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“"In Germany, teaching the Holocaust is mandatory. It includes visits to concentration camp, museums, etc. They don’t shy away from their own ugly history. Yet the kids aren’t damaged; they’re strengthened, matured, humbled. US needs to do same re slavery. Not that complicated.”
Siggy Rose.
@DidiQ As Canada is reckoning with the past horrors of residential schools.
Truth. And reconciliation.
@DidiQ
They should really abolish slavery first though. And provide reparations.
@DidiQ Come to America and learn something about laziness, sloppiness, angst and almost everyone on drugs - legal or illegal. Then you’ll understand, why what you ask is crying for the moon. America is in eternal puberty.
@DidiQ “Yeah, but, yknow… Blacks.”
- Americans
@DidiQ The way Germans teach history makes it much harder for fascism to be seen nostalgically. That’s exactly why US history is not taught the same way. It really is that simple.
@DidiQ All the invading countries in World War II need to do the same.
@DidiQ it is mandatory, but as always, the details depend on the school and teacher. Some are able to make it interesting, others just spend a semester listing atrocities and leave their students without a way to approach the complicated relationship we have with our history, thus giving birth to a fairly widely held belief: “I’m not responsible, I wasn’t even born. Why should I feel guilt?” And that’s the problem, teaching that knowing history is not a debt, but a responsibility.
@DidiQ The only way you can learn to avoid making the same mistakes over and over is to know how those mistakes were made, and what led up to them...
@DidiQ sorry, but me as a german, I have to disagree. The humongous focus on holocaust in history lessons is breaking the German self view, destroying society at its core. Don’t think it has no bad impact!
@DidiQ Ignorance and want beget fear and poverty….Only education and tolerance will allow everyone to move forward in understanding…
@DidiQ and why doesn’t America do this? because the supposed winners of the Civil War never succeeded in truly holding the losers to account; the will has never existed to acknowledge that enslavement was an atrocity that must never be revisited. at its base, even today too much of America still approves of slavery.
@DidiQ
Maybe this is what it will take to wake up the people in Florida....
By people I mean Democrats because the stupid Resputlikkkans aren't anything more than slugs.
@DidiQ ...it is with denial of events we doom ourselves to relive those atrocities over and over.
@DidiQ hear, hear!
@DidiQ Japan, on the other hand...
@DidiQ
Booommm!!!
@DidiQ Canada also needs to do this with indigenous history.
@DidiQ Unfortunately, education is not a guarantee. Germany today still has fascist groups. But if we tried to cover our history up our lied about it, it would surely be so much worse.
@DidiQ Yes, thank you. When I was in Germany in 2015 it was explained to our group that it is MANDATORY that the schools teach the children about the holocaust and that by age 14 children must go to and see one of the camps. The people do not want this piece of their history to ever be repeated.
@DidiQ As for those that go fascist in the face of that? They were going to end up fascist in ANY situation.
@DidiQ The teaching of history is seen as a powerful tool of control. In Scotland when I was a boy there was a push to try and suppress any feelings which might lead to independent thought. In history classes when I was at school we weren't taught about the Scottish enlightenment, Scottish / English wars, the Highland clearances or Red Clydeside. No, we were taught about the Aztecs. Could they have found a subject further from Scottish history?
#ScottishIndependence
#ScottishDemocracy
@DidiQ Right on. I always take the argument about guilt-tripping kids to be disingenuous. If conservatives don’t want their kids to feel bad about slavery, how *do* they want their kids to feel about slavery?
@maxleibman @DidiQ I don't agree. The head of the Arolsen Archives has been interviewed last summer in Kassel as she was talking to passers-by in the city who visited the open exhibition "#lastseen" on photos of deportations and she was shocked about the lack of knowledge on the Shoa and the killings. So knowing is one, emotional relations is one but Germany too is the country of Gedenken, which means most often thinking but not paying. Paying for the murder.
@DidiQ fuck fascist DeSantis. It's time for massive protests.
@DidiQ Sigh, same here in Austria. We actually even discuss in school the not so popular detail that most of our subject ethnicities from the days we were an Empire not exactly have loved us.
Side note, at least in Austria, history is a mandatory class, you cannot simply deselect it.
(we do have an almost infinite variety of school types, but the school types come with basically fixed class schedules, and perhaps some subjects like languages one can choose)
@DidiQ Maybe a bit more complicated: the Holocaust had a clear endpoint, while legal enslavement was followed by sharecropping, chain gangs, lynchings, segregation, redlining, voter suppression, etc. The 13th amendment exception for involuntary servitude of prisoners still stands. All of this should also be taught.
@Agora @DidiQ The Governor has also made it a *3rd Degree felony* for a teacher to have a book in her classroom that he & his administration hasn't specifically approved and listed in a database. My county issued a warning to all our teachers, asking them to proactively box up everything in their little classroom libraries just to be safe. Many K-8 school libraries have been decimated.
