Limited vision

Go and read "For Those Who Have No Voice" by Hendrix-Cat at
www.hendrix-cat.blogspot.com

HC is absolutely right. I wrote in a post a while back ("What I learned in school today") that I had been teaching a high school class called "The Holocaust," and that I felt an entire semester devoted to the subject was a bit much. I feel this way for two reasons. One: when you innundate people with a subject they tend to get numb to it and turn off completely. I don't want these kids to get numb to the Holocaust. I don't want them to get sick of it, resent it, or feel like it's making their lives miserably. They don't know what misery is, and I want them to always be willing to listen and learn about the atrocities. I don't want them to shut down. Two: The Holocaust of WWII is a roughly 10 year period of the history of western Europe. In the grand scale of things, that's a small amount of time in a small part of the world. To spend that much time one horrific incident of genocide belittles both the victims and survivors of genocides all over the globe, from the murauding Huns of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the entire civilizations wiped out in the Americas by the English and Spanish to the millions slain by Stalin (who was on our side) to the victims in Rwanda and Sudan today, and everything in between. I'm teaching the Holocaust class again in a few weeks, and I'll be taking HC's column and reading it to the kids.