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[CCBC-Net] Teaching the holocaust
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From: Kathy Johnson <kmquimby>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:18:48 -0400
In regard to this, I would like to suggest an adult read, as I have privately to several people: Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland_, as an example in how average people can be brought to do terrible things.
Kathy Johnson Administrative Assistant Center for Holocaust Studies University of Vermont
At 12:07 PM 4/27/2006, Hastings, Waller wrote:
> Well, I'll start by saying I'M sorry, but this comment,
> > I think you should let the books and facts speak for themselves, and
> > possibly keep your personal opinions out of the classroom.
>Coming as it did after expressing a series of *opinions* as *facts*, is
>itself arguable.
>
> I have said in other forums and continue to believe that we
>cannot overcome the problem of evil in the world if we subscribe to
>beliefs such as are encompassed by a statement like "I for one know for
>a fact that I am NOT
>capable of doing evil." We might like to believe it - but history shows
>that great evil is often accomplished by people who are certain that
>they themselves are incapable of doing evil. Sure, Hitler was mad - but
>ALL of the German people were not, and the genocide of the Third Reich
>would not have been possible without the complicity of many ordinary
>Germans who thought they were doing the "right" thing.
>
> And what of the devastation visited on the native peoples of
>North America by European colonization? Where do you identify the
>insanity there - what individuals' madness accounted for the killings
>and forced movement of Native Americans onto reservations? (One of my
>current projects is to understand L. Frank Baum's 1891 call for the
>extermination of the Sioux people - was he mad?) Or President
>Roosevelt's order that Japanese Americans be put into isolation camps
>during WWII - an action that was certainly shameful and, many would
>argue, evil. Yet "ordinary people" accepted it - as many continue to
>accept the imprisonment of hundreds of people by the U.S. government at
>Guantanamo for over four years without charges being filed, without even
>the right or opportunity to visit with legal counsel. Are the people
>who condone such actions ALL "mad"? Are the soldiers who committed
>atrocities at Abu Ghraib "evil"? Their actions were certainly evil.
>
> If all these things are promulgated by people who believe
>themselves "incapable of doing evil," then of course, the actions can't
>be evil - but they sure *look* evil to impartial observers. Remember
>the psychological studies that were done in which "ordinary people" were
>induced to inflict torture on others through a gradual process of
>increasing the jolt that would be delivered through a machine.
>
> I can think of no more dangerous stance to take than the
>assertion that one is somehow incapable of evil. The insistence that
>those who do evil are somehow qualitatively different from the rest of
>us is an easy moral position that absolves us from thinking about the
>consequences of our own actions or non-actions. Only if we recognize
>our own capacity to commit evil can we have any real hope of reducing
>the amount of evil that there is in the world.
>
>waller hastings
>northern state university
>aberdeen, sd 57401
>hastingw at northern.edu
>
>"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
>mistaken." - Oliver Cromwell, to his enemies
>
>_______________________________________________
>CCBC-Net mailing list
>CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
>Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe...
>http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Thu 27 Apr 2006 12:18:48 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:18:48 -0400
In regard to this, I would like to suggest an adult read, as I have privately to several people: Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland_, as an example in how average people can be brought to do terrible things.
Kathy Johnson Administrative Assistant Center for Holocaust Studies University of Vermont
At 12:07 PM 4/27/2006, Hastings, Waller wrote:
> Well, I'll start by saying I'M sorry, but this comment,
> > I think you should let the books and facts speak for themselves, and
> > possibly keep your personal opinions out of the classroom.
>Coming as it did after expressing a series of *opinions* as *facts*, is
>itself arguable.
>
> I have said in other forums and continue to believe that we
>cannot overcome the problem of evil in the world if we subscribe to
>beliefs such as are encompassed by a statement like "I for one know for
>a fact that I am NOT
>capable of doing evil." We might like to believe it - but history shows
>that great evil is often accomplished by people who are certain that
>they themselves are incapable of doing evil. Sure, Hitler was mad - but
>ALL of the German people were not, and the genocide of the Third Reich
>would not have been possible without the complicity of many ordinary
>Germans who thought they were doing the "right" thing.
>
> And what of the devastation visited on the native peoples of
>North America by European colonization? Where do you identify the
>insanity there - what individuals' madness accounted for the killings
>and forced movement of Native Americans onto reservations? (One of my
>current projects is to understand L. Frank Baum's 1891 call for the
>extermination of the Sioux people - was he mad?) Or President
>Roosevelt's order that Japanese Americans be put into isolation camps
>during WWII - an action that was certainly shameful and, many would
>argue, evil. Yet "ordinary people" accepted it - as many continue to
>accept the imprisonment of hundreds of people by the U.S. government at
>Guantanamo for over four years without charges being filed, without even
>the right or opportunity to visit with legal counsel. Are the people
>who condone such actions ALL "mad"? Are the soldiers who committed
>atrocities at Abu Ghraib "evil"? Their actions were certainly evil.
>
> If all these things are promulgated by people who believe
>themselves "incapable of doing evil," then of course, the actions can't
>be evil - but they sure *look* evil to impartial observers. Remember
>the psychological studies that were done in which "ordinary people" were
>induced to inflict torture on others through a gradual process of
>increasing the jolt that would be delivered through a machine.
>
> I can think of no more dangerous stance to take than the
>assertion that one is somehow incapable of evil. The insistence that
>those who do evil are somehow qualitatively different from the rest of
>us is an easy moral position that absolves us from thinking about the
>consequences of our own actions or non-actions. Only if we recognize
>our own capacity to commit evil can we have any real hope of reducing
>the amount of evil that there is in the world.
>
>waller hastings
>northern state university
>aberdeen, sd 57401
>hastingw at northern.edu
>
>"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
>mistaken." - Oliver Cromwell, to his enemies
>
>_______________________________________________
>CCBC-Net mailing list
>CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
>Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe...
>http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Thu 27 Apr 2006 12:18:48 PM CDT
