POISON FOR YOUNG MINDS: NAZI EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE

Though it lasted only 12 years, the German Reich was supposed to last a thousand. Early in his political career Hitler argued that in order to survive and prosper, future generations of Nazis would need to maintain a single-minded dedication to purity and strength. As such, the Nazis imbued all areas of public education with their party's ideology. These lessons took several forms:

Children's Stories: One of the more widespread lessons taught to young children was a story called "The Poison Mushroom." A mother and her son are picking mushrooms in the forest, and the boy finds some poisonous mushrooms. The mother compares the dangerous mushrooms to the dangers of a certain land of people. The boy rightly concludes that she is speaking of the Jews. The mother is proud of her son and exhorts him to learn to identify Jews in all their dangerous guises. The story was part of a collection published by Julius Streicher, who was executed as a war criminal in 1946. Repugnant yet alluring art by "Fips" (Philip Rupprecht, a Der Sturmer staffer) is the capper.

Primers: Nazi elementary books used simple illustrations and stories of children. Many of the stories include veneration for military parades and weapons. They also portray Hitler as a great man who is kind to children who bring him gifts. In one story, a boy named Karl attends a Hitler Youth rally. He wants to march with his older brother, but is too young. After the march, a race for young children takes place. Karl wins and receives a sausage and a pretzel, which he promptly eats.

Geography: Geography lessons stressed the concept of Lebensraum ("living space"), which Nazis proclaimed would provide the German people with land and resources that had been stolen from them after the Great War. Texts emphasize not only the need for this territory, but also the Germans' historical right to it. They mention Germany's cultural and historical influence on the countries surrounding it, as well as its geographic disadvantages, such as the ease with which the country was blockaded during World War I.

Biology: In German textbooks, biology was synonymous with racial purity and strength. Girls were given rigorous instruction in the selection of a suitable mate and the proper method of nurturing the next generation of Germans. Women's magazines often ran articles advising mothers to raise strong, physically active children who eschewed the classroom for the playing field. The articles advised parents to be stern with their children since "only he who has learned to obey can lead."

Mathematics: Even the discipline traditionally least susceptible to cultural bias, mathematics, was tainted by Nazi influence. For instance, word problems asked students to calculate the amount of money wasted on handicapped citizens and the amount of ammunition a plane could carry over a certain distance to bomb an ethnic slum.

A 1937 Nazi pamphlet for teachers, The Jewish Question in Education, quotes "Munich scientist Dr. Escherich," who relates a hare-brained tale of guards at a thriving termite colony who fall for the seductive charms of "foreign insects" of a different "race." In short order, "the foreigners had murdered the queen," and destroyed the colony. The pamphlet suggests that schoolteachers encourage students to draw a parallel between this astonishing natural event and predatory Jews who threaten the Aryan gene pool.

"POISON FOR YOUNG MINDS: NAZI EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE." World War II. Comp. Allen Orsi. Lincolnwood: West Side Publishing, 2007.

1. How did Hitler use the schools to spread his ideas?

2. At what age did this "education" appear to start?

3. Identify three specific "facts" that were taught and how they supported the Nazi's ideas.

4. Would the idea of free will or independent thought have been acceptable to the Nazis? Explain your answer.

Red Sector A

The Holocaust has been the subject of many songs in mainstream culture. Often, the references to the Holocaust are not stated explicitly but depend on the listener to actually understand and consider the lyrics. Watch the following video and then read the lyrics to Red Sector A by the Canadian prog-rock band, Rush. Then, read the short piece and answer the questions.



Red Sector A:
All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves
Is stay alive...

Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones

I clutch the wire fence
Until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal-
A heart that cannot feel-
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow-We'll all be freed

Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger-too weak to cry

I hear the sound of gunfire
At the prison gate
Are the liberators here-
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother-it's too late
But I must help my mother
Stand up straight...

Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings
To survive?...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sector_A]
Rush's 1984 album "Grace Under Pressure" included the track "Red Sector A." The song, written by drummer Neal Peart, focuses on the experience of a person struggling to survive at an unnamed prison camp. "Red Sector A" was particularly meaningful to the band's lead singer/bassist/keyboardist Geddy Lee:From "How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee", Jewish News Weekly, June 25, 2004:

The seeds for the song were planted nearly 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.) The whole album “Grace Under Pressure,” says Lee, who was born Gary Lee Weinrib, “is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive.”
Though “Red Sector A,” like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls “the psychology” of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.
“I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated,” Lee says during a phone conversation. “She didn’t believe [liberation] was possible. She didn’t believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in.”

1. What motivated Rush to write Red Sector A?
2. According to the lyrics, what impact did the camp have on its captives physically and mentally?
3. In the song, what hope surfaces for the camp's captives?
4. According to the final lines of the song, what are the captives left thinking and feeling after being freed?

