04-01-2020, 21:05 | #1 |
Registered User
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Teaching history without instilling hatred.
Quick question. How does one teach history in a way that informs without instilling hatred. For example, teaching Israeli children about the holocaust could potentially inspire hatred against the Germans. There are of course many other examples within countries and between countries and ethnic groups, all around the world. So, again, how should violent history be taught so that it does not inspire hatred? I have some ideas but none that are satisfactory.
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04-01-2020, 22:54 | #3 |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 4,988
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Quick answer – look at the thousand or so history grads that leave NUI+TCD annually, many of them progressing to educate young schoolchildren. Those graduates are taught disgracefully, force-fed bigotry. Rabid brats, all of them, ranting and raving, writing letters to the papers, trying to string people up from lampposts, burning embassies, bonfires of books, smashing windows, etc. Kristallnacht isn’t in it! When will we learn!!?
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04-01-2020, 23:04 | #4 |
Banned
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The first thing I would say is that history in schools needs to be focused on optimising the learning experience of children -- inculcating an interest in the past, developing critical thinking, argumentative writing, etc. Too many in Ireland think that the purpose of junior cycle history is to bring children up to scratch on all the salient events of the past, often for political reasons. There seems to be a belief that if they don't learn about them then, they never will.
I don't think that learning about past horrors has a tendency to arouse hatred. In Ireland, we are taught about the Viking invasions and the Cromwellian Plantation. The first involved raping and pillaging, yet it's only the second that arouses continued outrage. That's a consequence of culture. If Israeli culture remains resentful of Germany, no approach to teaching the Holocaust will avoid engendering hatred. |
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