Results of Holocaust survey on Long Island set off alarm bells among educators. Here's why.
A Long Island-based survey has found more than 1 in 4 registered voters do not think the Holocaust should be required teaching in schools.
The poll's results have set off an alarm among educators.
What the poll asked and what respondents had to say
New York state mandates schools to teach about the Holocaust and the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, but the recent survey of 400 registered voters shows local knowledge is lacking.
- 30% either do not believe the Holocaust should be required curriculum or declined to answer.
- 15% said they believed Holocaust deaths have been exaggerated or declined to answer.
- 27% either agreed with or refused to answer the question: "Are Jews too focused on the Holocaust and should they move on?"
Steve Krieger's company, B2K Development, underwrote the survey, which he says shows indifference to one of the most tragic chapters of human history. He said he hopes it becomes a roadmap to better educate and teach tolerance.
"How do you move on from something like this? How do you say you can move on and people overestimated the number of people who were killed?" Krieger said.
Testing remains key to understanding Holocaust, educators say
A coalition of history educators also had a lot to do with the survey.
"The Holocaust is unique. To trivialize it, to say it's here and there and this is a Holocaust and this is genocide -- it trivializes it," said Gloria Sesso of the Long Island Council for the Social Studies.
Educators say the best way to monitor how well the subject is being taught is through testing, but there has not been a Holocaust-related question on the New York State Regents Exam in three years, and the Global Studies Regents will soon become optional.
"Evil will prevail if good people do nothing"
A little more than eight decades after Americans liberated Nazi death camps, students who visited the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage learned about the tanks and troops that found unthinkable horrors.
"I feel I understand it but not a lot of other people do, so I feel they can teach it a little more," said Steven Barile, a senior at Connetquot High School.
In response to the results of the survey, Connetquot junior Vincent Micilello said, "That's pretty shocking. I don't think that's how it should be at all. You should keep learning so history doesn't repeat itself."
Museum trustee Jason Halloren said the survey must be a call to action.
"Evil will prevail if good people do nothing. Well, if people don't know about it, then it is doomed to repeat itself," Halloren said.