Orders and Initiatives

Orders, rules and laws have important places in society. Most regulations exist to ensure the safety of citizens within a community and make sense from a common sense or moral point of view. We have been conditioned to follow orders, based on those laws, given by people in authority. When a police officer arrives at the scene of a crime or an accident, we follow the orders because, we assume, the situation is going to be taken care of. When a soldier is given an order from a commanding officer, those orders are normally followed without question. When the officials giving those orders have questionable motives though, can we trust the orders that they give and the laws that they make?
We learn that it was actually a small but influential group of Nazi leadership - Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich - that made the secret plans to annihilate the Jews. At the Wansee Conference in 1942, the "Final Solution" was agreed upon. The poisonous gas, Zyklon B would be used in order to exterminate large numbers of people in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the other death camps. In order to do so, a vast number of people had to either follow orders or turn a blind eye to what was going on. Murder on such a vast scale simply could not happen unnoticed.

What are alternative actions can one take if one feels that an order is morally wrong?
What are some consequences if people do—or do not do—as they are ordered?
Professor Kissi has talked about "respecting authority but questioning information." Give an example where one could "respect authority" but "question information."

POISON FOR YOUNG MINDS: NAZI EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE

Though it lasted only 12 years, the German Reich was supposed to last a thousand. Early in his political career Hitler argued that in order to survive and prosper, future generations of Nazis would need to maintain a single-minded dedication to purity and strength. As such, the Nazis imbued all areas of public education with their party's ideology. These lessons took several forms:

Children's Stories: One of the more widespread lessons taught to young children was a story called "The Poison Mushroom." A mother and her son are picking mushrooms in the forest, and the boy finds some poisonous mushrooms. The mother compares the dangerous mushrooms to the dangers of a certain land of people. The boy rightly concludes that she is speaking of the Jews. The mother is proud of her son and exhorts him to learn to identify Jews in all their dangerous guises. The story was part of a collection published by Julius Streicher, who was executed as a war criminal in 1946. Repugnant yet alluring art by "Fips" (Philip Rupprecht, a Der Sturmer staffer) is the capper.

Primers: Nazi elementary books used simple illustrations and stories of children. Many of the stories include veneration for military parades and weapons. They also portray Hitler as a great man who is kind to children who bring him gifts. In one story, a boy named Karl attends a Hitler Youth rally. He wants to march with his older brother, but is too young. After the march, a race for young children takes place. Karl wins and receives a sausage and a pretzel, which he promptly eats.

Geography: Geography lessons stressed the concept of Lebensraum ("living space"), which Nazis proclaimed would provide the German people with land and resources that had been stolen from them after the Great War. Texts emphasize not only the need for this territory, but also the Germans' historical right to it. They mention Germany's cultural and historical influence on the countries surrounding it, as well as its geographic disadvantages, such as the ease with which the country was blockaded during World War I.

Biology: In German textbooks, biology was synonymous with racial purity and strength. Girls were given rigorous instruction in the selection of a suitable mate and the proper method of nurturing the next generation of Germans. Women's magazines often ran articles advising mothers to raise strong, physically active children who eschewed the classroom for the playing field. The articles advised parents to be stern with their children since "only he who has learned to obey can lead."

Mathematics: Even the discipline traditionally least susceptible to cultural bias, mathematics, was tainted by Nazi influence. For instance, word problems asked students to calculate the amount of money wasted on handicapped citizens and the amount of ammunition a plane could carry over a certain distance to bomb an ethnic slum.

A 1937 Nazi pamphlet for teachers, The Jewish Question in Education, quotes "Munich scientist Dr. Escherich," who relates a hare-brained tale of guards at a thriving termite colony who fall for the seductive charms of "foreign insects" of a different "race." In short order, "the foreigners had murdered the queen," and destroyed the colony. The pamphlet suggests that schoolteachers encourage students to draw a parallel between this astonishing natural event and predatory Jews who threaten the Aryan gene pool.

"POISON FOR YOUNG MINDS: NAZI EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE." World War II. Comp. Allen Orsi. Lincolnwood: West Side Publishing, 2007.

1. How did Hitler use the schools to spread his ideas?

2. At what age did this "education" appear to start?

3. Identify three specific "facts" that were taught and how they supported the Nazi's ideas.

4. Would the idea of free will or independent thought have been acceptable to the Nazis? Explain your answer.

Consuming Kids

After watching the video, respond to 2 of the 4 questions that follow.

1.  Do the makers of this video seem to have an "agenda?"  If so, what is their purpose?
2.  Do you agree with the argument presented in this video, that advertisers are attempting to create a generation of "super consumers" out of today's youth?
3.  How has advertising to children changed over the years?
4.  With the ability of advertisers to reach people everywhere now (internet, TV, radio, smartphones, etc.), what kind of "consumer culture" do you believe will exist in 20 years - when you are adults, with jobs and children of your own?  Will you support the same buying habits in your children that you have now?

