IS IT POSSIBLE TO TEACH VALUES BY TEACHING HOLOCAUST HISTORY?
While many educators would say that teaching the Holocaust helps to make students less prejudiced and more tolerant of diversity, many scholars would argue that there is no empirical data to support this assertion. I myself wrote a master’s thesis on the subject of teaching tolerance through teaching the Holocaust, and as much as I searched for concrete evidence and statistics, I failed to find any. Nevertheless, most teachers believe that through teaching the Holocaust, one cannot help but impart to students values of acceptance and tolerance. After all, the Holocaust is an example of what happens when prejudice and stereotyping go unchecked, when people allow their ignorance and their need to scapegoat overcome decency and common sense. The skepticism of scholars about the use of Holocaust studies to teach values comes from the difficulty of measuring the thoughts, words, and actions of students before and after their exposure to Holocaust history. However, I believe that through tea
