Fewer than half of Janice Wilkerson's adult students have heard of the Holocaust. Of those who have, some initially dismiss it as an exaggeration. Or they don't know where it occurred. One man calls the villain Hester.
The Tennessee students are learning about the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler as part of their General Educational Development, or high school equivalency, curriculum. Tennessee has become the first state to incorporate lessons on the Holocaust into its adult education plan. More than 600 teachers met last month in Nashville, where they learned how to weave the Holocaust into their program.
"I'm really surprised it's such a high-interest area for our students," says Wilkerson, whose charges range from 18 to 72. "It's so emotional. We have students who can really relate to it with their families." One young man in her class had a cousin in prison for setting fire to an African American church. A fellow student shared his shame: Her father is a Ku Klux Klan member.
"It's the perfect audience, because the history is engaging," says Lynn Williams of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with which Tennessee developed its curriculum, along with other partners.
"As far as we know there's no one else in the United States who's piloted a similar adult education program," says Williams. "We think Tennessee has produced a model that should be replicated."
Marva Doremus, assistant director of the office of adult education in Tennessee's Labor Department, reports that other states have expressed interest in doing just that. "You certainly find prejudice and stereotyping everywhere," she asserts. "Anywhere there's an undereducated population, I believe these lessons would have the same impact. And that's everywhere in the U.S."
Educators designed the Holocaust program to fight racism and increase tolerance. Tennesseans are witnessing the arrival of Kurds, Hispanics, Japanese, Sudanese, Somalians and other immigrants. The influx into rural areas with undereducated populations can be a recipe for problems, says Doremus.
Starting this month, all adult education teachers in the three kinds of classes taught in Tennessee - GED, English as a second language, and Families First for parents receiving public assistance - are working diversity training into their lessons. The Holocaust spans all subjects: Students learn vocabulary words like ethics and contempt. They calculate calories to learn nutrition, health and mathematics. Says Barbara Eubank at the UT Center for Literacy Studies, "If you had a candy bar you probably had more calories than Jewish prisoners lived on all day long."
[Published in the Jerusalem Report, August 25, 2003]