Commercialization of Childhood

Ending the Commercialization of Childhood
By: The Alliance for Childhood


     The Alliance for Childhood has joined 25 other organizations to form a new coalition, Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children (SCEC), to oppose the ever-growing presence of advertising aimed at children. Corporations now spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to children, according to information compiled by SCEC, which also reports the following:


*Children consume over 40 hours of media a week after school and see about 20,000 commercials a year on television alone.
*Marketing influences every aspect of children’s lives: the foods they want to eat, the way they want to look, how they interact with parents and friends, and how they play.
*Children tend to believe what they see and do not understand that ads are meant to sell them something. They have trouble differentiating between commercials and programs.
*Advertisers work with psychologists to develop marketing strategies that encourage children to nag their parents.
*Ninety percent of Saturday morning TV ads are for foods high in sugar, fat, salt, and calories—and this in a time of growing problems of obesity and Type II diabetes in children.
*Forty percent of fifth grade girls report dieting; discontent about body image correlates to how often girls read fashion magazines.


     The Alliance for Childhood joined other concerned groups in a public protest of the Golden Marble Awards, an advertising-industry celebration of “excellence” in advertisements aimed at children. The awards pay no attention to how the products marketed affect children and their families. Past winners, for example, include ad campaigns for violent toys, such as the Alien Autopsy action figure, and makers of food high in calories, fat, and sugar.
     In contrast, Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children gave “Have You Lost Your Marbles” Awards to six corporations whose practices are considered especially harmful to children. SCEC also gave positive awards, including its highest honor, the Inspirational Leadership Award to the Government of Sweden for leading the fight in the European Union to ban television advertising to children, setting an example for how individual governments can act to protect children from commercial exploitation. SCEC’s web site http://www.commercialexploitation.com has posted much material about the coalition’s summit and demonstration outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel where the industry awards were made.
    The coalition has grown rapidly from seeds planted one year ago, when three people who were appalled by the Golden Marble Awards decided to protest them. They were Alvin Poussaint, M.D., the prominent Harvard child psychiatrist who directs the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston; Susan Linn, Ph.D., the psychologist and gifted ventriloquist who is also assistant director of the Media Center; and Diane Levin, Ph.D., of Wheelock College in Boston, a psychologist who helped found the group TRUCE, Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment. A full list of the SCEC members with web site links can be found at SCEC’s web site. At this year’s protest, a colorful array of signs, carried by the 90 or so demonstrators, summed up many of the issues in graphic ways. They read:


*Children’s minds are not for sale.
*Public education not corporate education.
*What’s worse than taking candy from a baby? Selling it to her.
*Happy meals are not on the food pyramid.
*Mothers say, Back Off! Let us raise our children in peace.
*Children are supposed to play with puppets, not be puppets.
*Some signs were held by children:
*I am not a target market. I am a child.
*Madison Avenue leave me alone.
*Stay out of my mind.
*Stay out of my heart.
*Stay out of my piggy bank.


     The day before the public protest, SCEC sponsored a summit to address the issue of the commercialization of childhood. One of the presentations was by Tim Kasser, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, IL. Kasser describes research showing that materialistic values often go hand in hand with a lower sense of well-being. A summary of his research is available as part of the Alliance for Childhood web site.
     The declining health and well-being of children is a primary concern of the Alliance. There are many contributing factors to this, but the increase in the commercialization of childhood is certainly a major one. We urge all parents, educators, and other child advocates to speak out now against advertising aimed at children. We also urge every company and every advertiser to establish a firm policy that they will not advertise to children.


Thanks to the Alliance for Childhood for this article from its website. The Alliance for Childhood may be reached at P.O. Box 444, College Park, MD 20741. Its web site address is www.allianceforchildhood.net

Please comment on two of the following questions in complete sentences:
1.  This article shows only point of view.  What arguments might the advertising companies have in response to this?
2.  In your opinion, should advertising companies be held responsible for the techniques and content of their ads?  Why?
3.  How much of an effect do you think advertising really has on the decisions that kids make?  Does advertising influence your decisions?
4.  What role should parents play in this?  Should they be supervising what their children are watching on TV and teaching them about how to make good buying decisions?

Lord of the Flies quotes

Choose one of the quotes below and for that one:

1. Tell the circumstances surrounding that quote
2. Explain the significance of the quote in relation to the story

pg 103
"However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human ot once heroic and sick."

pg 64
"He capered toward Bill and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness."

pg 62
"Here invisible yet strong , was the taboo ofn the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm was consditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins."