Within the standard curriculum in U.S. schools, the study of genocide is generally limited to the mid-20th century crime perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jewish, Roma, homosexual, and physically disabled populations of Europe. The phrase often associated with Holocaust studies is “Never again.” These words, etched into a memorial at the Treblinka concentration camp, convey the necessity of learning about the Nazi commission of extermination, and imply that omitting such events from our education would be tantamount to complicity in allowing future genocides to occur.
However, it seems that we (the collective of educators in the United States) are more than comfortable in omitting other acts of genocide, all of which violate the spirit of “Never again.” I refer to the genocides that occurred in Indonesia <https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/> (1965), Pakistan <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinion/nixon-and-kissingers-forgotten-shame.html> (1971), East Timor <https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/index.htm> (1975), Guatemala <https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/19/what-guilt-does-the-us-bear-in-guatemala/guatemalan-slaughter-was-part-of-reagans-hard-line> (1980s), Iraq <https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1999/09/former-un-official-says-sanctions-against-iraq-amount-genocide> (1990s), Rwanda-Congo (1990) or Yemen <https://theconversation.com/us-complicity-in-the-saudi-led-genocide-in-yemen-spans-obama-trump-administrations-106896> (2015-present), along with that directed against Native-Americans. A dispassionate observer could easily surmise that the lack of focus on these atrocities is not incidental to the fact that the commission of these atrocities were all tacitly or directly supported by the United States. By permitting students to graduate high school without learning about these major crimes for which their government was deeply complicit, we are engaging in a form of genocide denial. https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/05/13/u-s-schools-support-genocide-denial-and-what-to-do-about-it/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8544): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8544 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82804084/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
