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[CCBC-Net] teaching the holocaust
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From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maia>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:19:10 -0700
What is it we (each) want in a book about the Holocaust? What do we want children to learn? I've been making a list of the things I want a child -- my children -- to know. Ultimately, it isn't gas chambers and cattlecars, although those will be relevant along the way. What I most want my children to grasp are (a) the choices human beings make, and are forced to make; (b) the dangers of silence, and the dangers of speaking up; (c) the historical precedents that have led to the cultures (and family dynamics) they experience today -- in the US, in the middle east, globally; (d) the complexities of human beings; (e) the danger signs for genocide, for oppression, for abuse. Strength, good judgment, and forgiveness. I want them to take from these stories a sense of what was, and what is, and where they can make a difference and where their best difference is to survive. I want them to grow wise, compassionate, empowered and compelled to care for all peoples as best they can.
If we put these "Holocaust books" in the context of teaching stories, what do they each teach? What might a child draw from each story? Are we worried that one novel must bear the entire weight of everything we want a child to learn about that piece of history -- because that is all they will be exposed to? -- or can it be one story among many?
My (step)father's mother was Jewish and his father German protestant; they married in California in the early 1940s. This was an action deeply contested by their families. I've never understood this grandmother well -- nor did she give me any room to as a child, for I was not favored as blood -- and my grandfather died in my father's adolescence, but I find this willfulness of theirs interesting. There are all kinds of resistance.
This discussion also brings to mind an oft-considered problem in children's and (especially) YA literature -- the lack of novels with black characters that are not serious and fraught with pain. Likewise, I would hate for a child's first introduction to Jewish people, culture, religion, history and mysticism to be through the lens of the Holocaust. This runs the danger of a child conflating the person with the problem, and removes them many steps from finding joy in what Jewish people bring to humanity. And, it adds a feeling of ab-normality, of not-now... not unlike how many talk and write romantically and vividly of "the Indians who /lived/ in America" rather than the Indians who live here today.
I read Night in high school, and then a good deal more of Wiesel afterwards -- and I could hold it closely then, as mine but not quite mine. (My step-father, whom I had lived with since I was three, and his family are Jewish; my near-twin stepbrother was Jewish; many of the teens in my classes were Jewish.) I am glad that I had had years of living before I experienced Night.
Another excellent book I read in my teens that dealt with the Holocaust was A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle. The Holocaust is not the main thrust of the story, but it does give one excellent interpretation of how the past lives on in us.
Maia
Received on Wed 26 Apr 2006 12:19:10 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:19:10 -0700
What is it we (each) want in a book about the Holocaust? What do we want children to learn? I've been making a list of the things I want a child -- my children -- to know. Ultimately, it isn't gas chambers and cattlecars, although those will be relevant along the way. What I most want my children to grasp are (a) the choices human beings make, and are forced to make; (b) the dangers of silence, and the dangers of speaking up; (c) the historical precedents that have led to the cultures (and family dynamics) they experience today -- in the US, in the middle east, globally; (d) the complexities of human beings; (e) the danger signs for genocide, for oppression, for abuse. Strength, good judgment, and forgiveness. I want them to take from these stories a sense of what was, and what is, and where they can make a difference and where their best difference is to survive. I want them to grow wise, compassionate, empowered and compelled to care for all peoples as best they can.
If we put these "Holocaust books" in the context of teaching stories, what do they each teach? What might a child draw from each story? Are we worried that one novel must bear the entire weight of everything we want a child to learn about that piece of history -- because that is all they will be exposed to? -- or can it be one story among many?
My (step)father's mother was Jewish and his father German protestant; they married in California in the early 1940s. This was an action deeply contested by their families. I've never understood this grandmother well -- nor did she give me any room to as a child, for I was not favored as blood -- and my grandfather died in my father's adolescence, but I find this willfulness of theirs interesting. There are all kinds of resistance.
This discussion also brings to mind an oft-considered problem in children's and (especially) YA literature -- the lack of novels with black characters that are not serious and fraught with pain. Likewise, I would hate for a child's first introduction to Jewish people, culture, religion, history and mysticism to be through the lens of the Holocaust. This runs the danger of a child conflating the person with the problem, and removes them many steps from finding joy in what Jewish people bring to humanity. And, it adds a feeling of ab-normality, of not-now... not unlike how many talk and write romantically and vividly of "the Indians who /lived/ in America" rather than the Indians who live here today.
I read Night in high school, and then a good deal more of Wiesel afterwards -- and I could hold it closely then, as mine but not quite mine. (My step-father, whom I had lived with since I was three, and his family are Jewish; my near-twin stepbrother was Jewish; many of the teens in my classes were Jewish.) I am glad that I had had years of living before I experienced Night.
Another excellent book I read in my teens that dealt with the Holocaust was A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle. The Holocaust is not the main thrust of the story, but it does give one excellent interpretation of how the past lives on in us.
Maia
Received on Wed 26 Apr 2006 12:19:10 PM CDT
