The news that some teachers in NSW schools are shying away from teaching the Holocaust because of pushback from students is perhaps not surprising, but it is disturbing.
History teacher Gregory Keith delved into the topic and found that almost a quarter of the fellow teachers he surveyed encountered racism and antisemitism in the classroom when the topic of the Holocaust was broached.
Teaching the Holocaust is a key part of the NSW history curriculum, but more than 10 per cent of the 80 teachers surveyed by Keith said they did not teach it in years 9 and 10.
Just over 30 per cent spend less than two hours covering it, The Sun-Herald’s education editor Christopher Harris reported.
Keith’s study, published last year before the horrific Bondi attack, contains anecdotal but revealing accounts, including from a teacher who decided not to teach The Diary of Anne Frank because of students’ views on Jewish people.
In another account, a student had made a Nazi salute in the classroom, while another teacher said one student had expressed views on the “deservedness” of what happened to Jews in the Holocaust.
All sensible people would be repelled by such views.
A NSW Department of Education spokesman dismissed Keith’s research as not an accurate “representation of the views or experiences of NSW public school teachers”.
A NSW Education Standards Authority spokeswoman said: “A survey of 75 teachers, out of 180,000 teachers across NSW, does not provide a relative snapshot of the work the profession does in this space.”
The Sun-Herald does not believe that Keith’s research offers a definitive, all-encompassing analysis of antisemitism in schools. It aims to be qualitative, not comprehensive.
But it is important that the views of individual teachers be heard, and the fact that some of them are reporting that antisemitism is interfering with teaching cannot be ignored.
It is right to have sympathy with teachers who must navigate topics that require students to show maturity as they confront sometimes horrific source material.
The revised history curriculum, due to start next year, seems a welcome step in this direction, provided it comes with more resources and more support for those required to teach it.
It includes increased focus on the Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials and the postwar Genocide Convention.
Likewise, the federal government-established Antisemitism Education Taskforce is likely to provide more tools to help education authorities stamp out racism when it completes its work at the end of this year.
Strongly held views on the Israel-Palestine war are common, and legitimate differences of opinion must be respected, but they should not be allowed to cloud the teaching of historical fact.
Thorough and nuanced teaching of the Holocaust is vital for many reasons, not least because it may help to combat antisemitic views among students.
It is also essential, of course, because an understanding of the Holocaust is a core part of understanding modern history.
The conditions in which fascism first took root, the incremental changes to German society that led to totalitarian terror, contain lessons that remain urgent today.
All students should be given the opportunity to learn them.
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