More than 180 New York City public school teachers, most of them at the high school level, have been volunteer participants in the first in-service courses for more effective teaching of the Holocaust sponsored by the city Board of Education, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Association of Orthodox Jewish Teachers (AOJT).
The project was described, in telephone interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, by Albert Post, assistant director of social studies for the public school system, who directed the school board program, in cooperation with the New York regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; and Jay Schechter, social studies teacher at Sara Hale High School in Brooklyn, who served as coordinator and primary instructor for the UFT-sponsored course.
Schechter also taught the course for the Association of Orthodox Jewish Teachers, which he said was the first such in-service course in the New York City program. He said an average of 35 teachers, many of them not members of the association, met at the AOJT office once a week from September, 1977 to February, 1978. He said there was a course fee of $5 as there was for the UFT course.
An ADL source said that, while similar in-service programs have been held in a number of other cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Great Neck and Oceanside, N.Y.–the Oceanside program in cooperation with the ADL–the New York program was probably the most intensive in the nation.
The 15-week Board of Education course, which began Feb. 9, was held at the ADL regional office. The UFT classes, called “Quest Course,” were held at UFT headquarters with Ray Frankel as director. Average attendance at the ADL office was 30 teachers and at the UFT from 95 to 100, the education officials told the JTA.
METHOD OF TEACHING
Post emphasized, in connection with plans of the Board of Education to introduce an experimental curriculum on the Holocaust in all 150 junior high schools and 100 full-scale high schools, in the city’s public school system in the 1978-79 school year, that study of the Holocaust has been a continuing one in world history classes in all of the city’s high schools since 1945.
He also told the JTA there is no standard world history course in the high school and that each high school teacher is free to develop the content of the history course as he or she feels is appropriate. He said this meant that the course requirements can involve assigned outside reading, or use of what has been described as limited references to the Holocaust in standard world history textbooks or–in a few high schools–full-semester courses, taking a class period five days a week. Post said world history is taught only in high schools.
Incorporation of special material on the Holocaust is optional for the world history teacher but, if the teacher decides to include Holocaust material in the course, it is mandatory for the student. Post noted, however, there is no rule requiring the teacher of world history, or of any other subject, to teach about the Holocaust.
One of the gaps in the public school Holocaust teaching material program has been a lock of accessible and authoritative material on the Holocaust. One of Post’s assignments has been to help supervise preparation of a massive Holocaust Curriculum Resources Material (CRM). He was project director for the CRM. It includes a course of study outlines, an extensive bibliography, lists of audio-visual materials, and hundreds of pages of excerpted materials and lesson plans.
He said about 500 copies of the CRM have been prepared in photocopy form and that it has been sent to each of the city’s junior high schools and high schools, as well as to superintendents in the city’s 32 school districts.
EXPERIMENTAL NATURE OF PROGRAM
Post said the in-service training was experimental in several ways. First, it is expected to stimulate more teachers to expand Holocaust portions of their courses. Second, it is experimental in that the Board of Education decision to institute an experimental course in the 1978-79 school year in all junior high and high school classes requires more effective teaching tools than have been available.
The board announced last October that it planned to introduce the experimental program in the coming school year and that it may lead to mandatory Holocaust study in the 1979-80 school year.
The Philadelphia public school system, which has had a widespread distribution of Holocaust study courses in its schools, also plans to institute a system-wide experimental Holocaust study program during the 1978-79 school year. However, the JTA was told, the curriculum for the Philadelphia experimental program is much less comprehensive than the CRM and the impact in New York City, compared to that in Philadelphia only on a population basis, is expected to be much greater. New York City has around eight million residents; Philadelphia around two million.
Post said that, before the financial crunch that enveloped New York City in 1975, there were 12 high schools offering full five-day semester electives on the Holocaust in the world history courses, with about 25 students taking the elective in each school. He said the crippled school budget forced a drop to a current total of six schools. He also reported there are a few Holocaust mini-courses in some city junior high schools and that literature teachers also teacher on the subject, using such materials as the Diary of Anne Frank.
Post predicted, as did Schechter, that the in-service programs and the availability of the CRM were certain to stimulate more teachers to incorporate more extensive elements about the Holocaust in their teaching, not only in world history but also in English literature and other social study courses. Post said his prediction applied not only to the teachers who took the in-service training but also from many who did not, because of the availability of the CRM.
The UFT program was started in January, initially planned for four two-hour weekly sessions, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Schechter said “we ended up with nine sessions” of two hours each. He said many of the teachers stayed on after 6 p.m. to get information not covered in the sessions.
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