A recent study concluded that most teachers in England do not know nearly enough about the Holocaust to teach it. Despite 964 of the 1,077 teachers surveyed having recently taught about the Holocaust, including many holding in-depth focus groups on the topic, the study showed that most teachers didn’t know “where or when the Holocaust began; the proportion of Jews in the German population in 1933, the year Hitler took power; or what the British government’s response was to the Holocaust while it was underway,” according to worldisraelnews.com. A fifth of these teachers surveyed by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education had no specialist training either.
These results are disturbing, to say the least. How can you teach the truth when you don’t know what is true? If a bad seed is planted, only bad fruit will grow. That’s exactly what you can expect to happen to the students who are taught about the Holocaust from those who don’t know much about it. Ignorance is a deadly poison that only grows more dangerous over time. In this case, it can easily grow into conspiracy theories and myths that harm the Jewish people. Many who deny the Holocaust or abuse Jewish people in some way likely have the same thing in common: an incomplete knowledge of the atrocities Jewish people have faced. This is an issue schools will have to address to ensure students are not lacking an important part of their education.
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