Granderson: Looking for opposing perspectives on the Holocaust? Try Texas


LZ Granderson
Sat, October 16, 2021

Texas state lawmakers reconvened for a special session in late September. 

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Can you think of an opposing view on the Holocaust that isn’t antisemitic? Evidently, a school administrator in Texas seems to think so.

Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, was caught on an audio recording telling teachers to “make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives."

I hope she wasn’t proposing that teachers supply students with neo-Nazi propaganda.

THE OPPOSING PERSPECTIVE ON THE HOLOCAUST

This all started with Republican lawmakers in Texas looking for ways to have teachers talk about American history without making white people look bad. I kid you not.

When hysteria over critical race theory became all the rage in the past year, the Texas Legislature came up with House Bill 3979 — a great whitewashing effort that instructs teachers who choose “to discuss widely debated and currently controversial issues” to “explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”

Of course, before the CRT “threat,” Texas conservatives were already upset because the state’s new history standards point out that slavery played “the central role” in the Civil War — 155 years after the end of the Civil War. Until the 2019-2020 school year, students were taught the war was caused by sectionalism and state’s rights, with slavery merely a third factor.

The political sanitizing got a booster shot with the passage of HB 3979, which prohibits any teacher from being trained on issues “that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex.” Can you think of a way to talk about American slavery without the role of race? How do you have an intelligent discussion about women’s suffrage without addressing the role of men? You don’t.

And that appears to be just fine for the 100 Republicans in the state Legislature — 95 of whom are white and only 13 are women. In a state that is more than 50% female and more than 56% people of color, HB 3979 is more like a bunker for the insecure than a thoughtful approach to pedagogy.

Texas state Sen. Kelly Hancock, a Republican, immediately took to Twitter to blame Peddy for her statement: “School administrators should know the difference between factual historical events and fiction,” he wrote, adding that “no legislation is suggesting the action this administrator is promoting.” Seems like Hancock didn’t read HB 3979 at all.

Now, because this unnecessary law was created to prevent educators from teaching students about systemic racism, it’s quite possible Texas Republicans didn’t consider how it could apply to other issues. In other words, maybe getting neo-Nazi propaganda in the school library to balance out the Holocaust wasn’t part of the plan.

Still, I’m sure the KKK would love to circulate some pamphlets showing all the good that came from discriminating against Black people in education, housing, banking, employment, healthcare, criminal justice, to name a few issues. You know, just offering “other perspectives.”

Maybe if one of your state’s claims to fame is being the last in the nation to tell enslaved people that they’re free, suppressing information about race should not be a 2021 agenda item.

In apologizing for the incident, Supt. Lane Ledbetter of the Carroll Independent School District, said Peddy’s comments “were in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history” and “we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust.”

But the thing is, there are two sides — humanity versus Hitler. Peddy’s comments were reprehensible, but the confusion is not surprising given the purpose of HB 3979, which is to provide cover for those who committed heinous acts while erasing the long-standing ramifications of those acts.

Of course, doing so requires that we ignore certain “factual historical events,” to borrow Hancock’s words. Things like Texas’ declaration of secession in 1861, which, in part, stated: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”

Seems pretty racist to me. I can see why many Republican lawmakers don’t want to talk about it. At least, not factually.

@LZGranderson



This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

School administrator's compassionless comments on Holocaust invalidate pain of generations

Fern Schumer Chapman
Mon, October 18, 2021,



Children of Holocaust survivors and refugees felt a knife twist in their backs on learning that Gina Peddy, a school administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, recently advised teachers that they are now required to provide students books with “opposing ... perspectives” when discussing the Holocaust.

The school district soon backtracked, but it’s too late. The compassionless, clueless comments of this bureaucrat challenged the veracity of the lived experiences of the second generation. She invalidated what we have seen with our own eyes, known in our yearning hearts and felt throughout our homes and communities all over America.

Our Holocaust parents’ pain was palpable. Like a second pulse, their sorrows beat within all of us. To replace and rebuild some of what they had lost, survivors and refugees relied on us – their memorial children – sometimes going so far as to name us after relatives murdered by Nazis.

In this photo taken Saturday, March 21, 2015, visitors look at portraits of victims at the Holocaust Museum in the town of Kalavryta, western Greece. The Nazis deported Greece's Jews to death camps in Poland.

Sadly, some Holocaust parents had little sense of how to love a child, having lost their own nurturing role models at a young age. Others clung desperately to their children, never allowing them to individuate and create their own lives. Some parents even inverted the parent-child relationship, assigning a son or daughter the role of becoming the parent the survivor lost at a young age.

In a disturbing transmission of trauma, the past was a presence suffusing us and our parents as we lived and relived all they had suffered, lost and endured. Holocaust survivors’ grief and guilt shaped their children’s consciousness, a backdrop framing each conversation and every act of our shared lives. We had not known their experiences directly, but we felt them intimately, indirectly. Some scientists have found that our genes, as the children of trauma survivors, have literally been remapped by the profound shock our parents suffered.

The Nazi genocide of the Jewish people is the most thoroughly documented mass murder in human history. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has an enormous amount of material available, free of charge, to educators, students and the public. Thousands of nonfiction books and memoirs in dozens of languages have been written on this topic.

