how to teach hate to impressionable minds

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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www.smh.com.au



Holocaust lesson gets out of hand


Students in Texas 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 and the "Germans" spat 
and hit the "Jews".

The exercise in the Ninth Grade Academy school's Advanced Placement 
Geography course Waxahachie, 50 kilometres south of Dallas, was meant 
to bring home the reality of intolerance during the Holocaust, school 
officials said.

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.

"They would spit on them. They would push them down the stairs. They 
would be really rude," student Tiffany Zimmerman said. "I think it 
was too rough and over the edge."

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 Aune told a Dallas-Fort Worth television station.

Aune said this was the fifth year the school has run the Holocaust exercise.

He said he had not received any reports of students spitting, pushing 
or tripping one another.

"I think that some of the kids were kind of harsh, but it taught us a 
little bit about how it was back then," student Trevor Smith said.

AP