Students Told to Take Viewpoint of the Nazis [high school English class]

New York Times ^ | April 12, 2013 | JESSE McKINLE

[grundle]

ALBANY — High school is full of hypotheticals, like “How does one solve for x?” and “What happens if I skip class?” But this week, students at Albany High School were given an alarming thought puzzle: How do I convince my teacher that I think Jews are evil?

That question was posed to about 75 students on Monday by an unidentified 10th-grade English teacher as a “persuasive writing” exercise. The students were instructed to imagine that their teacher was a Nazi and to construct an argument that Jews were “the source of our problems” using historical propaganda and, of course, a traditional high school essay structure.

“Your essay must be five paragraphs long, with an introduction, three body paragraphs containing your strongest arguments, and a conclusion,” the assignment read. “You do not have a choice in your position: you must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!”

[livius]

I think that perhaps she needed to give a little more “public” prep - that is, announce this project to the principal, etc. - because it strikes me as a valuable project in showing how the state can demonize an “out-group” and whip up the citizenry to blame that group for all their problems. (Obama sparodically attempts to do that with Christians, but fortunately he doesn’t quite have the power yet.)

I haven’t seen the name of the teacher, but frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she was Jewish and was trying to teach a largely non-Jewish student body about the experience of being Jewish (or any hated minority) under a state that needs to have a scapegoat.