Long-Term Insights About a Third-Grade Encounter With the Holocaust

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Issues of Controversy in the Social Studies

Abstract

Twelve years ago, Schweber (2008) conducted a study in a third-grade classroom to investigate at what age students should be taught about the Holocaust in formal school settings. She concluded that the third graders in the case study were too young to learn about this genocide and recommended that teachers should be discouraged from teaching similar units.
This follow-up study to be reported on here explores how, twelve years later, the participants make sense of its long-term effects. Using Rothberg’s (2009) “multidirectional memory” as a theoretical lens, this study suggests that the Holocaust holds tremendous power in the participants’ memories and begins to address the question of what are the emotional and psychological after-effects of early Holocaust education.

Authors

• Simone Schweber, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Irene Ann Resenly, University of Wisconsin - Madison