Teacher criticized for Hitler 'pros and cons' assignment

It could be discussed at 10th grade level, but I notice the teacher is accused of a positive spin. Hot water for sure, but we're left at the mercy of a skimpy article to make that judgement for us. Was there such a spin in fact, or is this someone else's spin? In other words, I guess I am unwilling to assume unbiased reporting at this time.

Here is an Ask Jeeves news search on the same issue. A little more info:

Click here for more

There are certainly much better ways to teach such:

Holocaust survivor visits Bloomington

While I agree we must study all parts of history in order to hopefully never relive these horrible times, I think it rather juvenile teaching method. It's like shes got her degree from Teenbeat. What's Hot and What's Not. Stupid.
Walter, the link, that wonderful woman is a treasure.

Thanks Ceili for articulating what i cannot...I find it deplorable that a teacher would make such a statement...walter your link was a blood pressure saver! :-)

Up until I read the part about the example she gave, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. It would be a way of sharpening one's debating skills by trying to find the positive effects of dictators who are considered evil men. But I have my doubts about that being the motivating factor now. I wonder what she was thinking? She obviously didn't consider the fallout from this.

Maybe she should be made to visit the holocaust museum in washington d.c....or visit with the woman in the linked story...definitely needs some re-education herself!

None of those articles provide very much specific detail about this deluded individual's "lesson plan." However, the bald statement that there were any medical "advances" produced from the grotesque ventures into morbid medical curiosity which constituted the "experiments" shows an appalling ignorance--assuredly, she did not do her homework. I am even more appalled that she could suggest there were ever any positive side to Stalin's reign of terror. Simply because the Soviet Union was an ally against Hitler, the almost incomprehensible extent of the horror of Stalin's rule has gone unexamined in the west.

I cannot for a moment believe that this individual is qualified to teach history. I also strongly suspect that she secretly admires Hitler, and may be a dupe of the twisted propaganda that teaches that he was maligned and misunderstood. My high school history teacher openly praised Hitler and "the great German nation." I know from first hand experience just how sick this sort of thing is, and the incredible sets of lies, the wilfull blindness and the constant denial required to believe such a position. In that school history classes are saddly the only source of historical knowledge for most people, i personally feel she should not be allowed to teach the subject.

I could understand doing something like this, but not at the high school level. I certainly think that the teacher used abominable judgment choosing dictators where there are still people living who had been affected by them.

Attila the Hun maybe, but Hitler, no!



I think that Setanta is "on" to something!

Couched in the terms described, i see no value to it at any level of historical dialogue.

Thanks Sentanta...I KNEW you were bright! :-)

I would say the concept was acceptable. However to make the statement if that is how she expressed it seems to me to be a justification for what was done. Planting that in young minds is almost like teaching the end justifies the means. Yes she should have been censured

I think there is a deeper issue here.

We have made Hitler into almost a mythological figure of evil (and I am not saying that he was not evil). But there is a danger of restricting thought based on a fear of saying something "offensive" when talking about this period of history.

This example may have just been a misguided attempt at a worthwhile goal -- that is, teaching kids to full explore all sides of an issue.

There is no question that what she said is completely inappropriate in a 10th grade public school classroom. I would accept this type of discussion at the University level or as a public discussion.

I am not ready to condemn the teacher as a Nazi sympathizer based on the scant information we have.

I'm with Ebrown on this one. There is no such thing as pure evil. O.J. Simpson was one of the best football players ever and a likeable, funny actor. He is also a monster. Experiments carried out under Hitler's rule did indeed reap medical benefits. I saw a documentary about how other doctors around the world wanted access to the despicable research; to use it for positive things. Hitler was also a world class motivator and Mussolini did get the trains to run on time. High school history tends to paint historical figures as Devils or Saints with little middle ground. 10th graders, just like college students, should hear the truth. Any good that came out of Hitler's rule is not going to sway a rational person's (students) judgment about the man anyway. This exercise may very well have provoked students to make their own harsh judgments against Hitler after accessing the Pros and Cons. I find that more educational than memorizing that "Hitler was bad".
If the teacher was really glorifying Nazism, than of course she should be subject to censure. Nothing in that article convinced me that was the case. Personally; I think teachers who promote individual thoughts are among the elite.

