Jerusalem – The Education Ministry announced Wednesday a new comprehensive educational program about the Holocaust to be taught to all students from kindergarten through high school.
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The new program, “Memory is for me” was formulated by a joint committee comprised of Holocaust experts, educational teams, psychologists and educational consultants from the Education Ministry and the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem.
“On Holocaust Remberance Day the kindergarden age children are exposed to the siren that sounds across Israel, and the special broadcasts in the media on the topic. As children do, they absorb the information without the cognitive or emotional ability to comprehend and draw meaning from it,” an Education Ministry statement explained.
“The main role of adults and educators on this day is to help the children organize the information they absorbed while preserving their sense of security,” the ministry added.
The kindergarten teachers will advise parents how to talk to their children about the Holocaust. Kindergarden teachers have been told by the Education Ministry not to show photographs from the era.
For first and second grade pupils the ministry has similarly advised teachers to present a non-threatening presentation of history.
The ministry decided that teachers of these grades focus on a central figure from the period that can create a empathy among the students.
Schools across Israel will mark Holocaust Remembrance Day with ceremonies on April 27.
how about the meaning of tishah bov will that be included in the kidergarten curriculum to?
It is a selfish thing to do. Children deserve to be ignorant of Holocausts and disasters. There is plenty of time later in life to learn about tragedies. The discussion should have started with teachers, not ended with teachers. My high school Rebby used to talk about Holocausters, and turning it into a religion. He went through it and he understood that first you teach the joys of Yidishkeit, then Holocaust.
How about a new Torah education program in Israel, to start in Kindergarten?
What i as a teacher in a modern orthodox Yeshiva in New Jersey am planning to do with my four and five year old children is to read the book “Joseph and the Overcoat”. This book, that shows pictures in an obvious European neighborhood, has nothing to do with the holocaust but shows the joys of a family living in Europe. I’m going to show the pictures, read the words, and discuss with the children how people lived such a wonderful family life in Europe which was then transferred to Israel, America, etc. I will also discuss how some of their grandparents even came from Europe.
In Israel, though, the children are exposed to the siren and to the seriousness with which their parents take that siren. I think it’s important that the siren be put into some type of context for them otherwise they might imagine that the horror is occurring to their parents and themselves right now.