Teens Honored for Objecting to School Assignment to Defend Hitler’s Genocide Against Jews
Syracuse Jewish Community gives standing ovation to Jordan April and Archer Shurtliff, from Oswego (NY)
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.
But asking high schoolers to roleplay Nazi officials at the 1942 Wannsee Conference and “put themselves in the shoes of Hitler’s top aides” supporting a plan to eradicate Jews isn’t a lesson in critical thinking—it’s unethical and dangerous antisemitic crackpottery.
Jordan and Archer aren’t Jewish, and neither of them has had any extensive study about the Holocaust. But they both immediately intuited the problem with the “Wannsee Argumentative Essay”: forcing students to argue in favor of mass killings and genocide.
CNY students upset after being asked to defend Nazis, Holocaust for homework https://t.co/awHIGLW67M pic.twitter.com/T5IUR6cwrZ
— syracuse.com (@syracusedotcom) March 30, 2017
It took a lot longer for their “morally incoherent educators” to figure it out.
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 at the Yom Hashoah Memorial Observance in Syracuse, NY.
Oswego #NY teens who challenged "weird" #Holocaust homework assignment honored as Upstanders #Syracuse #YomHashoah
Kudos Jordan & Archer! pic.twitter.com/t4ZbvAuO76— Miriam F. Elman (@MiriamElman) April 23, 2017
Jordan and Archer’s Homework Assignment Required the Defense of Nazi Atrocities
Jordan and Archer are participating in the “New Vision” partnership program between the Oswego, NY County BOCES (Board of Cooperative Education)/ Center for Instruction, Technology, and Innovation (CiTi) and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego.
The program is intended for academically qualified seniors interested in professional careers such as health, business, government, and law. They take college-level classes on the SUNY Oswego campus three days a week and spend the other two days at internships.
Jordan and Archer are both in the law and government internship track. According to the teens there are no Jews in the class this year, which by Archer’s estimation consists of some 75 students all of whom received the controversial Holocaust assignment.
The argumentative essay was a required assignment in DeNobile’s class “Principles of Literary Representation.”
Half of the class was randomly assigned to write in favor of the Final Solution and half against the Jews’ extermination. Jordan and Archer ended up being assigned to opposite sides of the “argument”—Archer was supposed to argue “for” and Jordan “against.”
Basically, half the class was told to justify and support the implementation of the Holocaust by “analyzing the issue”, finding the “evidence necessary to prove” the point, and providing “your Nazi point of view.”
Here’s part of the assignment (the full assignment is linked here):
Jordan and Archer’s Activism Against the ‘Final Solution Assignment’
Jordan and Archer brought their concerns to DeNobile and also to other administrators in the CiTi/BOCES New Vision program.
Eventually they also contacted educators and administrators in their home schools for advice and got in touch with the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL issued a statement condemning the assignment for even hinting at a “balanced perspective” to Nazi actions during the Holocaust.
To their credit, the teens kept a meticulous record of all these meetings and conversations, compiling what became a 14 page, single-spaced ‘Chronicle of Activism Against the Final Solution Assignment’ (I have a copy, but for now Jordan and Archer have requested that it not be released to the public or extensively quoted).
What I’m at liberty to note is that Jordan and Archer’s ‘Chronicle’ highlights how difficult it proved for them to get the offensive assignment pulled, following the CiTi/BOCES administration’s decision to offer an alternative assignment to the entire class within four days of the two kids raising their concerns.
Both teens jumped at the offer.
Jordan ended up writing about the response to America’s AIDS crisis while Archer wrote about the internment of Japanese-Americans.
But even though they were each no longer compelled to take the side of the Nazis and debate whether Jews deserve to be slaughtered, Jordan and Archer weren’t satisfied.
That’s because, with the exception of one student, all of their classmates chose to stick with the original ‘Final Solution assignment’ and they reportedly didn’t want their beloved New Vision program to be “tarnished by an assignment advocating for the death of Jews.”
