4 ms·

> Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. Now that might be one of the craziest things I've read all mont

> Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. Now that might be one of the craziest things I've read all month.

mathgladiator 9y ago
That is absolutely insane. How bad is our education system that it is unable to teach and retain such simple facts.
- omegaworks 9y ago
  I learned about it as a kid at my public Chicago school, but it took resources: textbooks, novels, field trips. I even had the privilege to see a play recounting one family's attempts to escape. Public school systems around the country are under attack by the people in positions of authority. Neoliberal Democrats and Evangelical Republicans have allied in a fight to privatize and strip resources away from the public school system. Public school teachers in the most neglected states have finally had enough, and are rising up and striking for better conditions for themselves and their students. It's worth it, to make sure we remember to never repeat the horrors of our past. http://kfor.com/2018/04/03/these-crumbling-textbooks-show-why-oklahoma-teachers-are-walking-out/ http://kfor.com/2018/04/03/these-crumbling-textbooks-show-wh...
- omegaworks 9y ago
  It's also not really a simple fact. When you live in a safe, stable environment where you are taught empathy, that everyone should treat everyone else fairly, and that nurtures a healthy skepticism, horrors so extreme are hard to wrap your head around. How could people treat other people, other living, breathing, bleeding humans, with such callous disregard? How to educate about hate, how it develops and how it manifests is hugely complicated and always encounters political friction. Americans have our own genocides[1], cultural erasure[2], history of violent bondage[2] and modern[4] internment[5] policies[6] that we also fail to educate about on a wide scale. It's not surprising that so many have slipped through the cracks wrt the Holocaust. 1. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html 2. http://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org/the-forced-assimilation-of-native-americans.html http://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org/the-forced-assimilat... 3. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgomery-alabama/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgom... 4. https://eji.org/mass-incarceration https://eji.org/mass-incarceration 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... 6. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/18/immigrant-children-detention-centers/10798643/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/18/immigr...

> Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. Now that might be one of the craziest things I've read all month.

mathgladiator 9y ago

That is absolutely insane. How bad is our education system that it is unable to teach and retain such simple facts.

omegaworks 9y ago
I learned about it as a kid at my public Chicago school, but it took resources: textbooks, novels, field trips. I even had the privilege to see a play recounting one family's attempts to escape. Public school systems around the country are under attack by the people in positions of authority. Neoliberal Democrats and Evangelical Republicans have allied in a fight to privatize and strip resources away from the public school system. Public school teachers in the most neglected states have finally had enough, and are rising up and striking for better conditions for themselves and their students. It's worth it, to make sure we remember to never repeat the horrors of our past. http://kfor.com/2018/04/03/these-crumbling-textbooks-show-why-oklahoma-teachers-are-walking-out/ http://kfor.com/2018/04/03/these-crumbling-textbooks-show-wh...
omegaworks 9y ago
It's also not really a simple fact. When you live in a safe, stable environment where you are taught empathy, that everyone should treat everyone else fairly, and that nurtures a healthy skepticism, horrors so extreme are hard to wrap your head around. How could people treat other people, other living, breathing, bleeding humans, with such callous disregard? How to educate about hate, how it develops and how it manifests is hugely complicated and always encounters political friction. Americans have our own genocides[1], cultural erasure[2], history of violent bondage[2] and modern[4] internment[5] policies[6] that we also fail to educate about on a wide scale. It's not surprising that so many have slipped through the cracks wrt the Holocaust. 1. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html 2. http://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org/the-forced-assimilation-of-native-americans.html http://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org/the-forced-assimilat... 3. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgomery-alabama/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgom... 4. https://eji.org/mass-incarceration https://eji.org/mass-incarceration 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... 6. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/18/immigrant-children-detention-centers/10798643/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/18/immigr...