The Facing History School Newsletter

The humanities courses, in particular, have served as an introduction to the themes and the mission of the school, using our resource book Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior as the guide. Humanities teachers Emily Haines, Ed Sugden, and Dana Panagot have used this historical case study, along with our extensive Facing History materials on the fragility of democracy and the importance of building and maintaining civil society as a framework for their courses. This course introduced students to the vocabulary, skills, and content of the school. The humanities classes combined history, current events, literature, art, and social science to create a fully integrated and interdisciplinary experience.

These classes—a required course for all students—began this September by asking students to reflect on their own identities and the choices they are faced with everyday involving peer pressure, bullying, and ostracism. This early unit became a touchstone for students—as they began to look at challenging moments in history, they kept coming back to the “everyday” struggles of teenagers, noting how difficult and important it is to see the “other” as “ourselves” and to find alternatives to a “we versus they” mentality.

Students next looked at how the history of race and racism in the United States has affected how we interact in our communities today. How do we learn to disparage the other? How are hierarchical ideas created, and under what conditions do they thrive? For much of the semester, the students examined Facing History’s core materials on the birth and death of democracy in Germany in the 1920s and 30s, the rise of the Nazis, and the transformation of Germany into a nation based on hatred and fear of the other.

The students also investigated the idea of speaking up by studying the political artists and their work during the brief period of democracy in Germany in the 1920s and early 30s—how did these individuals reflect on, and seek to change, their world? Working with artist-educators Emily Riedman and Fabian Saucedo from Working Playground, students created their own art reflecting on current events—to what degree is our democracy at risk, and how can we use our artistic voice to express our hopes and fears?

The humanities classes then learned how the Nazis destroyed democracy in Europe and created conditions that led to mass murder and the Holocaust. How did “ordinary” people abandon their neighbors in a time of extreme danger? How did people become bystanders and perpetrators? What does it take to become an “upstander”—someone who takes risks to prevent or stop injustice? This vocabulary—bystander, victim, perpetrator, upstander—will provide students with a lens through which to decode their own behavior and the choices of people and institutions and communities that they encounter in all of their classes. Reflecting on this new knowledge, these students demonstrated the significance of this vocabulary in how they think about themselves and their decision-making:

These words are part of our vocabulary now, and we use them whenever we look at history or literature throughout the school in all of our classes. It matters to everyday life, not just humanities. -- Johanna N.

In humanities I learned about perpetrators, bystanders, victims, upstanders, resisters. The different roles people take. It’s a sophisticated way to think about things, that you could be more than one of these things at the same time. I am a little of everything. I can also change—I don’t have to be a victim or a perpetrator or a bystander but can be more of an upstander. -- Talisa V.

Not too long ago there was a fight between students from other schools outside the building—not our students. But our students were there, and I saw on the street how many of us tried to stop the fight, when most young people would rather watch a fight happen. I don’t think so many of our students would have stepped in if it wasn’t for everything we talk about here. You can’t do everything, but it isn’t good to be a bystander if you can instead be an upstander. --Jeffrey H.

The last weeks of the courses focused on how Germans have addressed judgment, justice, memory, and the legacy of the Holocaust. Students explored how societies remember people, ideas, and events that are important to them, asking, “what is remembered and what is forgotten?” Students studied memorials and public art from the Holocaust. In response, they created memorials out of clay, paper maché, and other materials that commemorated the Holocaust in a way that reflected what they had learned from the semester. The students wrestled with what justice can, and cannot, accomplish after genocide, and examined how the international community has attempted—unsuccessfully—to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. In Emily’s humanities class, some students were inspired to write letters to government officials urging action after studying the current genocide in Sudan. They developed their letter-writing skills, becoming upstanders in the process.

In fact, students in their advisory groups and in virtually all their other classes, all semester long, debated and explored ethical issues. They asked questions about bystander behavior and making a difference. They pushed themselves to look deeper into what lay behind a given chart or graph, or the decision of a protagonist in a novel or play. As a result of their work, FHS students are better equipped to reflect on their own choices, identities, hopes, and fears, and by the time they are set to graduate, they will be better equipped to face the world.