Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Memory and Learning: The Education System’s Challenge to Create Empathy


     Germany has a unique relationship with nationalism. In “Media and Reinvention of the Nation,” Silvio Waisbord states that the concept of nationalism originated out of the disorganization born out of the political and socioeconomic factions of the post-French revolution era. “Nationalists believed that culture, rather than economics or politics, keeps societies together” (Waisbord, p. 376). After World War II and the fall of the Third Reich, Germans were taught to be wary of nationalistic views, lest they fall victim to the same ideologies of National Socialism (NS) propagated by the Nazi party. How can a country reestablish its national image and move forward from past injustices, but still operate with enough caution to make sure those injustices are never repeated, in what some scholars call a combination of “memory and learning?” This task has fallen to educators in Germany, whose primary goal is reflected in the words of Theodor W. Adorno, the co-founder of critical theory, who stated that the “very first demand on education is that there not be another Auschwitz” (Meseth and Proske, 2010). Educators in Germany are supposed to focus on a human-rights education of tolerance and democratic values. Studies show that they are failing.
As illustrated, anti-Semitism did not end with the liberation of concentration camps. Young people in Germany feel disconnected from the Holocaust, and much of that can be traced to teachings in schools. Classroom education offers a sterile approach and provides students with statistics that focus on histories of deportations and anti-Jewish legislation. The approach largely lacks pathos, or an emotional appeal; the most humanizing effect achieved, however, is a negative one. Young Germans can often only see Jewish people as victims and are left unable to empathize, identify, or relate to them as a people (Urban, 2008). “Most young Germans are able to understand what the Holocaust was, but not who it happened to. In most German schools, there is very little talk about Judaism, Jewish culture and history. Jews only appear in textbooks dealing with the Crusades and with the Holocaust” (Fleshler, 2012). One of the key issues we analyze in this paper is simple: there is a growing thy toward the Holocaust and rising anti-Semitism in Germany. The government has given the education system the responsibility to foster a moral conscience among students, but an inherent paradox exists in this framework.
Ethics in Education and the Negative Consequences of Moralization
In terms of pedagogical ethics, an educator is required to remain objective and cannot force feelings of morality and empathy in the classroom. The goal of education in Germany specifically is two-fold; one side is reflective of German culture as separate from National Socialism, and the second was created directly because of it. German students are taught to reach independent judgments, but they are also expected to find the history of National Socialism morally reprehensible. A student is supposed to be a free and autonomous being, a concept deeply rooted in German culture, which creates a contradiction one study linked to the philosophy of Immanual Kant: “How do I cultivate freedom through coercion?” (Meseth and Proske, 2010).  Essentially, education should exert emotional influence on the students without compromising their self-determination.
Both the conceptual structure and the tactics employed in the classroom are deeply flawed; when moral empathy is created in the classroom, however, the effect is no less troubling. Instances in which students achieve “appropriate” moral reactions to their history lessons do not suggest Germany has effectively communicated its history. For those students who have been emotionally affected by classroom teaching on the Holocaust, a new form of trauma has been created, called “NS-Traumatik.” The word “trauma” is applied to events that leave psychological scarring, in which the pain of the past shapes the present experiences of one’s life. “Trauma embeds the past into the present as an involuntary memory that appears over and over again; it cannot be forgotten” (Meseth and Proske, 2010). Discussions of trauma and the Holocaust are naturally appropriated to the experiences of the victims. But experts have discovered that the term can also be applied to the German conscience, and a “collective trauma” has now become a part of German’s national identity, encompassing the guilt and shame of the perpetrators and their descendants instead of the suffering of the victims.
As a result of this “NS-Traumatik,” studies are showing that while ignorance about the Holocaust is a growing problem in German youth, focusing on the Holocaust too much is contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany. “Education about the Nazis often imposes ‘exaggerated moral expectations’ on students, who respond with an anti-Semitism that is typified by ‘guilt denial’…they feel accused of acts they had nothing to do with. Some hate the Jews for putting them in this situation” (Fleshler, 2012). This over-education on the subject is leading to what is known as “Holocaust fatigue.” Sixty-seven percent of Germans find it “annoying that Germans are still held responsible for crimes against the Jews” (Fleshler, 2012).
Questions of Identity: Individual and National
German youth are determined to develop a personal identity that is separate from the Holocaust, and adults are weary of not having had the option themselves. They are searching for a more normative German national identity. Many German adolescents feel that the Holocaust is too much of a burden and that it has been over-represented in public discussion. Moreover, those who seek to return to a traditional German identity of nationalism attempt to rationalize the Holocaust as a comparable crime of human history, similar to the American treatment of Native Americans and African Americans. These individuals have a predisposition to reject the notion that the Holocaust was unique and set apart from other crimes against humanity. One study argued that German youth need to understand the Holocaust as a part of the German collective identity, “because you can neither rewrite history nor escape the fact that you are shaped by your social and cultural background” (Meseth and Proske, 2010).
            The creation and maintenance of a national identity is central to discussions about communication in German, but some scholars argue that focusing on national identity is also a key to reducing anti-Semitism. Holocaust education focuses too much on the concentration camps through which Jews were forced to suffer and not enough on their culture and identities outside of the Holocaust.   “Of course they need to know about Dachau and the Kristallnacht. The problem is that, especially for young people, teenagers, the atrocities are hard to imagine, they seem unreal. But they can easily learn about those who lived down the street, around the corner” (Fleshler, 2012). If education stopped portraying Jews as an “other” and as victims of German cruelty, then students would be able to understand Jewish culture, especially in Germany, as a shared national identity.
While there are many debates on how to improve holocaust education in Germany, some countries believe it should be stopped altogether. In Britain, Lord Baker of Dorking, who spent three years as Margaret Thatcher’s education secretary, has argued that the teaching of Holocaust should be banned in British schools, arguing that it causes British students to think “less favorably” of modern Germans (Rowley, 2011). He argues that British students should learn British history, not German. But experts from the Holocaust Centre argued that the Holocaust was a European-wide crime, suggesting that the Germans alone cannot be held responsible. Despite this argument, the Holocaust still remains central to German national identity. 

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