On Moral Education

It's teacher convention time. Today, I chose to go to a seminar about teaching the Holocaust in the morning. In the afternoon, I went to a seminar and Character building and Moral Education.

I believe that all of our children need to be taught values, virtues and morals. I believe we need to teach our children to view history from the point of view of the people who lived it and understand why they made the decisions that they made. I think we need to teach our children to see differences and look at the positive benefits of living in a society where individual differences are embraced and tolerated rather then subdued and "shushed".

It was a good day. It was good to get out of my classroom and to think about what I do.

This is a quote that happened to be in both seminars I was in. I don't believe things like this happen by chance. There's a lesson for me to learn in the words of Chaim Grinott.

"I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Gas chambers built my learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and buried by high school and college graduates. So I am suspicious of education.

My request is:

Help your students become more human. Your efforts should never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make children more humane."