Caroline Alphonso
Globe and Mail, Jan. 26, 2023
“A survey of students in middle school and high school conducted in 2021 found that about a third didn’t know what to think about the Holocaust, thought the number of Jewish people who died had been exaggerated or were unsure whether the Holocaust had happened.”
Cindy Kozierok saw the message pop up on her screen in the middle of a lesson about the Holocaust. Ms. Kozierok, who is Jewish, was leading her Grade 6 students through the material online, in the early months of the pandemic, and one child was acting out. In a text Box visible to the entire group, the child posted an antisemitic slur. Within an instant, other students rushed to condemn both the message and their peer, harnessing some of the lesson Ms. Kozierok had been teaching.
“Even before I noticed it, they were all standing up, doing the right thing,” said Ms. Kozierok, a teacher at Rockford Public School in Toronto. The boy was suspended; his mother later told Ms. Kozierok he had seen the words in a video game. Ms. Kozierok’s school board, the Toronto District School Board, has said it has noticed an increase in the number of antisemitic events at its middle schools. It reported more than 50 incidents involving antisemitic hate symbols in the last academic year.
Friday marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. But educators say Holocaust remembrance must also be integrated into elementary school curriculums, because instilling that knowledge in young students is a way to combat antisemitism across schools.
In Ontario, the provincial government recently announced that Holocaust learning will be a mandatory part of the Grade 6 social studies curriculum, starting in the fall. Currently, the Holocaust and other acts of genocide are required to be introduced in a Grade 10 history course. … [To read the full article, click here]