WW 2 more than Holocaust
MaryHaas (MaryHaas@AOL.COM)
Mon, 27 Apr 1998 09:31:27 EDT
Dear Pat,
You have already received some good suggestions from England. Perhaps you and
the others on the list would be interested in knowing that when I surveyed the
teaching of WWII in American High Schools two years ago I found several
trends. One is that more time is spent on the war in Europe than the Pacific.
Ironic since the war in the Pacific was longer and became active in loss of
life before our European experience. I ran across another study and it also
confirmed another of my findings. The Holocaust does receive a concentration
of study even in the elementary schools. Pearl Harbor and the dropping of the
Atomic bomb are about all the American students learn about the war in the
Pacific. The new book out called THE RAPE OF NANKING is very enlightening.
Your class may not have the stomach for all of it but it has a good analysis
of why this incident is not known in history in spite of the fact that there
is excellent documentation of it in the archives of Japan and the world wide
press of the time. In social studies we have a standard on Technology. You
might look at the level of technology before and after the war and you will
find out some of the continued impact of the war on the remainder of the
century. The woman's movement and the civil rights movement also have some
roots in the events and roles of these people during WWII Making a map of the
nations that took part in WWII is enlightening when you seek to describe what
the distribution looks like. It truly was a world wide war and its impact
continues to day. Of course the resources of this list are wonderful in
helping to see that people in many countries were greatly impacted during the
war. Mary E. Haas