Stop shocking our kids about Holocaust: Minister tells teachers.

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Stop shocking our kids about Holocaust, minister tells teachers​

More than 1,200 teachers attend Yad Vashem conference on how to instill the memory and heritage of the Holocaust to today's students • Education Minister Shay Piron tells teachers: We invest too much time on hatred and shocking our students

More than 1,200 educators attended a conference on Monday at the Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies to discuss the current role of teachers in instilling the memory and heritage of the Holocaust among the youth.

Speaking at the conference, Education Minister Shay Piron criticized the current method of teaching as focusing too much on victimhood, hate and shock value and not enough on compassion and hope.

"Dwelling on the victim, on the pain, on what was done to us, that's the easy part. Delving into our identity, asking what is a teacher's duty and what you teachers will do tomorrow in class, that's the challenge," the education minister said.

"We invest too much time on hatred and on shocking our students, thinking that if they are not shocked then we didn't do our job. This approach underestimates the atmosphere that creates a holocaust, remaining within the realm of tears and not advancing social change, justice, and concern for the weak," Piron said.

"If we don't present the Holocaust as a source of human compassion and recognition of the rights of others, then we will have failed in our task. In order to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, we must deal with lessons rather than stories, and we need to change the discourse," Piron went on to say.

"In this way, our history will become the map to our future. I want to ask us all, when we read the history books, to connect with the past but also think about how we can shape the future; how we can change the social order. Israel's students are old enough to be educated to love, and not just hate. This way they will remember their grandparents, but we will also have instructed them on how to build a better world," the education minister concluded.

Avner Shalev, the chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, also mentioned that currently there is no official curriculum to teach Israel's students about the Holocaust. "The very fact that more than 1,200 teachers came here at the beginning of their summer vacation is another indication that there is a thirst coming directly from the education system and the students themselves, for value-driven education on the Holocaust," he said.

The purpose of the conference was to create dialogue and compel teachers to teach students about the Holocaust. The international school's teaching staff fielded question like whether 4- and 5-year-olds should be taught about the Holocaust, or how to illustrate the concept of "selection" to teens.

The two-day conference was to include a variety of workshops on topics like the Holocaust in political cartoons, the Holocaust in the media, song selection for radio stations on Holocaust Memorial Day and the Holocaust in the theater. In addition, 25 Holocaust survivors will speak to small groups of educators on the role of passing the human stories down to the students.

Israel Hayom | Stop shocking our kids about Holocaust, minister tells teachers