I don’t understand the significance of this news. If I were going to ask students to defend an indefensible argument and (unfortunately) chose something as sensitive as denial of the Holocaust, I’d go to Google and search for “holocaust hoax” and copy some text from one of those BS websites as a basis for their side. Does this mean the teacher is a holocaust denier? Of course not. Doesn’t mean that the teacher is not one either, but so far we have no evidence at all either way.
There’s no there, here. I see that many of the comments on this page are dissecting the text of the Holocast denial site. Yes, they’re nutjobs. That says nothing about the teacher, either way.
The whole concept of this assignment is seriously flawed. It assumes there is actually a credible argument to make that the Holocaust did not happen, and that means that a student who makes that argument well could receive an “A” for arguing something that is completely contrary to fact.
If you want students to debate one or another side of an issue as an exercise in developing critical thinking skills, choose a question in which a reasonable case can be made for either side. “Should the US continue with a manned space program?” for example.
I think Common Core is the only reason this story has made the news at all – because conservatives want so, so badly to have negative stories with the words “Common Core” in them. The only connection is that Common Core mandates that kids learn to make a logical argument. Yet you’ll find a lot of people blaming the standards for this situation.
Before seeing this latest item about where they sourced this, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m naturally sympathetic to pedagogy that encourages critical thinking, even when it involves questioning why generally accepted facts are generally accepted.
There is a warehouse in Germany where are stored literally millions of documents, photos, films, diaries, letters, much of which was produced by those tasked with carrying out the “final solution” .
This evidence is what German and other prosecutors used against those tried for Nazi war crimes.
Alas, there is a significant segment of any population, usually those with little on no formal education. who just do not understand evidence and the epistemological concept of how we know what we know.
Worse, people who have a need for belief in conspiracies simply rationalize evidence away as contrived or fabricated.
One simply cannot have a rational discussion with such people.
Don’t waste your time.
Also, no one has ever claimed that all 6 million of them were gassed, as that site assumes. We know that they weren’t; some were shot; others were locked in buildings that were subsequently burned; some died of starvation or disease or overwork in the camps. But yes, at the end of the war 6 million Jews (and about 6 million non-Jews) were completely missing, and the deniers have never explained how this could be from any other cause but mass murder.
This reminds me of the “teach the controversy” approach used by Creationists. Rather than teaching consensus science, Creationists argue that both sides of argument be presented and then let the children decide which one makes more sense. On the surface it sounds reasonable, but in fact it isn’t because it legitimizes the absurd proposal as somehow being on equal footing with the known facts.
Doesn’t look like the teacher is taking a side but merely providing his students with a lesson in arguing against online insanity that is quite pervasive.
The lynch mob mentality against a teacher using outside the norm methods is more disturbing than the assignment. If my kid came home with this, I’d first be relieved he doesn’t have to do some Common Core crap, then I’d be thrilled he was about to get an A on an easy assignment.
It’s nothing more than an exercise in critical thinking our schools so dreadfully lack today. Idiots think the Holocaust didn’t exist. Prove them wrong. What’s the big deal?
Reading that bit of slipshod nonsense disguised as an “essay assignment” turned my stomach.
Whoever was responsible for making this assignment and linking it to long-debunked bullshit from a website dedicated to denying the Holocaust should be summarily fired.
Not only is this the worst kind of historical revisionism, it’s also unvarnished anti-Semitism and has no place in American educational institutions.
Yes, the popularity of revisionism among academics can really feed into this rewriting of history to suit your political ends.
(As an aside, the original term of deconstruction meant simply to lay bare the structure, make the inner workings of something accessible to knowledge and understanding. It certainly has degenerated in practical use into the debased form of ‘the text doesn’t say what it means to say,’ only I know what it means, etc.)
I don’t get Holocaust deniers. The Nazis never denied it. They left behind plenty of records. And there are witnesses. How is there a question? How is this an actual assignment? Did yesterday really happen or was it a hoax? Can you prove yesterday actually occurred? Scientific tests are inconclusive.
And the absurd logic that “tragically, many died of typhus or starvation, as often happens in such situations,” but it’s okay because none of them were gassed.
No, the scary part is these sorts of ideas were directly introduced to school children by a trusted authority figure that should be looked to for education questions…namely, their teachers.
Oh, my. It’s just barely possible that someone thought that they were doing this as a lesson in rhetoric or propaganda, and went terribly terribly off course. But no.
