriculum, it became a mandatory subject of study for all secondary aged students in the maintained sector. Many schools in the United States have also been teaching the Holocaust for some time (usually to students in grades 8 to 10), but in contr...

The article explores whether faith-based schools are necessarily a threat to social cohesion.

The article argues that faith-baed schools are not necessarily a threat to social cohesion; indeed, they can reinforce it.

In this article I seek to encourage those involved in Holocaust education in schools to engage not just with the Holocaust but also with its aftermath. I conceptualise the latter in terms of two questions; namely, what happened to those Jews who survived the Nazi onslaught and what became of the perpetrators? British researchers in the field of Hol...

The chief premise underpinning this chapter is that the Holocaust contains valuable lessons relating to the nature of racism and the measures necessary to prevent genocide. It is argued that Holocaust education fails insofar as students remain unaware of these lessons or learn inappropriate ones. With reference to research carried out in Britain an...

There is good reason to believe that anti-Semitism is rife in Muslim communities across the world. Consequently, one might expect that teaching the Holocaust in schools with a substantial Muslim presence would prove a difficult and stressful experience. In this article, I draw on a diverse body of literature to argue for a more nuanced approach to...

Investigations into how the Holocaust is taught in UK secondary schools have tended to focus on problems resulting from inappropriate teaching, inadequate resourcing or the allocation of insufficient time. No research has examined how aspects of the student body, such as its ethno-religious identity, might frustrate the efforts of teachers. This la...

The importance of learning lessons from the Holocaust and from the mass slaughter in Rwanda was recognised in the theme underpinning Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day in 2004. This article is principally concerned with the lessons learnt from the Holocaust by a culturally diverse group of students aged 14 to 16. They all attended schools in an outer...

Contrasting explanations of Jewish survival form the backdrop to this article. For Jonathan Sacks (1994) the crucial factor has been the role played by Jewish education; indeed, he claims that the demographic threat currently facing Anglo‐Jewry is largely the result of the community having neglected the Jewish education of its children over the pas...

The Holocaust currently forms part of the National Curriculum in England and Wales and is mandatory in several other countries. Its teaching is frequently justified on the grounds of providing a range of important lessons. However, in recent years this claim has met with a growing scepticism, not least because of the persistence of genocide over th...

Michael Hand has recently advocated the abolition of faith schools on the grounds that they may indoctrinate their pupils. In this rejoinder, I aim to show that the assumptions underpinning his thesis are seriously flawed. Initially, I question whether faith schools set out to indoctrinate. I then consider whether they are able to do so (particular...

Recent years have witnessed the beginnings of a debate over whether the Holocaust should be taught in primary schools. In this article the claims advanced in favour of the proposal are shown to be plausible but lacking in empirical support, while the counter-claims are considered either peripheral, contentious or contrary to established research. I...

Recent years have witnessed the beginnings of a debate over whether the Holocaust should be taught in primary schools. In this article the claims advanced in favour of the proposal are shown to be plausible but lacking in empirical support, while the counter-claims are considered either peripheral, contentious or contrary to established research. I...

In February 2001, the British government announced its willingness to expand the number of faith schools where there was ‘clear local demand’. Predictably, the decision aroused widespread controversy, with much of the criticism centring on the allegedly divisive nature of such schools; segregated education was seen by some detractors as inevitably...

The British government recently announced its willingness to expand the number of state–funded faith schools. It was a decision that aroused considerable controversy, with much of the unease centring around the allegedly divisive nature of such schools. In this article I defend faith schools against the charge that they necessarily undermine social...

In February 2001 the British government announced its commitment to increase the number of schools run by the churches and other religious groups where there was 'clear local demand from parents and the community'. The decision met with approval in some quarters, but was condemned elsewhere on the grounds that such schools, in a multicultural socie...

Studies of Holocaust education in secondary schools have tended to focus on how the subject is taught as part of the history curriculum. Comparatively little work of either a theoretical or an empirical nature has looked at how the subject is handled in other curricular areas. Religious education is a case in point, for the field is marked both by...