What’s clear in the timeline is how reluctant CiTi/BOCES administrators were to meet Jordan and Archer’s three other demands—an apology from DeNobile, a retraction of the assignment from the curriculum, and a promise that it would never be given again (the students are adamant that they never called for DeNobile to be fired).
For weeks, DeNobile and administrators stood by the assignment and refused to retract it or apologize for it. In their Chronicle, they record being told on numerous occasions that the essay was a “lesson in seeing the other side of an argument.”
According to the students, the teacher himself admitted that he had used the assignment before, that no one had ever complained, and that all the prior times he used the exercise the class thought that writing like a Nazi in support of genocide was an “eye-opening and world-view expanding experience.”
Only after pressure was brought to bear by the ensuing media maelstrom, the intervention of the ADL, and condemnation by various local NY politicians, who called for Elia’s resignation (see here, here and here), did administrators begin to budge.
Jordan and Archer Get Support from Family and Their Home School Teachers, Flak from Classmates
Jordan and April both received a considerable degree of support from their families and from the teachers and administrators at their home schools (Archer from Paul V. Moore and Jordan from Hannibal).
According to the teens’ documentation, only one of the educators at their home schools who they approached about the situation was “disappointed” by what they had done.
Many of the others appreciated their actions and took the time to provide their own opinions as to why they too found the assignment deeply troubling.
In their Chronicle, several teachers noted that completing the assignment successfully would require students to delve into antisemitic sources and hate websites in order to get the information necessary to ‘convince’ Nazi officials in the mock assignment that Jews deserved to be reviled and even mass-murdered.
One teacher also raised a different point for Jordan and Archer to consider: even the part of the class selected to argue against the Final Solution wouldn’t be able to successfully roleplay their part since there is no record of any Nazi officials who attended the 1942 Wannsee Conference objecting to the plan to exterminate the Jews. Here too, students would be forced to write a paper based entirely on factual inaccuracies.
As for their own peers, the Chronicle reveals a more mixed picture.
A few students who also expressed feeling “weird” about the assignment preferred to free-ride off of Jordan and Archer’s efforts rather than saying or doing anything about it themselves.
But as documented by the two teens, most of their fellow New Vision classmates were angered by their activism, seeing it as pushing a negative narrative against their teacher.
One student subsequently wrote in defense of the assignment and DeNobile in a published letter for The Post Standard. In it, New Vision student Rachel Trumble insists that the purpose of the exercise was to “help us become more sympathetic to everyone” and to “humanize” the Nazis to “see their side of the story.”
Trumble seems like a well-meaning kid who isn’t interested in “glorifying Nazis or their agenda” but she might want to reconsider what gaining a “new sensitivity” to the racial, religious, and ethnic policies of Hitler’s henchmen looks like in practice: after being given the assignment, one of her fellow classmates thought it would be OK to make a Nazi salute; another voiced disappointment that he wasn’t assigned to the group arguing “for” the Final Solution “because Heil Hitler, duh.”
Even if most of her New Vision classmates aren’t Nazi sympathizers and wouldn’t treat the assignment as a license to feel comfortable, Trumble needs to realize that many of her friends will still remember only one thing: we debated the Holocaust in high school, so it must have a positive side and not be settled opinion.
Jordan and Archer Are Recognized as ‘Upstanders’ at the Syracuse Area Yom Hashoah Memorial Observance
This past winter, two gutsy Oswego high school seniors spoke up and objected to participating in an insane assignment that instructed them to defend Hitler’s systematic annihilation of Europe’s Jews.
If not for them, the exercise would never have become public.
After the article about the assignment appeared in The Post Standard, the Jewish Federation of Central New York invited Jordan and Archer to its communitywide Yom Hashoah Memorial Observance.
The teens include the invitation as an entry in their ‘Chronicle of Activism Against the Final Solution’, noting that they were “very appreciative and accepted the invitation.”
So on April 23, Jordan and Archer sat attentively in the first row of a Syracuse-area synagogue during the 90 minute commemorative program. Archer wore a yarmulke. Out of respect, he kept it on even after the service was long over.
