Mr. Schneider's Online Classroom
Overview
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior demands that students consider themselves as active participants in a democratic society as they discover how the failure of democracy in Germany in the 1920s-40s led to the Holocaust. The course compels students to explore unexamined prejudice, myths, and misinformation as a means of preventing such atrocities from happening again. Students are challenged to complicate their thinking by going beyond simple answers to complex problems. Readings, images, film, and music are selected to open up students' thinking to the range of choices people had, to question why they ultimately made the decisions they did. Students must sift through a variety of perspectives to explore themes such as identity, group membership, judgment, memory, legacy, and bystander behavior. Ultimately, this course of study will bring students to connect past and present and to make conscious choices to participate in building a more just and humane society. Students' progress in this course is crucial to their development at New Haven Academy, especially as a foundation for the culminating Social Action Project they will complete as seniors.