The premise underpinning this article is that if the Holocaust is taught well it can help to promote anti-racist goals. The need to realise the Holocaust's anti-racist potential is self-evident, but is arguably greatest where conventional anti-racism (aimed at enhancing the life chances of visible minorities) is under threat. Such a situation curre...

This article deals with the role of the Holocaust museum as an educational resource. It presents a case study of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and considers its strengths and weaknesses in the light of research into how the Holocaust is taught in British and North American high schools. Among other things, that research shows that...

This article was published in the journal, International Studies in Sociology of Education [© Taylor and Francis]. The definitive version: Carrington, B. et al, 2000. The recruitment of new teachers from minority ethnic groups. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 10 (1), is available at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09620214....

This article reports on part of a larger, ongoing two-year investigation supported by the Teacher Training Agency into the recruitment of new teachers from minority ethnic backgrounds via Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in England. The authors focus here on interviews with admissions tutors, course directors and other senior st...

An assumption implicit in antiracist education is that students who learn about racism and who subsequently come to hold antiracist attitudes will tend to act in accordance with those attitudes. The existence of countervailing forces leading such students to active or passive complicity in racism seems never to have been acknowledged in antiracist...

In her highly publicised polemic, All Must Have Prizes (1996), Melanie Phillips launches a scathing attack upon the British educational establishment and various facets of policy and practice during the past three decades. She is especially critical of progressivism and approaches to teaching and learning supposedly predicated upon relativist princ...

Holocaust education in England and Wales received a major boost in 1990 when, as part of the National Curriculum, it became a mandatory subject of study for all secondary aged students in the maintained sector. Many schools in the United States have also been teaching the Holocaust for some time (usually to students in grades 8 to 10), but in contr...

In this paper we assess the potential of Holocaust education as a medium for developing ‘maximalist’ notions of citizenship among students of secondary school age. Particular attention is given to the contribution that such teaching can make to the realisation of anti‐racist goals. Because of the dearth of published work in the UK on the effects of...

The failure of antiracist educators in the United Kingdom to engage seriously with the issue of anti‐Semitism provides the background to this article. With specific reference to the Holocaust, it argues that a lack of interest among antiracists in how the subject is taught has had a number of adverse consequences. These include the forfeiture of a...

Compared to the literature on children's racial and ethnic identities, relatively little is known about their understanding of national identity. Such knowledge is necessary if schools are to challenge racism, xenophobia and ethnocentrism effectively. In this paper, we present the findings of a case‐study (undertaken in a mainly‐white Edinburgh pri...

Little is known about the impact on children in primary schools of what is currently referred to as the new racism. This dearth of research is a major concern, for if young children are influenced by such thinking, the implications for anti‐racist education are considerable. In this paper we present ethnographic data on the development of understan...

In this paper I examine the prospects of Ethiopian children integrating successfully into the Israeli school system. My specific concern is that the children will experience in Israel the same sort of difficulties that beset Afro-Caribbean children in Britain when assimilation and later integration were the dominant concerns of educational policy m...

During the past decade, the cultural restorationist wing of the New Right has sought to impose its own anachronistic and sentimental conception of ‘British culture’ on schools and colleges. This conception, which is little more than a glib celebration of quintessential ‘Englishness’, characterises the national culture in largely monolithic and ethn...

Following the recent publication of the Model Syllabuses for Religious Education, this paper considers some of the arguments surrounding multi‐faith teaching. Focusing specifically on children learning about Judaism, it reports the findings of two studies. The first, involving 12‐ and 13‐year‐olds, offers prima facie support to those who criticise...

The Holocaust is now part of the history curriculum for all 11‐14‐year olds in maintained schools in England and Wales. In this paper it is argued that for the Holocaust to be taught effectively, teachers will need to have some idea of how children within this age group perceive Jewish culture and identity. The empirical core of the paper attempts...

