More than 80 years have now passed since the end of the Second World War, and the continental genocide of Europe’s Jews.
Over that time, our collective knowledge of what took place has grown considerably, and the Holocaust has become more present in the national discourse than ever before.
This shift has partly been the result of important work in schools and classrooms to teach about the Holocaust to our young people.
But teaching and learning about the Holocaust is not easy. And the evidence is suggesting our teachers and students need more support.
Studying the Holocaust has been a mandatory requirement of the key stage 3 history course in every revision from 1991 to the present. Importantly, the government has stated the Holocaust will continue to be a compulsory topic.
While this is positive, it remains unclear if further details will be included such as why the Holocaust should be taught, what the aims of Holocaust education are, what content to include and what pedagogic approaches teachers should employ.
The fact is that none of these critical issues have ever been addressed in the five versions of the national curriculum since its inception in 1991.
Many teachers want more guidance
This needs to change. Our research at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education shows many teachers want more guidance and support on how to teach this inherently challenging subject.
When teachers are unsure about the most effective ways to teach about the Holocaust, when they struggle to access specialist professional development or when they have their own misconceptions and knowledge gaps about the Holocaust, this impacts their students’ knowledge.
And now our latest research into what students know and understand about the Holocaust has exposed some stark and troubling realities.
In 2016 we published our first national study with almost 10,000 students. The study revealed concerning gaps, confusions and significant inaccuracies in students’ knowledge about the Holocaust. In response, we developed a series of recommendations, including actions for teaching practice, policy and research.
Over the ten years since, very few of those recommendations have been acted upon.
We recently completed a second national study with students. And while, pleasingly, some progress has been made, it is worrying that numerous issues persist.
Many other knowledge gaps
Take the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, for example. Today, some 73 per cent of students knew that the answer is six million, higher than the 56.8 per cent of students who knew this in 2016.
Clearly, increased knowledge about the scale of the Holocaust is an encouraging development, especially given how easy it is for students to stumble across Holocaust denial and distortion online.
But the fact that more than 25 per cent do not know the true scale should worry us all.
Indeed, our new research clearly shows that many other knowledge gaps and misconceptions are prevalent.
For instance, just 10 per cent of students correctly identified that in 1933 less than 1 per cent of the German population was Jewish. This was a negligible increase compared to our research in 2016, when 6.3 per cent of students knew this information.
To be clear why this matters: this misunderstanding can mean that students struggle to recognise that Jews were a vulnerable minority group within Germany. They need to recognise this to inform their understanding of how and why the Holocaust unfolded.
Exposure to unverified content
Our recent study explored a new dimension of students’ encounters with the Holocaust: exposure to online video and user-generated content that is unverified.
Troublingly, we found that 36.3 per cent of students used YouTube to learn about the Holocaust and 26.9 per cent used TikTok. Moreover, 59.4 per cent of students had come across online content about the Holocaust when they had not been searching for it, and of these students, 66.4 per cent reported this happening on TikTok.
Our focus groups were arguably even more eye-opening. Students outlined various examples of Holocaust-related content they’d stumbled across, content that was inaccurate, insensitive and irresponsible.
Incredibly, one group discussed seeing content where unrelated video game footage is paired with a voiceover about the Holocaust. The students suggested this was to maintain viewers’ interest and thus, prolong the time they spent watching the video.
Clearly, Holocaust education in schools is essential, especially in the current era of misinformation and disinformation. However, we now have compelling evidence that shows we need to revisit how and why the Holocaust is taught.
The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education has decided to convene a national conversation on Holocaust education.
We don’t want to reopen the settled question of whether the Holocaust should be taught, but to examine why we believe the Holocaust should be taught what the aims of Holocaust education are, and how teaching and learning can respond to both the realities of the classroom and the world our students inhabit.
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