Posted on 04/24/2017 9:43:14 PM PDT by KingofZion
On February 15 two 17-year-old central NY high school students—Jordan April and Archer Shurtliff—raised objections to a homework assignment in which they were required to either oppose or defend the extermination of Jews.
Their teacher, Oswego County High School teacher Michael DeNobile, asked them to write an internal memorandum within the highest ranking offices of the Nazi party in regards to your support or opposition to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
Presumably the goal was to teach the students critical thinking, thereby promoting one of the Common Core’s desired skills.***
At first Jordan and Archer got the run around from their teacher and other administrators in their educational program, who dismissed their complaints.
NY State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia also initially defended the exercise, noting the importance of “teaching students critical-thinking skills and the ability to understand all sides of an issue.” (She later claimed that she was speaking in general, without knowing the specifics of the assignment when she was first questioned by reporters about it).
Jordan and Archer wouldn’t let the matter go. As noted in The Syracuse Post Standard article which broke the story on March 30, the classroom assignment took them on a mission: To make sure no other student would be asked to argue in favor of killing Jews again.”
By April 3, DeNobile had issued a formal apology and Elia released a statement retracting the assignment as inappropriate. She also promised that it would “not be used in the future.” The school district and the program in which the assignment was a part also wrote on their websites to that effect.
On Sunday April 23—on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah)—the two Oswego teenagers who spoke up against a modern-day example of Jew-hatred were recognized for their efforts...
(Excerpt) Read more at legalinsurrection.com ...
Good for him. This could have been a very informative and formative process if allowed to proceed. Obviously the “for” side won the argument at some point in history. Society needs to understand what makes the “for” argument so compellling and how to effectively rebut it. How is that done without knowing the “for” argument?
Pretty strong point to make in favor of his choice.
If you read the article it says that they would have had to go to some of the most hateful and reprehensible sources and web sites to gather the information they needed to understand the issues in context. And if you read the comments, some of their objections were based on the fact that none of their classmates rejected the entire morally bankrupt idea of forming a defense for the Final Solution in their minds. Another comment pointed out the obvious: some issues really are settled and there are no more "two sides", comparing what would have happened if the students were asked to write a defense of slavery's worst features or a condemnation of racial intermarriage.
And another comment pointed out that in today's political environment, if any of the hypothetical defenders of killing Jews were to run for office in twenty years, their paper would still be available someplace on the web, waiting to be misinterpreted by their opponents and the media.
Asking students to think this way is polluting and corrupting to their morals and character, when there are literally billions of other hypotheticals that could have been used instead of this disgraceful denial of everything our nation has shed blood to stand for.
So, they were being trained as lawyers.
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