In another Holocaust-related headline, a New York state teacher was put on leave after assigning six graders a writing exercise in which they would to pretend to be Nazis.
According to an article in Jezebel, the ill-advised prompt went like this: “You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!"
Imagination is one thing, but do we truly need to put ourselves in the shoes of Nazis in order to better under the horrors of the Holocaust?
Needless to say, the nameless teacher has been put on leave while the equally nameless school deals with ensuing media attention and decides on an appropriate course of disciplinary action for the teacher.
Vague as to whether or not the teacher faces termination. Cue the sensitivity training.
"You asked a child to support the notion that the Holocaust was justified, that's my struggle," said school superintendent, Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard. "It's an illogical leap for a student to make."
As the Jezebel article states: "nothing ever good comes from pretending that you’re a Nazi."
Better to, say, pretend you're a "monstrous verminous bug" a la Kafka. Not a bad metaphor while we're at it...
Did the exercise go too far, or is there inherent value in understanding an ideology we don't support?
Printer-friendly version