School apologizes over pro-Nazi essay assignment

[dps]

If it's a good exercise to learn how to defend opinions that you actually find wrongheaded, distasteful, or even abhorent, then what better topic to pick than the Nazi's?

Think about high school morons for a moment:  how many of them are angry and confused young boys that get enamored with Nazis and don't find them wrongheaded, distasteful or abhorrent?

That's why the Waffen-SS are more professional..

But as long as they aren't represented by white print on black counters, everything's OK.

[CountDeMoney]

That's why the Waffen-SS are more professional..

But as long as they aren't represented by white print on black counters, everything's OK.

Now I want waffles.

[11B4V]

If it's a good exercise to learn how to defend opinions that you actually find wrongheaded, distasteful, or even abhorent, then what better topic to pick than the Nazi's?

Think about high school morons for a moment:  how many of them are angry and confused young boys that get enamored with Nazis and don't find them wrongheaded, distasteful or abhorrent?

That's why the Waffen-SS are more professional..

But as long as they aren't represented by white print on black counters, everything's OK.

But, but, but that's the way it's suppose to be. It has to be.

[Capetan Mihali]

Grumbler was a member of the Teacherbund.   

[Ideologue]

I'm sure even you could've come up with something better than "You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!" for a critical thinking exercise.

It is a terrific exercise.  It forces the students to actually read the rationales that the Nazis actually created here in the real world, instead of just making shit up on their own.  It makes the familiar unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar familiar.

Most people don't like to think, and so they don't like exercises like this that require thinking.   You sound like you just don't want people writing about Nazis because they are "so icky."

But since none of this involves math, science or manual skills, is it actually worthwhile?  Not really.

[Camerus]

Even if it were a great critical thinking exercise (which it isn't), the teacher is a moron if he thought it wouldn't cause a huge shit storm, possibly resulting in a loss of his job.

If he wanted to do something along those lines, why not ask students to consider why some Germans supported National Socialism or something to that effect, rather than writing an essay that could appear in the Voelkisher Beobachter?

[Razgovory]

I encourage Grumbler to try this exercise with his students.

[grumbler]

Backing away from your original assertion (that Nazis were, by definition, antisemites) doesn't make it a strawman.    There were plenty of economic reasons to side with or join the Nazis without having to believe that Jews were a pestilence to be exterminated.

Ah, so you are dropping the strawman, but now changing my premise for me?  Sorry, gonna call bullshit on that, as well.  I am talking Nazi ideology and propaganda, just like the assignment was.  You can talk about individual Nazis all you want; they aren't relevant to my point.

Again, the fact that antisemitism was a part of the propaganda from the top doesn't mean it was universally accepted by all Nazi party members.

Again, thank You, Captain Obvious-but -Irrelevant.

[grumbler]

I agree that it's a good exercise in general. I disagree that it's a good exercise regarding the topic. There are a myriad of other positions that can offer the same lesson in critical thinking without subjecting a group of people to "see the side" of people who could conceivably have killed members of their family. I mean, my  grandmother came from Germany in 1947. That's a little too close to home, from my perspective. Especially when there are a multitude of other scenarios that offer the same exercise without the potential concerns that this one does.

It's just not necessary to go there, imo, and can still cause more harm than good. Why do it?

Again, education isn't about what is safe and comfortable and uncontroversial.  Reading and understanding tracts with which one disagrees is an essential life skill.  It is one that, frankly, most people don't have (in part, perhaps, because they were educated in systems that feared to challenge students' indoctrinated belief systems).  The year your grandmother left Germany is simply irrelevant to the assignment given to students in Albany New York in 2013.

While there certainly are a number of topics about which one can educate students, I feel that it is important to have them read books like Night, no matter when your grandmother left Germany.  As part of the preparation for reading books like Night (which book assumes a lot of knowledge about the Holocaust on the part of the reader), I think it is entirely appropriate to give students a critical thinking assignment, even if some woman in Illinois feels uncomfortable about it.

No matter what assignment is given, there will always be someone who could argue that "there could have been a better assignment."  Better is the enemy of good enough. 

[garbon]

Well thankfully Albany disagrees with you.

[grumbler]

The Nazis are a terrible example to use for this kind of exercise.  Their ideology was notoriously shoddy in terms of logical thinking. Same is really true for any racist ideology - the argument depend on assuming obviously false premises and thus there is little value in such an exercise.

I don't think you understand the purpose of the exercise.  It wasn't to get the students to critique the quality of Hitler's prose or to quantify the rigor of Goebbels' conclusions, but to get students to read and comprehend what the Nazis themselves were saying they were doing, and why, so that the Holocaust isn't just some absurdly horrific clown show undertaken by deranged men for no reason, as most people seem to think it was.  What happened to Elie Wiesel and his father isn't comprehensible unles one undertands what the Nazis thought they were doing.

History is sometimes "icky."  We shouldn't ignore history we find distasteful in favor of some Greek philosophers whose work has no practical merit but which is therefor divorced from the ickiness of history.  The Nazi leadership looked in the mirror and say heroes.  It is important that we teach students how that could happen, even if it means teaching about reality and not just theory.

[grumbler]

But since none of this involves math, science or manual skills, is it actually worthwhile?  Not really.

I don't think you are in a position to disdain critical thinking skills. Ide!   Imagine where you would be if you had them. 

[grumbler]

Even if it were a great critical thinking exercise (which it isn't), the teacher is a moron if he thought it wouldn't cause a huge shit storm, possibly resulting in a loss of his job.

If he wanted to do something along those lines, why not ask students to consider why some Germans supported National Socialism or something to that effect, rather than writing an essay that could appear in the Voelkisher Beobachter?

I can tell that you don't teach.  If one wants to teach critical thinking skills, then one doesn't assign "book report" assignments like you suggest.  Students learn a little bit when writing descriptive essays like you suggest, but not much. 

I think the teacher obviously overestimated the maturity and professionalism of his bosses in the bureaucracy, but that's a risk every public school teacher faces (and the reason I left public school teaching).  I don't think he is a moron, I think he is somebody who doesn't think as bureaucratically as most people on the forum here, and thus is poorly suited to teach in a bureaucratic environment.

[grumbler]

Well thankfully Albany disagrees with you.    

Exactly.  We wouldn't want students to learn critical thinking skills in public schools; thankfully, most public school systems are as bureaucratic as Albany's so I will always have parents willing to pay me to do so in a private school, where we don't have nearly as much of the bureaucratic bullshit.

You win and I win when the American education system fails its students.

[chipwich]

Grumber- Would you mind writing an essay that Jews are evil and the source of our problems? I ask because I'm pretty sure the Nazis never came up with a consistent reason why, they just expected everyone to believe and shot everyone who didn't.