Affective Revolution and Holocaust Education

Abstract

Learning about the Holocaust aligned with the overall goals of the comprehensive high school, an institution that was experiencing a great degree of financial and cultural stress in the 1970s. Secondary schools were designed to bring students from disparate social and ethnic groups together and to keep them engaged (and enrolled) with relevant material. Many secondary school teachers and administrators were realizing that these goals were often contradictory. Discussing slavery and racism openly with minority students could be counterproductive by exacerbating racial tension. On the other hand, discussing the history of rich white men could bore and antagonize students, who were understandably cynical of “official” history in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. The topic of the Holocaust, however, provided a way to talk about discrimination and apathy indirectly. It provided a window into a whole slew of issues and events for students to explore safely in ways that made them feel subversive. Many asked why schools had ignored the Holocaust for so long. Why were Americans ignoring genocides in the present? As we shall see such ideas did not simply emerge from local classrooms, but instead were part of a larger movement away from traditional history toward areas of conflict and diversity known as the “affective revolution.”