Saturday, April 1, 2006

A school in Apopka, FL are angry over a "Holocaust" experiment that took place on eight graders on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Students with last names beginning with L through Z were given yellow stars to wear throughout the day, while other students were privileged.

The privileged students weren't called Nazis, and the yellow stars had only five points. I guess they still had to be PC about this nonsense.
One boy was made to go to the back of the lunchline four times by an administrator, and children with the 'five point' stars were disallowed from using certain facilities.

Parents who were upset felt that the experiment taught their children little or nothing.

"Children were selected to be persecuted or privileged, some not told the rule," Local 6 reporter Gerald Reznick said. "Parents tell Local 6 they were not told prior to the school-wide experiment."

"Teachers felt that it would have defeated the purpose to tell the students ahead of time because that would have prepared them," Principal Douglas Guthrie said. "Students came in and all they got was a star."

"This was supposed to be a creative way to teach the horrors of the Holocaust but unfortunately, it has sparked controversy and more importantly, it has sparked conversation," Reznick said. "We have now heard from nearly a dozen parents (who are) very upset."

Ya think? So, let me get this straight...Not being allowed to use a water fountain or going to the back of the lunchline teaches about the horrors of genocide, eugenics and Nazi Germany in general?

Even the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida could not justify this sort of thing.

"Of course, we applaud Apopka (Memorial) Middle School's effort to engage in Holocaust education with the hope of a tolerance education component in the classroom. That is the mission of The Center to teach tolerance through Holocaust remembrance and education. However, we do not encourage nor train teachers to engage in simulation exercises."

When I was in high school, they had an exercise similar to this, except the point was that we had to either be slaves, overseers or masters, thereby learning about the travesty of slavery.
We had to wear tags identifying who we were. Slaves had to do whatever they were told (barring, of course, sexual assault or other similarly inappropriate things), such as going to the back of the lunchline, barred use of certain restrooms, ect. If an overseer or master wanted food off of the luchtray that you bought, you had to give it up. If you had to go all of the way to the other side of the school building to use the restroom and was late to class, you had to take a detention.

Yours truly was a slave, but part of the privilege of being a quiet nerd meant no one ever noticed my existence, the same as usual.

If I was the person then that I am now, I'd have walked right out of school that day. What a farce!

I submit that this sort of thing doesn't really teach anything, but rather is an insult to the memory of those who have suffered by trivializing what they went through.

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