{"id":280067,"date":"2018-10-22T11:33:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/22\/nearly-all-teachers-i-worked-with-habitually-2\/"},"modified":"2018-10-22T11:33:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:33:47","slug":"nearly-all-teachers-i-worked-with-habitually-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/22\/nearly-all-teachers-i-worked-with-habitually-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly all teachers I worked with habitually excuse Hitler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly all teachers I worked with habitually excuse Hitler<\/a><\/p>\n

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littlegoythings<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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As an assistant teacher for 16 years, I encountered numerous examples of antisemitism being taught \u2014 sometimes unknowingly \u2014 in England\u2019s classrooms. Nearly all of the teachers I encountered had uncritically absorbed antisemitic tropes at their universities and teacher training colleges, much of it dressed up as \u201canti-Zionism\u201d.<\/p>\n

For instance, Year Sevens are taught about the Black Death in RE, a lesson I often observed. Children were nearly always told that the Jews were blamed at the time for the plague, but this was rarely presented as an example of an antisemitic falsehood. Indeed, the teachers usually left open the question of whether the Jews really were responsible.<\/p>\n

That meant that when the children were taught about the Holocaust in Year Nine, it was not uncommon for children to respond by saying, \u201cBut Sir! The Jews DID give us the Plague though\u2026 \u2018coz you said so in Year Seven!\u201d<\/p>\n

For instance, Year Nines are often taught about the Holocaust in the context of why the Jews have been hated throughout history. But unless carefully presented, this \u201ccontext\u201d can often seem like an apology for Nazism, as if the Jews did something to deserve their misfortune.<\/p>\n

Nearly all the teachers I have worked with who were born in the 1980s habitually excuse Hitler and undermine the unique historical horror of the Holocaust. The usual response to Hitler\u2019s genocidal antisemitism is to explain that it was not just the Jews. Others suffered too. In the interests of \u201cbalance\u201d, the teachers often point out that Hitler did good things as well as bad \u2014 he created jobs and made Germany great again, for instance.<\/p>\n

When I suggested to a teacher that we first talk about the positive influences of Judaism before introducing the Holocaust, she dismissed it on the grounds that \u201clearning how successful they are might irritate some people\u201d.<\/p>\n

In GCSE History, antisemitism often slithers into students\u2019 subconscious in ramshackle debates about the aftermath of the First World War. \u201cYou can understand why the German people were so angry with the Jews after the First World War, because if you fought in the trenches, lost your jobs and your businesses and you saw that the Jews were having an easier time of it, you\u2019d be angry too,\u201d explained one teacher, helpfully.<\/p>\n

Because, of course, German Jews did not fight in the trenches, German Jews did not lose their savings, their jobs and their businesses. So, all Jews are cowards, all Jews are rich, all Jews have no right to get angry.<\/p>\n

Visiting a school as a guest speaker once, I tried to explain to some teachers in the staff room how ridiculous Jewish stereotypes were. They immediately launched into a tirade about the \u201carrogant Jewish princesses\u201d they had encountered growing up who got everything they wanted on \u201cDaddy\u2019s money\u201d. A self-professed \u2018lefty\u2019 even complained that a street near her university was \u201cwall to wall Jewish businesses\u201d. One of these teachers boasted to me that she had taught the whole Holocaust \u2018module\u2019 without showing \u201cone of those atrocity pictures once\u201d. When I relayed this to a Jewish friend whose mother survived Ravensbruck, he said, \u201cHow can people know how bad it was without showing them how bad it was?\u201d This same teacher, who claimed the Holocaust was \u201cabsolutely fascinating\u201d, whispered to me, \u201cwe have to ask this question\u201d and, instead of saying it aloud, wrote it down on her planner and showed it to me: Did they deserve it?<\/p>\n

I was shocked. Do we ask this question about the Middle Passage? Do we ask it about the victims of 9\/11? We do not. Incidentally, she had already taught her students about Israel and why its existence was so \u201ccontroversial\u201d and, as she explained to me, that\u2019s why the desert question had to be asked. In her brain, the Holocaust and Israel had somehow become chronologically juxtaposed, with the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 somehow causing the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.<\/p>\n

Alas, this kind of prejudice is not confined to the state sector. A young acquaintance of mine who attends a posh private school told me his history teacher joked that \u201cJews won\u2019t fight\u201d after he was asked if Jews had fought in the First World War. I armed the pupil with facts: the Roman Legion Regi Emeseni Iudeai; Cleopatra\u2019s two generals; how, in the First World War, Jews were the largest ethnic group to fight for either side; how Anne Frank\u2019s father, as well as the young lieutenant who awarded Hitler his Iron Cross, had fought for Germany. The boy told the class, the teacher smirked and said, \u201cWell, you learn something new every day.\u201d Maybe so, but very rarely do you learn anything about antisemitism from teachers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly all teachers I worked with habitually excuse Hitler littlegoythings: As an assistant teacher for 16 years, I encountered numerous examples of antisemitism being taught \u2014 sometimes unknowingly \u2014 in England\u2019s classrooms. Nearly all of the teachers I encountered had uncritically absorbed antisemitic tropes at their universities and teacher training colleges, much of it dressed … <\/p>\n

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