[Jordan April, left & Archer Shurtliff | Syracuse, NY | April 23, 2017 | credit: Miriam Elman]
When the teens were introduced as akin to the less than 1% of Europeans who, instead of acting like indifferent bystanders, stood up to defend and protect their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust, those congregated stood to honor Jordan and Archer with an ovation.
It was the first time being present at a Yom Hashoah commemoration service, which was typical of many across the country this past weekend. It included:
- reading of Psalms and prayers and the lighting of memorial candles;
- recitation of names inscribed in the Jewish Federation of CNY’s Book of Remembrance, which includes hundreds of names of individuals lost during the Holocaust provided by their local family members;
- recognition of living survivors and liberators from the central NY area;
- communal recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish for Holocaust Remembrance Day followed by the Star Spangled Banner;
- closing with Israel’s National Anthem—the HaTikvan (‘The Hope’).
In our #Syracuse community we follow Kaddish by standing for the Star Spangled Banner ?? #YomHashoah#HolocaustRemembranceDay pic.twitter.com/Qzxuwt1ka9
— Miriam F. Elman (@MiriamElman) April 23, 2017
Closing of our #Syracuse community #YomHashoah2017 #HolocaustRemembranceDay
Always fitting to end with #Hatikva pic.twitter.com/SkF4IoHje5— Miriam F. Elman (@MiriamElman) April 23, 2017
Jordan and Archer Learn More About Their Home Town’s Connection to the Holocaust
Hopefully meaningful to the Oswego teens was the short address by this year’s featured speaker who was a child survivor rescued to Ft. Ontario in Oswego, NY.
The site is now recognized as Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Memorial, which also houses a museum and education center.
Located on what was a decommissioned WWII military base, in 1944 Safe Haven became home to 982 survivors from war-torn Europe—the vast majority of them Jews.
The U.S. Congress at the time refused to lift the quota on Jewish immigration from Europe, so the refugees were allowed entry into the U.S. through President Franklin Roosevelt’s executive authority.
Roosevelt considered it a symbolic gesture of good will.
How the refugees were selected and made their way from Italy to asylum in Oswego, NY is a remarkable story of the only attempt by the U.S. to shelter Jewish refugees during the war.
Yesterday our guest speaker helped to fill in some of the details of what life was like in the 1940s at the Oswego Army training base.
As Elfi Hendell explained, it wasn’t freedom but it wasn’t a prison either—there was barbed wire, chain linked fences and military personnel overseeing the camp. But the Oswego residents were kind and she and other children at the camp were welcomed into the area public schools.
[Safe Haven | Fort Ontario | Oswego, NY | Barracks]
You can read more about Oswego’s Safe Haven here and the support provided to the facility by Rep. John Katko (R-NY-24) here. Katko has spearheaded the effort to have Ft. Ontario, including Safe Haven, given National Park status, a move which will preserve the site and keep alive the story of Oswego’s Holocaust refugees for future generations.
Conclusion
Back in 2013, a teacher at Albany High School asked students to argue that “Jews are evil” and the “source of all our problems.”
In this case too, the high schoolers were tasked with roleplaying Nazi officials. They had to write a 5 paragraph “persuasive essay” using a “solid rationale from government propaganda” to convince the reader of his or her “loyalty to the third Reich.”
At the time, the school superintendent reportedly acknowledged that the teacher’s intent wasn’t to be malicious but that the assignment represented a “severe lack of judgment and a horrible level of insensitivity.”
This winter yet another group of central NY high schoolers were given an obnoxious assignment which required them to think like a Nazi.
Now too the current school superintendent views it as an “event that shouldn’t have happened” and hopes to use it as a teaching opportunity to develop appropriate programming for teachers and students.
This will be a positive development for the kids in Oswego.
But there’s still the rest of New York—and the country (another unbelievably antisemitic assignment was required for eighth-graders in a school outside of Los Angeles in 2014)—to worry about.