The recently revived debate between proponents of multicultural and antiracist education provides the starting point for this paper. Whilst not advocating an exclusively multicultural focus, the paper nonetheless seeks to defend multiculturalism against its antiracist critics. It does so in two ways. The first is by showing that the criticisms of i...

The Holocaust is now part of the history curriculum for all 11‐14 year‐olds in maintained schools in England and Wales. This paper directs attention to some of the ethical and pedagogic issues involved in teaching the subject. In particular, concern is expressed at the dangers of teaching it in ways likely to promote anti‐Semitism. Other ethical is...

This paper is concerned with explanations of sex‐typed behaviour in primary school children. Three explanations are considered. The first is in terms of social pressures to conform to the norms of society. The second focuses on children's intellectual commitment to the ‘truth’ of gender stereotypes, whilst the third is an amalgam of the first two....

This paper is centrally concerned with criticism of inter‐racial contact as a means of improving race relations. It aims, amongst other things, to highlight the damaging implications of the criticism on practices hitherto thought useful in combating racial prejudice. The main focus of the paper is the charge that a reduction in prejudice towards in...

Since the mid‐1980s many schools in predominantly white areas have taken active steps to counter racism and ethnocentrism and raise awareness of Britain's ethnic diversity through curriculum development. This paper is primarily concerned with the ethical issues raised by research into such initiatives at primary school level. We begin by alluding v...

There are many similarities between anti-Semitism and other forms of ethnic and racial prejudice. Yet while British educationalists have in recent years given much attention to the impact of racism on people of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian descent, they have all but ignored the problem of anti-Semitism. There is no research in Britain on the natu...

This paper is concerned with the literature on teacher training for a multiracial society. Specifically it maintains that the literature has failed to consider the implications for training institutions of a particular type of racism. As a result, committed (or explicit) racists may have been allowed to enter the teaching profession. It is claimed...

This article is concerned with two aspects of the debate over teaching the Holocaust in schools. The first is whether the subject ought to form part of the curriculum; the second is whether it can be taught effectively. In respect of the former, it is argued that the Holocaust ought not only to be studied in schools but should be introduced to chil...

This paper describes an initiative to promote social justice in two groups of primary aged children. The initiative was concerned with the extent to which first‐ and third‐year juniors can apply principles of unfair discrimination to issues of gender, ‘race’ and social class having been taught the principles in contexts unrelated to structural ineq...

This paper is concerned with the role of education in promoting social justice. It deals specifically with the development of children's understanding of social class, not because this particular form of inequality is considered more important than any other, but because of the inadequacies of extant research. It is argued that unless we know how c...

In this paper, we outline a number of strategies to obviate resistance to anti‐racist education, especially in ‘all‐white’ areas. Drawing upon psychological research on attitude formation and change, we argue that there is a clear need to re‐think the packaging and targeting of such policies in order to broaden their appeal. It is our contention th...

Although the Swann Committee's Report on the education of children from ethnic minority groups in Great Britain (1985) generally embraces a cultural pluralist rather than antiracist perspective on education, it nevertheless acknowledges that all schools (irrespective of phase, ethnic composition or location) should play a more active role in challe...

Following an analysis of current responses to the ideologies of multicultural and anti‐racist education, the findings of a survey of student teachers’ perceptions of the role of the school in a multiracial society are presented. The survey suggests that prospective primary teachers may be more amenable towards contemporary policy initiatives in thi...

The Interim Report of the Rampton Committee (1981) claimed that unintentional racism is widespread within the teaching profession and contributes, via the self‐fulfilling prophecy, to the relative academic failure of West Indian children. This paper examines both aspects of the claim, dealing with the latter in terms of the model of teacher expecta...

Executive Summary and Recommendations This report draws together the outcomes of a programme of research that has extended over two years. The project, which was financed by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), aimed to fill some important gaps in our understanding of issues surrounding the recruitment of people from ethnic minorities into the teachi...