Forget facts. Teach "right" attitudes or "character" through feel-good experiences: An important aspect of Nazi education was the cult of 'Experience' as being more crucial to the development of the individual than the academic process of learning with its stress on 'knowledge'. Unlike knowledge which involves the intellect, experience involved 'feeling' which alone provided access to the deep truths of Nazism which were essentially based on [ideological unity]. Such an 'experience'... was regarded as essential to character-building. (441)
Reject old authority figures through critical thinking and values clarification: "It appealed to the desire of youth to be independent of the adult world and exploited the conflict of generations and the typical tendency for young people to challenge authority figures, whether parents or teachers." (429)
Confuse students' values through shocking stimuli and values clarification exercises (including sex and AIDS education): "...particularly teachers in secondary schools, were alienated by the crudity of its indoctrination." (433)
INFUSE NEW VALUES THROUGH "REAL LIFE" LEARNING
Create new beliefs and values through multicultural and global education: "New courses were introduced in such fields as racial studies, eugenics, and defence studies and there was a new emphasis on pre-history... Law and political science courses were adapted to fit in with the changes introduced by the regime." (446)
Arts, crafts, and multicultural experience: "People told stories, danced and practiced handicrafts..." (423)
Teach math through integrated curriculum: "Other subjects such as math and foreign language were less subject to ideological contamination. Even here however, Nazi ideology could enter by the back door, as is clear from the following tests...: 'Question 95: The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million RM. How many houses at 15,000 RM each could have been built for that amount?'" (438-439)
Peer counselling: "The slogan 'youth must be led by youth'... was ritually echoed and to some extent followed in practice. But the spirit in which it was applied was very different these young leaders were not representing an autonomous youth culture but were functionaries of an official bureaucracy regimented by rules and regulations and following set patterns of training." (422)
Condition students to compliance: "It was preferred that people should not have a will of their own and should totally subordinate themselves." (428)
Lifelong Learning requires training, testing, remediation, more test and training: "If they have still not become real National Socialists, then they go into the Labour Service and are polished there... And if after six or seven months, there are still remnants of class consciousness or pride in status, then the Wehrmacht will take over the further treatment... and when they return after two or four years then, to prevent them from slipping back into old habits once again, we take them immediately into the SA, SS, etc., and they will not be free again for the rest of their lives." (417)
REQUIRE COMMUNITY SERVICE
"Service learning": "The purpose of labour service was partly practical--to... provide a source of cheap labour--but mainly ideological. It was a part of the cult of community current in the youth movement now manipulated by the Nazis for their own end. Students would be confronted with Real Life and, by being forced to mix with the less privileged sections of the community, would be reminded that they were all [national comrades] together." (440-441)
Mandatory service: "Service in the Hitler Youth is honorary service to the German people. All young people are obliged from the age of 10 to their 19th birthday to serve in the Hitler youth." (420)
Character Education and Cooperative Learning: "We cannot fight our way out of this deep crisis through intellectualism... The school for character... which is a practical test of true comradeship in work and living is irreplaceable.... the true, great, practical school is... in the labour camp, for here instruction and words cease and action begins." (441)
REVISE HISTORY
New content: "...in addition to controlling and indoctrinating the teaching profession, reorganizing the education system and establishing new elite schools, the regime sought to influence youth through the content of what was taught in schools." (436) "Relevance" and historical revision: "The course of history must not appear to our young people as a chronicle which strings events together indiscriminately, but, as in a play, only the important events, those which have a major impact on life, should be portrayed." (438)
RETRAIN TEACHERS
First indoctrinate teachers: "The real task of the NSLB is to create the new German educator in the spirit of National Socialism. It is being carried out with the same methods with which the movement has conquered the whole nation: indoctrination and propaganda." (432)
Certify compliant teachers. "The Nazi party... realized they could do little with the existing professors if they outwardly conformed. They concentrated, therefore, on trying to transform the profession by controlling entry and promotion within it throgh process of political indoctrination...." (444)
The oppressive tactics of the NEA: "Teachers were, however, also subject to control from their professional association, the National Socialist Teachers' League (NSLB)... it expanded through a mixture of propaganda and intimidation... The main functions of the NSLB were, first, the provision of reports on the political reliability of teachers for appointments and promotions and, secondly, the ideological indoctrination of teachers..." (431)
Conform or resign. "Most academics were either apolitical or approved of at least some aspects of the regime.... Those who did not, were either forced out or intimidated into silence." (445)