I would like to weigh in here with a little more background. The term facist comes from Italy--the old conundrum about the trains running on time in Italy ignores the cronyism and corrupt liaisons with business and industry which was killing the Italian economy by the 1930's and which lead to Moussolini's imperialist adventures in Africa. Of the four Facist dictators in Europe in the 1930's, he was arguably the most inept. Mataxas in Greece was a great admirer of Hitler and Franco, and would likely have been an ally, had not the idiot Moussolini invaded his nation. Franco was simply repeating the conservative counterrevolution which was a feature of every attempt to install a liberal government in Spain after 1814. Hitler was the worst of the bunch, although Stalin was much more destructive--but Stalin was not a facist. If the discussion were whether or not some good was eventually extracted from the insane cruelty of the concentration camps, that might be an appropriate discussion. Hitler was not responsible, however, even for those ghastly experiments. He was simply responsible for the atmosphere which allowed them to be carried out.

The standard defense of facist dictators has been that they did their people some good in a time of need. This ignores, however, that these men in particular had really no useful political ideas of their own. Moussolini had been a socialist newspaper editor, who used a mish-mash of the ideas of others to create a governmental equivalent of Scientology. Facism in Italy was doomed, because it simply did not work. It survived in Spain because of a history (easily demonstrated) of a deep conservatism in that nation which runs counter the liberal tradition which had grown up in Europe since 1789 and 1848. In Germany, Hitler was responsible for none of the programs which seemed to benefit the average Germans. The economy in Germany was recovering when he took power, because the Weimar Republic had knuckled down and paid the reparations from the First World War, and then practiced the essential austerity without which economic recovery would not have been possible. The soup kitchens and make-work public works projects which the Nazis were at pains to publicize were the brain-child of Ernst Rohm and his brown shirts, co-opted by Hitler--even then, the idea of how to organize the public relations campaign was very more likely the idea of Rudolph Hess. The danger inherent in such a discussion is that as a result of the necessarily shallow examination of the historical record which is the norm in secondary education, and even in university historical survey course for non-majors, the student will not get sufficient information to make a realistic assessment of the man, as opposed to the course of events. Hitler was a dangerously pathological individual, and there is no stretch of the historical imagination which can tie him to any benefit having accrued from his reign of terror. I rate only Josef Dugashvilli (Stalin) as a worse blight on the history of mankind.

Volkswagon Bug

Couple of things occur to me here:

1) as has already been stated by some, the teacher is oafish at best in attempting to get at either the complicated nature of historical cause and effect (to what end, I don't know) or how Hitler might have come to and remained in power (though this feels like reaching to give somebody the benefit of the doubt).

2) Had the teacher attempted to examine Hitler's rise to power, delving into politics, propaganda, the aftermath of WWI, some history of European Jews and Romani, similar resistance might have been encountered, which would be unfortunate. I'm no student of history myself, but I would imagine it would be more useful to really look at NAZI propaganda and the nature of political support for and opposition to Hitler than to simply say that he was there, he killed a bunch of people, he was really, really bad, and we kicked his ass right out -- which is how it was presented to us in high school. There are many folks out there who would see this as a morbid fascination with Hitler and call for censure, as well.

The "Auschwitz Medical Experimentation" was done on humans, against their will.

I can't understand that someone finds any good on this.

The Volkswagen is another example of how Hitler is credited for something undeservedly. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, they captured the Skoda works, where this vehicle was developed. Hitler turned it over to his buddy Willi Porsche, another famous example of a Nazi crony who did very well for himself after the war.