To be surprised and a bit shocked

[Thomasina79]

That a high percentage of young people cannot name the concentration camps of the Second World War in Germany and some are not even aware of the atrocities committed.

in the light of the far right extremism in Europe rising up, financial instability, anti semitism/anti Muslim are we nit in danger of history repeating itself. People have poor memories.. yes sadly there have been many many wars since, some all too recently. The situation in the world is all so worrying and I fear for my grandchildren and adult children.

Extremism of any kind is alarming, however it's named.

I have an avid interest in WW2 on the home front, I know much more than the average 40yr old. However I could only name Auschwitz. I simply don't have any interest in any of it; Not out of a lack of respect but because I'm incredibly fragile emotionally (clinical depression & anxiety) and it would likely break me if I learnt about it.

She may not have been taught it! The poster was from Scotland and they have their own curriculum.

Also WW2 is on the curriculum for England but it's not statutory, meaning schools can include it in their curriculum but are not obligated to.

What a ridiculous generalisation. They are no more nor less intelligent than previous generations.

If you really think the entire generation is unintelligent, how do you account for, for instance, the students on University Challenge?

200 years ago ?

Never said every one of them was dense but a bloody large proportion are. Obviously not the ones on university challenge 😂

Yes I grew up through the 50s and 60s and it was well known and talked about. When I started work as a teenager I worked with a man who was at the liberation of one of the camps, Belsen I think. One day he just started to talk about it which was quite chilling. We also had a woman who worked at our school and she had her camp number tattooed on her arm. It was just around us.

None afaik.
That’s why it doesn’t happen.

They're generally crazy. See below.

Brunei did. About a couple of decades ago I heard a journalist who went there and everyone spoke well of the Sultan ( not a democracy), as their oil wealth meant they could provide well for the citizens. All healthcare cost just one dollar. Their rainforests in tact as they did not need the money they would have got from turning them over to ranching or farmland. Once a year, everyone was invited by the Sultan and his wife for dinner at their palace.

Unfortunately, last I heard was that as the Sultan aged he got worried about securing his place in Paradise and introduced strict Sharia law, including cutting people's hands off.

Which is the problem with dictatorships really....

The Rome wasn't exactly a democracy as we would understand it

Why do people need to be able to name them? We know where they were and the atrocities that occured we don't need to be able to name them.

That surprises me, I went to school in Scotland in the 90s my recollection of history is 80% WW1&2 with 20% highland clearances. And with WW2 the focus was on how this happened, the lead up to the war international relations appeasement etc lots about concentration camps and discussions about why people would all do as they’re told. The french resistance. We watched Schindler’s list which I remember as particularly hard hitting. If we hadn’t been so far away I’m sure we would have done a trip to somewhere.

Were they death camps, also called extermination camps? All death camps were concentration camps, not all concentration camps were death camps.

Except possibly Vetinari, from the Discworld novels! I appreciate he's fictional though.

I didn't do History after 3rd year (don't know what that is in New Money, sorry, I'm 58 without kids.)

I know about the Concentration Camps and what happened there but aside from Auchwitz couldn't name any.

Which is probably OK. Much more important to learn what actually happened and understand why it happened. And also, as a poster pointed out upthread, to understand that these were ordinary people who were influenced into planning and carrying out unimaginable atrocities.

I couldn't name a single concentration camp that was in Germany and I'm in my 40s.

Every generation probably thinks the one below them doesn’t know what they should, the younger generation probably thinks we’re ignorant of many important things, I’m sure the one above us can’t believe we aren’t more informed on x or y

I was taught about it in school in early 90s. My 15 year old has also learned about it as part of curriculum. He has also done a phenomenal amount of extra research as he is interested. Maybe we need to stop expecting young people to be spoon fed information and to be encouraged to be curious and interested

No. Just no. 1000 times no.
The UK has been a democracy for hundreds of years and had done a lot for its citizens. You are probably thinking of recent incompetent politicians.
I can vote out a government, I can’t vote out a benign dictator when he decides that the best thing for his people is a strong ‘defence’ force, better access to natural resources, more living room, and perhaps elimination of those who oppose his plans.

Just because something is 'curriculum' does NOT mean its taught or indeed taught well.

Early 2000s for me and our history teacher (we actually didn't have one, the history teach left the school and was never replaced in my time there) barely ever even showed up to class, we would sit for an hour in a teacher-less class room 9 times out of 10 (unless by some miracle a teach with nothing to do popped in). One of the few classes we did have WAS on WW2 and they told us the plane used by Germans was called a Fokker, kids laughed and we where then told to spend the rest of the hour building paper planes for a 'battle' while the teacher pissed off again.

This was year 9 by the way not year 3 etc... we where taught nothing about the holocaust in our secondary formal education (regardless of if we where 'suppose' to be). I know what I know through social acquired knowledge, films and documentaries and researching things myself (like I discovered accidentally about the Wilhelm Gustloff as an off shoot of personally researching about the Titanic).

We did Saxons, Tudors, Romans and Egypt in history over the 4 years of primary school, I was good at history and still remember the work we did.

I can't remember infants as we didn't have set formal classes/subjects just a sort of rolling day but I'm pretty certain they aren't doing any meaning holocaust training with 5 year olds.

Yes, that's what we teach. We use the HET lessons (upthread).
There's one in which many individual stories are told, and the students use evidence to support whether these people were Perpetrators, Collaborators, Bystanders or Rescuers and Resisters. I think it's a very good lesson.

I really don't think the human brain can hold that sort of information unless you are studying the subject and about to take an exam on it. It absolutely does not mean people are not bothered or uneducated. A ridiculous study tbh.

I think it’s a bit of a leap to suggest that just because some young people can’t name all the concentration camps, that means it’s all bound to happen all over again.

Politics has always swung back and fourth between left and right. Left has been the prevailing narrative for a while but it went too far, now it’ll swing back right again. There have always been people with extreme views on both sides. We just hear a lot more about it now as people can connect with the whole world and share those views. I think social media algorithms have a lot to answer for. They create an echo chamber for each individual user.

I also do not think warfare will ever exist in exactly the same guise it did before. Again, with the internet/social media I do not believe anyone would be able to get away with committing those same atrocities. These days, it’s all about which billionaire owns the most data - that’s where the real power lies.

Someone mentioned unthread that British students seem to know more about the holocaust than some other nationalities… however, I would like to see more of Britain’s shady past being taught in UK schools… potato famine anyone??

"in the light of the far right extremism in Europe rising up, financial instability, anti semitism/anti Muslim are we nit in danger of history repeating itself. "

Considering your post is about learning from history, the glaring omission of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism is a bit jarring!