SILENCE THE OPPOSITION
Block the negative influence of parents and traditional culture: "...these boys join our organization at the age of ten...four years later, they move from the Jungvolk to Hitler Youth and there we keep them for another four years. And then we are even less prepared to give them back into the hands of those who create our class and status barriers..." (417)
Punish parents who protect their children from state indoctrination: "A legal guardian will be liable to a fine up to 150 RM or to imprisonment, if he deliberately contravenes the stipulation #9 of this decree (registration for Hitler Youth)." (420)
Vouchers and Christian schools: "Private schools and denominational schools gradually succumbed to various pressures: the loss of government subsidies or tax concessions...." (434)
FACE THE CONSEQUENCES
Some resist the crude, immoral, and anti-intellectual climate and the pressures to conform: "By the end of the 1930s, a growing number of students were coming to resent the regimentation, the pressures to conform, the anti-intellectual climate, the crudity of the regime's style and its moral duplicity." (443)
Arrogant students: "Teachers, in particular, were also concerned at the contempt for intellect cultivated by the HJ and at the arrogance displayed toward them by pupils who were leaders in the HJ." (429)
Education played a very important part in in trying to cultivate a loyal following for and the Nazis. The Nazis were aware that education would create loyal Nazis by the time they reached adulthood. The had been created for post-school activities and schools were to play a critical part in developing a loyal following for Hitler - indoctrination and the use of were to be a common practice in Nazi schools and the education system.
Enforcing a Nazi curriculum on schools depended on the teachers delivering it. All teachers had to be vetted by local Nazi officials. Any teacher considered disloyal was sacked. Many attended classes during school holidays in which the Nazi curriculum was spelled out and 97% of all teachers joined the Nazi Teachers' Association. All teachers had to be careful about what they said as children were encouraged to inform the authorities if a teacher said something that did not fit in with the Nazi's curriculum for schools.
Subjects underwent a major change in schools. Some of the most affected were History and Biology.
History was based on the glory of Germany - a nationalistic approach was compulsory. The German defeat in 1918 was explained as the work of Jewish and Marxist spies who had weakened the system from within; the was the work of nations jealous of Germany's might and power; the was the work of Jewish saboteurs; the national resurgence which started under the leadership of etc.
Biology became a study of the different races to 'prove' that the Nazi belief in racial superiority was a sound belief. "Racial Instruction" started as the age of 6. Hitler himself had decreed that "no boy or girl should leave school without complete knowledge of the necessity and meaning of blood purity." Pupils were taught about the problems of heredity. Older pupils were taught about the importance of selecting the right "mate" when marrying and producing children. The problems of inter-racial marriage were taught with an explanation that such marriages could only lead to a decline in racial purity.
Geography taught pupils about the land Germany had taken away from her in 1919 and the need for Germany to have living space - lebensraum.
Science had a military-slant to it. The curriculum required that the principles of shooting be studied; military aviation science; bridge building and the impact of poisonous gasses.
Girls had a different curriculum in some regards as they studied domestic science and eugenics - both of which were to prepare young girls to be the prefect . In Eugenics, girls were taught about the characteristics to look out for in a perfect husband and father.
Indoctrination became rampant in all subjects. At every opportunity, teachers were expected to attack the life style of the . Exam questions even contained blunt reference to the government's anti-Semitic stance:
Other questions would also include areas the government wanted taught by teachers in the nation's search for a master race:
PE became a very important part of the curriculum. Hitler had stated that he wanted boys who could suffer pain.........."a young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel." PE took up 15% of a school's weekly timetable. Boxing became compulsory for boys. Those who failed fitness tests could be expelled from their schools - and face humiliation from those who had passed such tests.
In 1937, pupils were give the choice of studying Religious Instructions or not.
For boys considered special, different school were created. Those who were physically fitter and stronger than the rest went to Adolf Hitler Schools where they were taught to be the future leaders of Germany. Six years of tough physical training took place and when the pupils from these schools left aged 18, they went to the army or to university. The very best pupils went to Order Castles. These were schools which took pupils to the limits of physical endurance. War games used live ammunition and pupils were killed at these schools. Those who graduated from the Order Castles could expect to attain a high position in the army or the .
From 1935 on, after the Nuremburg Laws, school children were not allowed to attend schools. The Nazi government claimed that a German pupil sitting next to a Jew could become contaminated by the experience.
The sole purpose of this educational structure was to create a future generation that was blindly loyal to Hitler and the Nazis.
