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Holocaust Education in England: Concerns, Controversies and Challenges

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The Palgrave Handbook of Britain and the Holocaust

Abstract

Teaching and learning about the Holocaust in schools has a long and established history in England and on the surface it would appear that Holocaust education has made considerable progress since it was first established in the curriculum in 1991. Furthermore, not only has the Holocaust maintained its pre-eminent position in the history National Curriculum through 5 major curriculum revisions over the past three decades, but, in the most recent 2014 curriculum iteration, the Holocaust now enjoys the privileged position of being the only compulsory subject of study in the twentieth century for students aged 11–14.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Andy Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain (New York: Routledge, 2014); Lucy Russell, “Teaching the Holocaust History: Policy and Classroom Perspectives”. Unpublished PhD thesis, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2005. Britain has a devolved education system. As a result, funding, policy and curriculum developments vary within the separate nations of the United Kingdom (i.e., England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). Although it is likely that similar issues and challenges are shared across Britain, this chapter broadly focuses on matters which relate to Holocaust education in England.

  2. 2.

    Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain.

  3. 3.

    Cabinet Office, Britain’s Promise to Remember: The Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission Report (London: Cabinet Office, 2015).

  4. 4.

    Stuart Foster, Alice Pettigrew, Andy Pearce, Rebecca Hale, Adrian Burgess, Paul Salmons, and Ruth-Anne Lenga, What Do Students Know and Understand About the Holocaust? Evidence from English Secondary Schools (London: UCL Institute of Education, 2016); Michael Gray, “Preconceptions of the Holocaust Among Thirteen and Fourteen Year Olds in English Schools”. Unpublished PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University of London, 2014; Alice Pettigrew, Stuart Foster, Jonathan Howson, Paul Salmons, Ruth-Anne Lenga, and Kay Andrews, Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary School: An Empirical Study of National Trends, Perspectives and Practice (London: Institute of Education, 2009).

  5. 5.

    Stuart Foster Eleni Karayianni, “Portrayals of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks, 1991–2016: Continuities Challenges and Concerns.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 23 (3) (2017): 314–344; Nicholas Kinloch, “Learning About the Holocaust: Moral or Historical Question?” Teaching History 93 (1998): 44–46; Andy Pearce, “The Holocaust in the National Curriculum After 25 Years.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 23 (3): 231–263; Alice Pettigrew, “Why Teach or Learn About the Holocaust? Teaching Aims and Student Knowledge in English Secondary Schools.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 23 (3) (2017): 263–288; Lucy Russell, Teaching the Holocaust in School History (London: Continuum, 2006); Paul Salmons, “Teaching or Preaching? The Holocaust and Intercultural Education in the UK.” Intercultural Education 14 (2) (2003): 139–149; Geoffrey Short, “Teaching About the Holocaust: A Consideration of Ethical and Pedagogic Issues.” Educational Studies 20 (1) (1994): 53–67; Idem., “Learning from Genocide? A Study in the Failure of Holocaust Education?” Intercultural Education 16 (4) (2005): 367–380.

  6. 6.

    Pettigrew, et al., Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary Schools; Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain.

  7. 7.

    The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance unites governments and experts to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, research and remembrance and to uphold the commitments to the 2000 Stockholm Declaration. “The IHRA (formerly the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, or ITF) was initiated in 1998 by former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson. Today the IHRA’s membership consists of 31 member countries. IHRA has produced educational guidelines for teachers which cover nine primary areas including recommendations on “why, what and how to teach about the Holocaust”. The guidelines are internationally recognised as the key guiding principles for intelligent and sensitive Holocaust education (see, www.holocaustremembrance.com/educational-materials).

  8. 8.

    See for instance: Susan Hector, “Teaching the Holocaust in England” in Teaching the Holocaust: Educational Dimensions, Principles and Practice, edited by Ian Davies (London: Continuum, 2000): 105–116; Kinloch, “Learning About the Holocaust”; Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness; Pettigrew, “Why Teach or Learn About the Holocaust?”; Russell, Teaching About the Holocaust; Salmons, ‘“Teaching or Preaching?”’; Short, “Teaching About the Holocaust”; Idem., “Learning About Genocide”; Carrie Supple, “The Teaching of the Nazi Holocaust in North Tyneside, Newcastle and Northumberland Secondary Schools”. Unpublished PhD thesis, Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 1992; Samuel Totten, Stephen Feinberg, and William Fernekes. 2001. “The Significance of Rationale Statements in Developing a Sound Holocaust Education Program” in Teaching and Studying the Holocaust, edited by Samuel Totten and Stephen Feinberg (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2001): 1–16.

  9. 9.

    For the full list of content topics provided see Pettigrew et al., Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary School, Appendix V, pp. 124–125.

  10. 10.

    Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).

  11. 11.

    It is important to note that schools which had worked closely with the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education did not participate in the study. In other words, the national study was designed to reveal practice that was not directly influenced by the Centre.

  12. 12.

    David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992); David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949 (London: MacMillan, 2016); Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1996); Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987); Robert Welker, “Searching for the Educational Imperative in Holocaust Curricula” in New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars, edited by Rochelle Millen (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 99–121.

  13. 13.

    Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Mary Fulbrook, Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

  14. 14.

    Foster et al., What Do Students Know and Understand About the Holocaust?; Stuart Foster, “Myths, Misconceptions and Mis-Memory: Holocaust Education in England” in Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings, edited by Andy Pearce (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 239–256.

