From the Teacher Support Network, www.teachersupport.info.

HOLOCAUST EDUCATIONAL TRUST
We are being passed a torch to carry

If the merit of an educational organisation is to be measured by its commitment to quality training and investment in the development of teachers it works with, then without doubt, the Holocaust Educational Trust is the most impressive organisation I have ever had the privilege to work with, and the training I have undertaken is the best I have ever received.

It may seem an odd choice to spend significant amounts of a summer break attending a conference about Holocaust education, and this is unavoidably emotionally draining and intellectually challenging, but if ever the proverb 'a change is as good as a rest' been proven more true than I have just experienced, then I would be staggered.

The Trust runs a summer teaching course, based in Israel, aimed at all teachers (and in my cohort we had teachers representing a range of subject areas) who want to improve their understanding of issues relating to the Holocaust, their pedagogical approach to the subject, and most fruitfully for me, the context in which Holocaust education is set. Delivered jointly with Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial and Educational Museum, the course began in London with a superb seminar introducing the aims of the course, and with a lecture by Dan Stone (one of the foremost scholars in the historiography of the Holocaust), and then, a week later continued in Israel.

Lectures were delivered by an incredible range of scholars. They focused on topics such as historical antisemitism, pre-war Jewish society, the Final Solution, and different religious responses to the Holocaust. These lectures were complemented by pedagogical workshops led by educational specialists from both Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Educational Trust, which demonstrated practical educational resources. Whilst the seminar programme was incredibly full and academically demanding, I have never found myself so engaged and enthused by the quality of the lectures delivered, and this is a credit to the quality of those who delivered and prepared such stimulating material.

I went into the course thinking that I knew quite a lot about the Holocaust, and that my approach to Holocaust education was grounded in a solid understanding of pedagogy relating to the subject. However, as the sessions went on, I realised how little I knew, how the preconceptions I held were - if not false - then somewhat misguided, and how vitally important my attendance at the course was to inform my teaching in the weeks, months and years to come.

Participants in the summer teaching course run by the Holocaust Educational Trust in which Matthew Pike participated.

If I were to make one recommendation to anyone considering applying for this course, it would be to avoid writing a scheme of work before you go. I had recently developed what I considered to be a very good reworking of our Holocaust teaching in Yr 9. Yet as the sessions at Yad Vashem progressed, I could almost hear the sound of tearing paper as everything I had planned to do was superseded by better ideas that were demonstrated, or glaring gaps in the rationale for the lessons became more apparent. The most important lessons I have taken from this training is that the Holocaust is not a simple, straightforward narrative, that it was not inevitable, that it was as confused as it was brutal, and incoherent as it was murderous. Our job as teachers is not to fit it into a comfortable historical framework. Rather, our task is to convey to pupils the ease with which a modernised western society allowed mass murder, the ease with which it has happened since then, and the preventative measures we must all take to ensure that it does not happen again. The Holocaust should not be 'just' a study of facts and figures, or horrified reflection upon emaciated victims and survivors, but a human story, of prejudice, victimisation and wholesale slaughter that happened to human beings, by human beings, whilst human beings stood by and allowed it to happen.

We are reaching a crucial time in education about the Holocaust, as the invaluable experience of survivor testimony delivered in person is becoming less available. We are being passed a torch to carry, a challenge which the Holocaust Educational Trust takes seriously. The quality of the Trust's teacher training programmes speaks volumes more than I can say about how this task is valued by them. To all of the staff at the Trust and at Yad Vashem who made this inspiring experience possible for me, I must pass on my thanks, as the experience will live with me for a very long time to come. I hope to reflect this in the teaching of my department too, so that many may benefit from my experience.