Yet somehow, a school administrator in Texas has managed to speak as if she's unaware of this abundance of information. Perhaps she is intimidated by citizens who want to undermine Holocaust education. These statements amount to sanctioning anti-Jewish bigotry, just as critics of education about slavery or the eradication of Indigenous peoples cloak their racism in demands for “fairness.”

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This incident follows one during which a teacher drew a reprimand for keeping an anti-racism book in her classroom. During a training seminar, Peddy cited a new Texas law requiring teachers to provide multiple perspectives on controversial topics.

She directed teachers to “make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” a teacher asked incredulously.

“Believe me,” Peddy replied, “that’s come up.”

It is ludicrous even to suggest that an “opposing” view exists on the topic of mass murder. The "other perspectives” here aren’t condemnation of mass murder. They’re denial that the Holocaust ever occurred.

“Who's going to teach the ‘opposing’ view?” Arnie Bernstein, author of "Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund," asks rhetorically. “What are their textbooks? Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion? Will they be showing Triumph of the Will or Jud Suss?”

In fact, the enormity of the evil and its horrific manifestations frighten many educators. The subject is so awash in pain, sadness and wrongdoing that even sensitive educators may shy away.

Yet this evades a teacher’s duty to history and to students. Beyond explaining the objective reality of the Holocaust, teachers can and do use its example to impart a serious, vital understanding of social forces. This mission includes nurturing students’ empathy and compassion. Learning about the Holocaust cultivates an appropriate outrage at wrongs – helping youngsters develop a voice to speak out against bullying, exclusion and prejudice.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”

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We are living in a deeply dislocating moment as elderly Holocaust survivors pass away, robbing us of the opportunity to hear their stories firsthand. My mother, who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 as an unaccompanied minor refugee, in recent years overcame decades of silence and found the courage to share her experiences with middle- and high-school students. To her surprise and relief, she discovered that telling her story is a healing act.

Watching my mother interact with captivated students was transformative – for her, for the students and for me. Many students wrote her personal notes about what the experience meant to them, saying that she had brought this history to life. Some students promised to become her voice in the future.

Those who have heard Holocaust survivors and refugees tell their stories will never forget. When students who have had this privileged educational experience become adults, they will be less likely to tolerate misguided school administrators who try to blur the truth.

Neither will the second generation. Our families were annihilated. We won’t allow any “opposing ... perspectives” to slash at the fragments that remain. To do so denies one of history’s worst mass murders, but also our own lived experiences and family stories.

Author Fern Schumer Chapman has written several books documenting her mother’s experiences during and after the Holocaust, including "Motherland," "Is It Night or Day?" and "Brothers, Sisters, Strangers."

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas school official Holocaust remark invalidates pain of generations



Take it from a former history teacher: Southlake must teach facts of the Holocaust



Star-Telegram
Sun, October 17, 2021, 

Don’t downplay the Holocaust

Southlake school officials just can’t keep from tripping over themselves and putting the district continuously in the national spotlight. The story about an executive director of curriculum and instruction telling teachers to provide opposing perspectives if they have books about the Holocaust is only outlandish (Oct. 15, 1A, “Southlake teachers told books about Holocaust need opposing views”).

The comment gives the stamp of approval to downplay or deny it ever happened. If not an attempt to whitewash history, it is nothing short of an ignorant understanding by the administrator.

I’m a former world history teacher, and students left my class every year knowing facts and details about the Holocaust. There was never any question in their minds about what happened and how it was important to not only never forget, but to never let it happen again.

- Brian E. Rosson, Fort Worth

Sting operation is such a relief

On the sting operation focusing on contributors to “the forces of evil” — adult men and some teenagers attempting to pay for sex — at least six agencies were involved in this roundup (Oct. 12, 1A, “Authorities arrest 115 men on suspicion of soliciting prostitution”). Thanks to Gov. Greg Abbott and our Legislature, these suspects can now be charged with felonies.

This will continue as an ongoing operation, so it’s nice to know that our taxpayer money is being judiciously spent and that our local war against the “oldest profession” is under way. Perhaps we would be even better served if a bounty were available for informants who snitch on anyone considering this heinous act.

- David N. Snider, Arlington

Let’s encourage people to read

The Editorial Board says that we could use more books for school libraries and that we must find ways to raise students’ reading levels (Sept. 28, 7A, “Want more Fort Worth kids to read? Spend more on school libraries. This is not hard”).

This was a problem before COVID-19. We cannot force people to read, but we can at least encourage them. Make sure they try books a little above their reading level so they are challenging themselves.

A beginning reader should spend at least 20 minutes a day reading to or with someone. One way to get children interested in reading is to have parents read to them before they get to grade school. It’s time to encourage young students to improve their reading.

- Ethan Koehne, Haltom City

New low for Pence, Haley

I’ve discovered recently that Mike Pence and Nikki Haley would be tremendous limbo stick contestants. Surely no one else could stoop as low as they have in kissing up to Donald Trump, ostensibly to curry favor with his followers. They have set a new low bar.

- George Aldridge, Arlington