@DidiQ Thx for the post. In Canada we have the Truth and Reconcilliation process. There is a 1500 page public PDF which describes the atrocities of the past between the First Nations & Canada. You mention ‘shy away from their own ugly history’. That publication is very difficult to read because of its ugliness. It is vile what was done. One has to deconstruct that culture which presented these previous lies. It’s the ugly colonialism, racism, and greed that supported this regime. It’s tough work
@DidiQ German here. Completely true. Learning about history based on facts and understanding how something like that could happen was part of our basic education. I live in the US now and when my kids were old enough, we made sure to visit a concentration camp so they can learn and see what happened. It was certainly a somber visit to experience what humans have done to other humans who were different from them.
@kkz Thank you for sharing. I visited a concentration camp once when I was in Germany as a teenager, and it has stayed with me.
@DidiQ I agree. Problem is that here, these disgraceful children of Shitler, haven’t overcome their defeat.
Germany learned from nazism and actually changed their electoral system to prevent it happening again. US Republicans learned from US history and are trying to turn back the clock. Big difference.
“In Germany, teaching the Holocaust is mandatory. It includes visits to concentration camp, museums, etc. They don’t shy away from their own ugly history. Yet the kids aren’t damaged; they’re strengthened, matured, humbled. US needs to do same re slavery. Not that complicated.”
@Greengordon @DidiQ what changes did they enact to prevent another fascist regime?
As I said, they changed their electoral system. They selected a version of #proportionalrepresenation that they believed would make it unlikely that another demagogue could seize power ad Hitler did.
@hlfshell @Greengordon @DidiQ A dramatically different constitution.
E.g. an almost complete ban of referendums at the federal level.
(because the Nazis loved referendums)
Strict limits on enabling laws (but these are common in many European countries after WWII, almost as common enabling laws were before WWII). Not as strict as Spain (but then they had Franco).
@hlfshell @Greengordon @DidiQ E.g. if I caught it correctly, the Spanish authorities had to renew the Corona measures more than once per month because the limits on enablement laws (how long basic rights can be restricted) are so strict in Spain.
Than Germany also has a very strong federal system, with the Federal government literally being forbidden to dabble in many things.
The Corona response was so chaotic as the rules were made mostly by the 16 states, and administered at county level.
@hlfshell @Greengordon @DidiQ Then, probably again as response to Nazi abuses, the EU's privacy fetish has actually been born in Karlsruhe ("the basic right to privacy was invented by the German Constitutional Court").
Ah, when we are at it. Karlsruhe.
Federal institutions (like the supreme courts, agencies) are even now after reunification rather distributed around the country.
@yacc143 @Greengordon @DidiQ thanks for the quick education on the matter!
@hlfshell @Greengordon @DidiQ Something many people do not understand (e.g. many BrExiters had problems with and accused me of talking my country, Austria, down), ignoring problems, or your own weak points and shouting out how great you (or your nation) are, does not solve any problems.
Acknowledging issues raises the probability that something will be done dramatically.
@hlfshell @Greengordon @DidiQ It might be not comfortable to talk about the “dark spots” in your national past, but generally speaking, the only ones hurt by this are either direct perps (hence in DE/AT the remembering really started with the post-war generation), or people that would like to re-enact some historical policies. Hence some AfD politicians who demand a 180° turn in remembrance policies.
@Greengordon @DidiQ anti-revisionism laws help them along, I guess. Freedom of Speech has some obvious flaws.
@DidiQ @donmelton German. Can confirm. Holocaust education is broad and extensive, for multiple years and in multiple subjects (not just history, but German, English, etc., because “how did I affect culture? What did it do to families across Europe?” is a key point), and it doesn’t hurt kids; it builds character.
@chucker @donmelton Thank you for adding your first hand experience learning about the Holocaust in Germany.
@chucker @DidiQ @donmelton same here, German and we had roughly three years of history only on this topic including a visit to Dachau. Since I live in Dachau I think it is our responsibility
@kojote @DidiQ @donmelton we never went to a camp but I know a lot of people my generation who did. Sounds scary (and important)
@chucker @DidiQ @donmelton +1 to this.
the older i get, the more i am astounded how much that part of education became a solid and useful foundation. i even find its lack in some folks from other countries disconcerting.
and yet, at the time, it felt so dreary and useless. turns out, even when kids in puberty can be really ungrateful little shits, energy spent on them isn’t necessarily spent in vain.
@gekitsu @DidiQ @donmelton yeah, but I do think my schools (OS and then Gym) may have overdone it a bit, and I will say we got fairly little history education about other regions. Mostly Eurocentric; some US and Aus. Way too little South American, Africa, Asia.
@chucker @DidiQ @donmelton yes, full agree to the latter part – it did come at a cost of less time spent on other important subjects. but i’m sure that sort of encompassing coverage of nazi germany could still be maintained while on a less eurocentric history curriculum.
at least in my school (gymn. in bavaria), it wasn’t just a matter of history lessons, there was a lot of it in german as well, and other subjects as it fit in. (plus excursions, visits from survivors, etc.) didn’t make it any less ‘come on, again?’ to teen-age me, but in retrospect, that interdisciplinary approach allowed for more chances of something grabbing here, something else gaining a foothold there.
@DidiQ This makes so much sense.
@DidiQ I hope DeathSantis loses BIGLY!
@DidiQ when I come across people who resist our true history; I say the Germans courageously acknowledge their history. So can the U.S. unless we are just too weak to face the truth. Waiting to see…..another test.