It’s unfathomable to think that at some other school in America the Holocaust is also being treated as a scenario for a mock debate and as a means for stimulating critical thinking. How many other middle and high schoolers are being asked to weigh the merits of genocidal action against Jews as part of their educational experiences?
Miriam F. Elman is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Robert D. McClure Professor of Teaching Excellence at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She is the editor of five books and the author of over 60 journal articles, book chapters, and government reports on topics related to international and national security, religion and politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also frequently speaks and writes on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Israel movement. Follow her on Twitter @MiriamElman
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Comments
When education centers give these assignments, they always end up going after the Jews. I know they want to argue “well we were just being theoretical, we wanted them to learn to defend a controversial position”. Well if that’s so, then here’s the assignment I’d like to see them make next time.
OBJECTIVE: DEFEND A CONTROVERSIAL OPINION
Description: In your paper, you will defend the position that Blacks in America owe the descendants of former slaveowners in the American South a great debt of gratitude for bringing their ancestors here, since blacks living in America today are generally far more advantaged in terms of income, health, and life span than those that are still living in equatorial Africa today.
Think any of these academics would jump at assigning THIS “controversial” opinion???
You beat me to the punch (I wholeheartedly agree) — nonetheless, here is my post on the topic:
——-
Here’s a very simple thought-experiment to do on this issue. Had the teacher asked her students to either defend or attack Black slavery…? Or defend or attack whether Blacks and Whites should procreate…? I guarantee you (and rightly so!) that there would have been a huge backlash against. Most people would not have to first sit and “think about this.” It would have been a gut reaction that we don’t want to even put someone in the position of defending slavery — even as an “exercise” in “advanced” rhetoric.
But when it’s Jews (and not “people of color”) well, then it takes a good deal longer for there first to be generated sufficient (proper) indignation on the part of Jews and our allies — which in turn pressured the defenders to (ultimately) become sufficiently ashamed — or at least they professed this in public as they backtracked (slinked?) from their original position.
Until a school requires the exact same exercise for Black slavery and Japanese internment, then I cannot believe it was done (and subsequently defended) only on principle.
Not always. Almost always. White males who are not Jews come right behind.
Too many people are so morally dead inside that they can’t even comprehend the idea that not every issue has two sides. Some things are not subject for debate. Some things are so utterly reprehensible that there simply is no defending them on any grounds.
That is absolutely mind blowing that these educators thought this appropriate. These kids were awesome though in having the moral compass to recognize what their instructors did not and then holding their ground.
Progressives want to think there are no moral absolutes, given the proper circumstances, anything can be justified. NO, there are some things that will always be wrong!
Situational morality is morraly bankrupt!
It’s actually a legitimate issue, and one which has occupied the time of some fairly serious and original thinkers. There is a considerable body of literature. Are there two sides to such an issue? Well, somebody thought so, even if you or I don’t. And that makes it unwise to simply blow it off.
In general, the twentieth century failed to take National Socialist doctrine seriously, and the twenty-first is making the same mistake. And if you don’t take it seriously, you can’t kill it properly. Because of this failure, we’ll be seeing more of it in the future. Adolf in particular remains one of history’s most cryptic figures. Hermann Göring, Josef Djugashvili; these guys are easy to understand, but Adolf, not so much. And the usual reaction—revulsion and precipate intellectual withdrawal—is no way the handle the menace of revivals, any more than a physician can treat tumors by ignoring them.
However, I wouldn’t have dumped it on high schoolers. Give them easy stuff, like that Democrat who put a side order of atomic bombs on the WW2 menu.
“Are there two sides to such an issue? Well, somebody thought so, even if you or I don’t. And that makes it unwise to simply blow it off.”
