Strollerderby : genocide

How Young is Too Young To Learn About Evil?

Amy Kuras — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:32:00 GMT

So, this isn’t going to be a funny post, y'allz, but I want to get the opinions of our readers on this one.

Where I live, we have a small, but very community minded, Jewish population. One of the things they’ve done is to create a well-regarded Holocaust museum and memorial center, the first freestanding such place in the country. Among other things, they run a speaker's bureau of Holocaust survivors who speak with school and community groups about their experiences. Connecting with children and young people, so that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten, is a huge part of their mission. That's also accomplished through school tours, which are mostly aimed at high school and middle school students.

But some people believe that more needs to be done to reach the youngest kids, those ages six to 10 years old. To that end, the museum plans a children's gallery aimed at that age group.

Hmm. I am just not sure what to think about this. On the one hand, I want to shield my kids from knowing about the true extent of human ugliness as long as I can. On the other, you can’t fight injustice and evil if you never go face to face with it, and maybe starting earlier is better. And my oldest is only three, so I have no idea how she'd handle it when she's twice this age.

What do you think? Is elementary age too young to learn about the Holocaust?

When Education Works

Adrienne Martini — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Feel good stories about Rwanda are thin on the ground. Which is how it should be. It's hard to find genocide heartwarming. But in 1993, a few months before Rwanda exploded in bloodshed, something kinda cool happened in a classroom in rural Nebraska.

Global geography teacher Tim Walz decided to try something a little bit different with this group of high school students. Rather than simply require them to memorize facts about the globe and the Holocaust, he had them look deeper into how genocides happen. On the final, he asked them to predict where the next one would be.

The result gives you just a little bit of faith in the American education system. It might also kill any faith you had in people when it comes to avoiding mass murder. But let's focus on the good.

Map credit: Perry-Castenda Library

Bullies are the Kids Who Grow Up to be Genocidal Maniacs

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:58:00 GMT

So, your kid is the neighborhood bully? You'd better nip that in the bud unless your goal is to raise the next Slobodan Milosevic.

Does that sound crazy? Yeah, kind of, but Barbara Coloroso doesn't think it is that big of a stretch. Coloroso says it is “actually a short walk from bullying to hate crimes to genocide.” She says that bullying is not so much about being angry as much as it is about contempt. Once you are able to marginalize a person as someone beneath you who doesn't count and you can harass at will, you can feel that way about a whole group.

Scary? Definitely. Fixable? Certainly.

Coloroso says that if we can raise our children with a sense of uniqueness and respect for the differences between other people we will all be parenting in the right direction.

Rwanda to Maybe Limit Families to 3 Kids

Karen Murphy — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:18:00 GMT

Okay, so sorry to interrupt your Valentine festivities here (I don't know about you, but where I live there's an ice storm, and the schools are closed, and there's NO CHOCOLATE, so why not go after the hard news?), but I ran across this piece of news about Rwanda. Remember Rwanda? That would be the country which engaged in racial genocide of some 500,000 - 800,000 (the numbers are conflicting) members of ethnic groups, which could have been stopped by UN or US involvement but was a case of too little, too late. Yeah, that Rwanda. I know, I know. I couldn't watch the movie "Hotel Rwanda" last year either, and had to turn it off.

So why am I interrupting your Valentine's Day love-fest to bring this up? Because apparently, amid the past ugliness, there's been such a resurgence of hope in the country that women are bearing an average of six children apiece (!!!) in an effort to regain the lost population. Wow, that's hope, isn't it? I love that. The only problem is, the country's so damn poor that all those children really can't be supported. Oops, some more "too little, too late". So now the country's thinking about trying to create incentives for families who adhere to a new minimum of three children per. China, it's not. But maybe someday this overpopulated country will find its balance; I certainly hope so.

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled chocolate now.