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From: Monica Edinger <monicaedinger>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 05:52:20 -0400
I knew when this topic was announced that I would not be able to stand back, but would post long and more than once as it is a topic that is very important to me firstly because it is my family history and I have firsthand knowledge of it; I grew up with it and it has always been around me. But it is also important to me because I've spent a lot of time teaching history to children, thinking about how they develop historical understandings, reading the research, and writing about all of this. When it comes to historical horrors, like Norman Jean I want children to know, to grapple with the truth. Where we seem to disagree is that I feel these topics must be introduced to children when they are developmentally ready which for me means, in the case of the Holocaust, children beyond the usual picture book stage of life.
I think there is a distinct developmental trajectory in terms of historical understanding. Introducing ideas, concepts, and information before children are ready developmentally to make significant sense of them means they are only gaining a superficial and simplistic understandings. They can also become unnnecessarily frightened as well as create profound misunderstandings in their minds just because they are not ready and have not been given enough information and so fill in the gaps themselves in their own minds.
The US Holocaust Museum has an excellent teacher's guide and annotated bibliography. (http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/) On page 3 the authors address age appropriateness: "Students in grades 7 and above demonstrate an ability to empathize with individual eyewitness accounts and to attempt to understand the complexities of this history, including the scope and scale of the events. While elementary students are able to empathize with individual survivor accounts, they often have difficulty placing these personal stories in a larger historical context. "
And later in the annotated bibliography (pages 6-7), the authors write: "In choosing books for student use, it is as important to determine when a book should be assigned as which book to use. Most students have little prior knowledge of the history of this period and, therefore, need some historical background to be able to put the book they are reading into perspective. This is especially true of the fiction and personal narratives on the middle school list. Many of these books were written from a child's perspective; the child in the book frequently does not really understand the events he or she is caught up in and neither will the reader without some historical background."
I'm off to Plimoth Plantation shortly with 94 4th graders for an overnight trip so will not be able to respond till tomorrow evening or Saturday morning (depending on how shattered I am!). At which point I'm happy to take on all comers!
Monica
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 05:52:20 -0400
I knew when this topic was announced that I would not be able to stand back, but would post long and more than once as it is a topic that is very important to me firstly because it is my family history and I have firsthand knowledge of it; I grew up with it and it has always been around me. But it is also important to me because I've spent a lot of time teaching history to children, thinking about how they develop historical understandings, reading the research, and writing about all of this. When it comes to historical horrors, like Norman Jean I want children to know, to grapple with the truth. Where we seem to disagree is that I feel these topics must be introduced to children when they are developmentally ready which for me means, in the case of the Holocaust, children beyond the usual picture book stage of life.
I think there is a distinct developmental trajectory in terms of historical understanding. Introducing ideas, concepts, and information before children are ready developmentally to make significant sense of them means they are only gaining a superficial and simplistic understandings. They can also become unnnecessarily frightened as well as create profound misunderstandings in their minds just because they are not ready and have not been given enough information and so fill in the gaps themselves in their own minds.
The US Holocaust Museum has an excellent teacher's guide and annotated bibliography. (http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/) On page 3 the authors address age appropriateness: "Students in grades 7 and above demonstrate an ability to empathize with individual eyewitness accounts and to attempt to understand the complexities of this history, including the scope and scale of the events. While elementary students are able to empathize with individual survivor accounts, they often have difficulty placing these personal stories in a larger historical context. "
And later in the annotated bibliography (pages 6-7), the authors write: "In choosing books for student use, it is as important to determine when a book should be assigned as which book to use. Most students have little prior knowledge of the history of this period and, therefore, need some historical background to be able to put the book they are reading into perspective. This is especially true of the fiction and personal narratives on the middle school list. Many of these books were written from a child's perspective; the child in the book frequently does not really understand the events he or she is caught up in and neither will the reader without some historical background."
I'm off to Plimoth Plantation shortly with 94 4th graders for an overnight trip so will not be able to respond till tomorrow evening or Saturday morning (depending on how shattered I am!). At which point I'm happy to take on all comers!
Monica
-- Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at gmail.comReceived on Thu 20 Apr 2006 04:52:20 AM CDT