Modern academia has lost the moral background to honestly undertake such topics. Because the truth is, in things like this, the answer to what the “Two Sides” are is that one is good, or at least attempts to be, and one is Evil. Now it may be intellectually stimulating to defend Evil, but that doesn’t make it something that is worthwhile doing. For an example – rather than some huge crime such as genocide, apply this “two sides” paradigm to any common crime – theft, murder, rape. Those happen all the time, obviously, and in every case “someone” thought it was a good idea and felt justified in doing it. (we call those people perpetrators, and later, convicts)
Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and many lesser states such as today’s Venezuela illustrate what happens when a group of criminals are able to seize the power of the State and use that power to advance their own personal criminal enterprises. It’s useful to understand *How* criminals can take over a country, but I find very little use in understanding how criminals create a self-justification for their crimes. Frankly, it isn’t very hard to do, it’s just wrong.
So I’m not the only devil’s advocate around here…
I’m basically a professional anti-eugenicist. Eugenics was “respectable” before the Holocaust and it has come back, if indeed it ever really went away. I know this garbage so well that I could construct a convincing facsimile and still think it was complete horse manure. What’s the alternative — thinking these people were simply irrational, freaks, insane? That is a dangerous mistake.
Now, it may have been inappropriate for the maturity level of high-schoolers and a captive audience. It may have been bold for these two to confront their teachers, their classmates, and their school instead of going along to get along. What if this class were a graduate-level seminar? Would that be different?
Aside from the vile and repugnant nature of the assigned topic, can you imagine the fallout in 20 years when someone from the class is a candidate for some office?
And oppo research dredges up the paper, and makes the smear “well, back in high school the candidate wrote an essay defending the Nazis’ Final Solution! Hate! Bigot! Nazi!” etc
Worse than Romney’s haircut antics or whatever. These so-called educators are morons.
Well done kids, well done.
I also find it kind of funny that the “Lesson” did end up teaching these kids about critical thinking, it just happened to be by accident, lol.
I would weigh in but you keep saying what I want to say.
On cue, one more time, this time with gusto.
Decriminalize school truancy. Texas has reduced truancy from a criminal misdemeanor to “just” a civil offense, but still has fines. If parents don’t want their children forcibly indoctrinated by leftist monsters. When school truancy is decriminalized and without penalty, and students don’t attend because it simply is a waste of time, the schools will change. Until then, don’t count on any change coming.
Baby steps.
Way, way off topic, but if anyone speaks Hebrew how do you spell “Machmedim.” I think that’s how it’s pronounced. It’s the word for “altogether lovely” in the Song of Songs. I don’t speak Hebrew, obviously, so a romanized version would be best.
(Pokes the interlinear Bible) I don’t know Hebrew, but see if any of these give are useful for you:
http://biblehub.com/interlinear/songs/5.htm
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/machamaddim_4261.htm
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/4261.htm
Thank you! I was way off. No wonder my searches didn’t turn up anything.
Left wing teacher was just ahead of the liberal pack.
A school assignment in America to defend Hitler’s genocide against Jews exists.
Imagine if we let the freaks infesting our schools continue on?
Defense lawyers have to argue cases like this in court all the time – justifying or defending someone they know to be guilty of a great evil, but doing so anyway because they are part of a system that believes denying an accused a full and competent defense is an even greater evil. Even the accused at the Nuremberg trials had defense counsel.
These weren’t run of the mill high school kids. They were AP students taking college courses in a law and government program.
Defense lawyers don’t argue the merits of crime.
They attempt to insist the state prove its case against a defendant.
“These weren’t run of the mill high school kids. They were AP students taking college courses in a law and government program.”
They were far more advanced than the average high school student, but they were not nearly as well educated or mature as the average courtroom lawyer.
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I don’t want to come across as unkind, but every time I look at the boy I think, “That kid needs to start hitting the gym.”
When my dad was 17 he was a Coastie in the Pacific War. And, uhh, somewhat more robust. I’m sorry; I feel bad for bringing it up. But while my dad is gone, my mom has framed pictures of him on her nightstand from when he was 17.
“Jordan and Archer aren’t Jewish, and neither of them has had any extensive study about the Holocaust”
The author makes the particular point that Archer isn’t Jewish, but, then, doesn’t explain why Archer wears a kipah.
Or, did I overlook something?