High School Project Goes All Stanford Prison
I wonder who thought this was a good idea:
Students said a three-week lesson that assigned students the roles of Germans and Jews during the Holocaust got out of hand when some students took the role-playing too far.
The exercise in the Waxahachie Ninth Grade Academy school’s Advanced Placement Geography course was meant to bring home the reality of intolerance during the Holocaust, school officials said.
The point of the class was “learning about the problems of intolerance and the problems of discrimination and helping kids understand what some people went through to change the world,” Principal John L. Aune told Dallas-Fort Worth television station KTVT.
Students and teachers said the students tagged as Jews were forced to stand against the wall as those portraying Germans passed by in the hallway. The Jewish students were also the last to eat lunch and had to pick up everyone’s garbage, the station reported.
Some students said the exercise got out of hand when the German students spat on or hit the Jewish students.
There was an ABC after school special called ‘The Wave’ that covered a similar issue.
LastTrumpet, shame on you! Don’t you ever, ever question any aspect Holocaustism!!! Everything the Holocaustians do is good, never enough, and absolutely teaches tolerance. And if something goes wrong, it just goes to show how much more FUNDING, I mean, education, is needed.
Remember — the Holocaust happened in Europe, so it’s a critical part of general American history.
DK, huh? Sounds more like NF to me!
Crammed,
Exactly! Anyone who questions any expansion of Holocaustism is clearly a self-hater.
You know, when I was in B’nai B’rith in high school, at one of our regional conventions we were subjected to a “Holocaust educational experience” in which something similar went on… except that every kid participating was Jewish. Did our bunch of privileged upper-class white suburban teenagers learn anything from the experience? Only this – not to trust our peers with any kind of power.
“Beware of rulers, for they befriend someone only for their own benefit; they act friendly when it benefits them, but they do not stand by someone in his time of need.” – Avos 2:3
Um, I don’t think that LT was questioning “Holocaustism” (I don’t love it myself, and have raved about it’s evils inthe past, but let’s not get our problems confused).
As the posted graphic indicates (I’ll leave the identification as an exercise for the reader, but I recognised it immediately, -good call LT), this er, experiment has been done before, with similar, albeit much worse, results.
Aside from the other problems with this, it shows that our edicators are a really undereducated bunch. What did those fools *think* would happen?
Um, I don’t think that LT was questioning “Holocaustism” (I don’t love it myself, and have raved about it’s evils inthe past, but let’s not get our problems confused).
As the posted graphic indicates (I’ll leave the identification as an exercise for the reader, but I recognised it immediately, -good call LT), this er, experiment has been done before, with similar, albeit much worse, results.
Aside from the other problems with this, it shows that our educators are a really undereducated bunch. What did those fools *think* would happen?
oops. that was supposed to be “its” with no apostrophe, lest someone think that I too am undereducated.
DK, I think I’m with Marisa on this. The exercise really seems to have very little to do with The Holocaust. It may be an effective demonstration of oppression. But, if you are trying to teach about specific historical events, you probably need to be a bit more specific in your methods.
An exercise like this has the potential to work quite well. But, something clearly went wrong here. My guess is that the participants were not monitored closely enough. You don’t give a 15 year-old that much power, send them on their way, and then expect everything to go as well as you may expect.
yeah, good call LT on the title; bad call on these educators for using this exercise, which has been performed numerous times before with groups of varying ages (even elementary-age kids) and has always had the same result.
the main thing it teaches, i suppose, is that power and bigotry corrupt people… and that’s about it. if that was the lesson, it has been well learned.
It just gets wilder and more meshugah over time. When do we say enough? When do we say let’s focus on other things? When do we concede that while this is an important part of our history, it is not the burden of American public school kids to remember our tragedy so intensely? And again — who says this will help anybody? This is most speculative. There is backlash. I saw it as a public school kid in a predominantly non-Jewish school, and so did Mobius. Ask Mobius about his fond memories of Holocaust education in his public school system.
Keep this stuff in Solomon Schechter, okay?
didn’t anyone study the famous Stanford Prison Experiment? This is textbook Psych 101 shit, and these teachers should have known.
http://www.prisonexp.org/
sorry, just saw the subject line of the post. but anyway, read up on SPE ya;ll!
An exercise like this was done by an elementary school teacher in some midwestern state, where she separated the children with light eyes from the children with dark eyes. On one day, one group was superior and was inferior on the next day. It was in the 60’s and was more of a lesson on general racism and discriminatory policies but it grew to be pretty famous in education.
Waxahachie is right up 59 from me in Houston! Best next time to read the Sneetches
“Best next time to read the Sneetches”
Better yet, study a collection of Dr. Seuss’ political cartoons published during WWII. There’s an online version of this book (which, along with a Horton the Elephant hat, I bought with BZ at the Dr. Seuss memorial in Springfield, MA).
seems like the exercise worked. Shows that what fueled the Shoah is still with us, and shouldn’t be dismissed by concerns of “holocaustism.” (not that I agree with that poster. But they could have just watched the documentary about the Zimbardo study as well.