Some Montgomery high schools will offer Holocaust studies as a semester-long elective course, following a school board vote earlier this month.
By Nicole AsburyNovember 18, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST Washington Post
Amid calls for Montgomery County Public Schools to educate its students more on the Holocaust, some high schools in the district will offer an elective course next year on the history surrounding the World War II murder by Nazi Germany and its collaborators of about 6 million Jews.V
The semester-long course will give students an “in-depth historical analysis of the Holocaust and the events and ideas which led to the Holocaust and the aftermath of the Holocaust,” according to a summary given to the Montgomery school board. It was one of several elective courses unanimously approved by the board earlier in November.
The decision comes after the school system — Maryland’s largest with over 160,000 students — saw several antisemitic incidents in recent years, ranging from students drawing swastikas on classroom desks and in bathrooms to a person spray painting “Jews Not Welcome” across Walt Whitman High School’s entrance sign.
In the aftermath, several Jewish students called on the district to expand its teachings on the Holocaust, and also joined efforts with state lawmakers to advocate for a bill that would have mandated “antihate and Holocaust education.” Proponents say such instruction could curtail the rise of antisemitism in schools, which they say has escalated since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. Students have also reported a rise in Islamophobic and anti-Arab incidents.
The state bill didn’t pass in the most recent legislative session. Currently, Maryland’s social studies framework — which guides school systems on what to teach — explicitly mentions the Holocaust as a topic for discussion in grades 6-7 and in U.S. history courses. It also guides high school world history teachers to provide instruction over the role nationalism played in the development of Germany during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Montgomery County Public Schools has previously said it teaches students about the Holocaust in U.S. history and world history classes. But some educators say they have noticed high school students don’t have a strong academic understanding of what happened during that time.
“I think as we get further and further away in terms of knowing people who have survived the Holocaust, there’s a lot more myth and misconceptions,” said Christopher Murray, a social studies teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School who proposed the elective and plans to teach it next school year. “A lot of students fill in and hear things or piece together what they think the Holocaust was.”
Murray said he believes some students don’t understand that the Holocaust “is a piece of a larger concept of antisemitism,” and lack the knowledge of “how certain structures came together and how it unfolded.”
Murray, who has been an educator for about 20 years, said he briefly taught a Holocaust studies elective course at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Catholic school in Bethesda about six years ago. At the time, Murray was getting his master’s degree in Holocaust and genocide studies at Gratz College.
He returned to Montgomery County Public Schools to teach at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High, and he proposed the Holocaust studies course in 2022.
His course proposal said students would learn, among other things, how the impacts of antisemitism and propaganda created an environment that led to a human catastrophe and how Jewish people resisted discrimination.
After he pitched it, Murray briefly left the school system to teach in Mexico for two years. But while he was gone, Steve Kachadorian, a social studies teacher at Damascus High School, taught the elective in fall 2023 as a pilot. Kachadorian, who typically teaches AP European History and AP World History, said he wanted to try something new.
Kachadorian said he allowed students’ interests to guide the course rather than following a rigid curriculum. He said the class was interested in learning more about modern antisemitic movements that deny the Holocaust happened and wanted to understand how social media has spread hatred. He said students were also curious about the history of antisemitism in Europe before the rise of Nazi Germany.
He said the course — which is taught for about 90 days — allows students to dig deeper into the Holocaust and its lasting impacts. “When you have this much time, you can talk about how the survivors have dealt with it,” he said. “You can talk about how the Holocaust is reflected in art. You can talk about the rise of antisemitism in Europe.”
Kachadorian tried teaching Holocaust studies again in the spring, but not enough students enrolled.
Courses require a minimum of 15 enrolled students to be placed on the schedule, said Tracy Oliver-Gary, a supervisor for PreK-12 social studies for the Montgomery school system. She said Whitman High School also tried offering the course as a pilot last school year, but similarly struggled with getting enough students to sign up.
Typically, courses are piloted for two years to allow for feedback before receiving final school board approval. The Holocaust studies course has only been taught one year, Oliver-Gary said.
The school board approved a recommendation to make Holocaust studies an active course at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High. It will also be offered at Damascus High and Whitman High. The elective has no costs associated with it, since the teacher creates the curriculum on their own, Oliver-Gary said.
The school board also approved several other electives, including ethnic studies at Poolesville High School; Muslim global experiences at Magruder High School in Rockville; and global climate change at Northwood High School in Rockville and Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/11/18/holocaust-education-montgomery-county-schools/