Should the Holocaust be taught in schools?
The Holocaust was a horrible event in the history of the modern world. Millions of people were needlessly and ruthlessly exterminated at the hands of the Nazis. There are few people in Britain who feel that the Holocaust should not be taught in schools. While it is important to teach about the Holocaust to children, it will be in vain if we do not know why we do it. My high school is a diverse one and there are many reasons why it should be taught there.
One of the most important reasons has been summed up rather well by George Santayana, an American philosopher and poet. His famous line is, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In spirit, this unoriginal quotation says that if you do not learn what went wrong in the past, then the same mistake will happen again. If it does not get taught, then people will forget. And that is dangerous. In fact, the dangers of it have already been seen this decade. As less and less people were getting education on the Holocaust, less and less people were paying attention to the world around them. Nobody noticed when a civil war in the former Yugoslavia turned into almost a replica of the Nazi's Holocaust. Concentration camps, mass graves, genocide, just as in Germany, yet nobody noticed. While less and less British people were getting educated on the Holocaust, less and less noticed the concentration camps, totalitarianism, and religious persecution in the People's Republic of China. Less and less noticed because less and less people knew that they should notice. Therefore, if the children of Britain do not learn about the Holocaust, they will be condemned to repeat it.