  15. 15.

    Pettigrew et al., Teaching About the Holocaust.

  16. 16.

    David Canadine, Jenny Keating, and Nicola Sheldon, The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

  17. 17.

    Foster et al., What Do Students Know and Understand? pp. 215–216.

  18. 18.

    A key problem for schools is the difficulty of releasing teachers from their daily teaching duties to attend professional development courses. With increasing pressure on school budgets, many schools are reluctant to pay for supply or substitute teachers to “cover” teacher participation on courses. Thus, fewer teachers are able to access professional development courses.

  19. 19.

    Peter Carrier, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Torben Messinger, The International Status of Education About the Holocaust: A Global Mapping of Textbooks and Curricula (Paris: UNESCO/Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, 2015); Stuart Foster and Adrian Burgess, “Problematic Portrayals and Contentious Content: Representations of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 5 (2) (2013): 20–38; Foster and Karayianni, “Portrayals of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks”; Barbara Wenzeler, “The Presentation of the Holocaust in German and English School History Textbooks: A Comparative Study.” International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 3 (2) (2003): 107–118.

  20. 20.

    Doyle E. Stevick and Deborah Michaels. 2013. “Empirical and Normative Foundations of Holocaust Education: Bringing Research and Advocacy into Dialogue.” Intercultural Education 24 (1–2) (2013): 1–18.

  21. 21.

    Years 9–13 broadly includes students who are 14–18 years of age.

  22. 22.

    David Cesarani, “From the Pulpit: Striped Pyjamas.” Literary Review 359 (3) (2008); Michael Gray, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: A Blessing or Curse for Holocaust Education?” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 20 (3) (2014): 109–136; Foster et al., What Do Students Know and Understand?.

  23. 23.

    Gray, “Preconceptions of the Holocaust”, p. 178.

  24. 24.

    Cesarani, “From the Pulpit”.

  25. 25.

    Gray, “Preconceptions of the Holocaust”, p. 174.

  26. 26.

    Foster et al., What Do Students Know and Understand? p. 93.

  27. 27.

    Cesarani, Final Solution, xxv.

  28. 28.

    Paul Salmons, “This Holocaust Memorial Day Don’t Oversimplify the Story” (2014). Online. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/6335ae00-2cdc-371d-8619-6976e7035050, accessed 9 February, 2018.

  29. 29.

    Deborah Dwork, “A Critical Assessment of a Landmark Study.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 23 (3) (2017): 385–395. 388.

  30. 30.

    Foster et al., What Do Students Know and Understand? p. 219.

  31. 31.

    Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History Is Bought and Sold (New York: Routledge, 1999); Duncan Bell, “Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity.” British Journal of Sociology 54 (1) (2003): 63–81.

  32. 32.

    Yehuda Bauer, “Foreword” to What Do Students Know and Understand About the Holocaust? Evidence from English Secondary Schools, Stuart Foster, Alice Pettigrew, Andy Pearce, Rebecca Hale, Adrian Burgess, Paul Salmons, and Ruth-Anne Lenga (London: UCL Institute of Education, 2016): xi.

  33. 33.

    See for instance, Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution; Browning, Ordinary Men; Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Idem, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (London: Vintage, 2005); Ian Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

  34. 34.

    Tom Lawson, “Britain’s Promise to Forget: Some Historiographical Reflections on What Do Students Know and Understand About the Holocaust?” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 23 (3) (2017): 345–363. 352.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 359.

  36. 36.

    Pettigrew, “Why Teach and Learn About the Holocaust?” p. 219.

  37. 37.

    Foster et al., What Do Students Know and Understand? p. 219.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., p. 204.

  39. 39.

    Cabinet Office, Britain’s Promise to Remember, p. 21.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 23.

  41. 41.

    Vera Fast, Childrens Exodus: A History of the Kindertransport (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011); Rebekka Gopfert and Andrea Hammel,“Kindertransport: History and Memory.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (1) (2004): 21–27; Diane Samuels, Kindertransport (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

  42. 42.

    Martin Gilbert, The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996).

  43. 43.

    David Cesarani and Tony Kushner, eds. The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1993); Tony Kushner, Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies: How the Allies Responded to the News of Hitler’s Final Solution (London: Mandarin 1991); Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1979).

  44. 44.

    Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society During the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); London, Whitehall and the Jews.

  45. 45.

    See for instance, David Cesarani, Britain and the Holocaust (London: Holocaust Educational Trust, 1998); London, Whitehall and the Jews; Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe.

  46. 46.

    Tony Kushner, “The Holocaust in the British Imagination: The Official Mind and Beyond, 1945 to the Present.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 23 (3) (2017): 364–384. 365.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 378–379.

  48. 48.

    Lawson, “Britain’s Promise to Forget”, p. 350.

  49. 49.

    Kushner, “The Holocaust in the British Imagination”, p. 378.

  50. 50.

    Lawson, “Britain’s Promise to Forget”, p. 360.

  51. 51.

    Impact studies conducted by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education in 2016, 2017, and 2018 clearly evidence that student knowledge and understanding significantly improves when schools work closely with the Centre.

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  1. UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

    Stuart Foster

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  1. Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

    Tom Lawson

  2. UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

    Andy Pearce

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Foster, S. (2020). Holocaust Education in England: Concerns, Controversies and Challenges. In: Lawson, T., Pearce, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Britain and the Holocaust. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55932-8_18

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