When teaching the Holocaust effective teachers will often take the opportunity to also teach tolerance.?Tolerance is a skill that should be taught over and over throughout one’s educational experience.

The Simon Wiesenthal Museum in Los Angeles makes it explicitly clear why tolerance is such an important skill to teach, through its exhibits.?I’m not certain if this exhibit still exists but years ago when I was at the museum, visitors first walked into a big room.?Speakers placed around the room resounded with the sounds of bigotry: “kike”; “nigger”; “fag” and so on.?The point of the exhibit was that in one way or another everybody has some level of intolerance. While intolerance may be a part of human psyche it is not a good thing.

When teaching the Holocaust effective teachers should take the opportunity to challenge students to consider their own tolerances. The following question might prove useful in prompting analysis of intolerance.

1.?What does the word “intolerance” even mean?

2.?Have you ever seen somebody being intolerant of another??Explain what you saw!

3.?Why would somebody be intolerant towards another person, or a whole group of people?

4.?Have you ever been intolerant of anybody or anything??Explain!

5.?Why do you think you were intolerant?

6.?In what ways does a discussion of tolerance relate to a study of the Holocaust?

In Judaism there are concepts of a “good inclination” and an “evil inclination.”?Freud’s concepts of the id, ego, and super-ego, are very similar to these Jewish concepts.?Regardless, all people have “evil inclinations”.?We want to do things that we know are wrong.?Intolerance is just one example of an “evil inclination.”?One important purpose of education is to help students understand their own evil inclinations and overpower them with their good inclinations.?Perhaps this is truer in character education, but it’s also true in core subject area learning.

When teaching the Holocaust, do not just make it a study of the Holocaust make it a study of tolerance.

By: Andrew Pass

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