Introduction

Facing history was the most influential class I’ve ever taken.  It is a class designed to help you understand how some of the greatest tragedies in human history were caused by racism and prejudice, and how racism and prejudice comes about.  It gives you the tools to use this information in making decisions regarding racism and prejudice in your everyday life.  Facing History uses various films to provide a greater emotional connection with what’s going on and to allow you to actually see what has gone on in human history.  I chose to take this course because my tenth grade history teacher recommended it, as did most other students who had taken it.  They told me about how it really did change them as people and how some of the films were really eye opening, especially the ones about the Holocaust.  I’m a junior at Westborough High School and my name is Sean Anderson.  I like being active and doing something, so sitting a desk in normal classes all day isn’t what I usually want to be doing.  Facing history is one of the best classes I’ve ever taken because it was a completely different class atmosphere, where we were actually free to speak our minds, and rather than being lectured all class, we were able to watch videos, read articles, and have group discussions about what we thought.  I liked how the class encouraged us to form our own opinions about topics and to give us the freedom to dictate our own discussions.

What Facing History and Ourselves Meant to Me

Facing history was the most influential class I have ever taken.  It really opened my eyes to the types of prejudice that we see around us all the time and even prejudices that I know I have been guilty of at some point.  The lessons that I found most influential were when we saw the actual footage and photographs of when Americans discovered the death camps, when we learned about the experiments on human behavior, and when we learned about the children’s march.

The real footage was definitely the most eye-opening aspect of the course.  It made the Holocaust so much more real and all of the shocking images allowed it to really sink in for me just how bad the Holocaust was.  There is a big difference between reading and hearing about it and then actually seeing it.  Watching the bodies being thrown into ditches and the people who were too weak to move from being starved nearly to death was really powerful. The use of the bulldozer on the pile of bodies was also really eye-opening because I realized just how many people were killed and how dehumanizing the whole thing was.  Everything started to sink in about how every one of the millions of people to die was just an innocent person who was being tortured in the cruelest ways just because of the prevailing ideas in Germany against the Jews.

The photographs that we looked at also had a big effect on me because that made all of the victims that much more human to me.   You do not really realize the scope of the Holocaust when you just see all of the numbers and statistics, but when you look into the photos and into the eyes of each person you can connect to them.  Then you realize that each of those lives was an innocent one and one taken and without reason other than prejudice.  I started to think about how similar those people looked to the friends I surround myself with and my family and it made me think about how any person killed in the Holocaust was just as innocent as anyone I know.  Seeing the photos and videos and connecting with the people makes all of the injustices even more evil and all of the events so much more real.  

I thought the psychological experiments were one of the most interesting parts of the course because I was so surprised by the results.  In Jane Elliott’s experiment with her class full of students, she separated the kids based on eye color, and then gave them different privileges based on the eye color they had.  This was meant to show the separation of race that was going on in the South and how it arose and affected both parties.  Segregation and the superiority of the white race was a widespread belief in the time period.  When the children were told that a group with a certain eye color was better, they took full advantage of being given a higher position and even poked fun at the other kids.  The kids who were treated poorly were angry and the other kids, but when the roles were reversed, they acted exactly the same.  Because the children for the most part were not exposed to the idea of prejudice, the experiment showed how prejudice can develop from something as simple as a difference in eye color.  When one group is given more power than another or is given the label of being better, that group will use that power to their advantage and often without sympathy for the other group.  It was shocking to me to see how the kids acted so meanly to one another over something as simple as eye color, but it showed how an idea like that is able to spread. It showed that it can be human nature to discriminate and hold prejudices, and it was the same basic way that ideas like the inferiority of Jews were able to spread in Nazi Germany.  It is hard to understand how people can justify killing an entire group of people over the idea of superiority, but this social experiment helped to show how prejudicial ideas can spread.

The Milgram experiment was another part of facing history that I found really interesting because it was another example of human behavior and how something as horrible as the Holocaust could have happened.  In the Milgram experiment, the test subjects were told that they would be administering shocks to a student whenever they answered a question incorrectly and the shocks would increase in intensity.  When the test subject was told he was not responsible for the health of the person he was shocking, the subject would continue to shock the student regardless of how much pain they could have been in.  I was really surprised by how far each tester went in administering the shocks, and if I had to have guessed I wouldn’t have thought that any would have maxed out the machine. I was surprised to find out that the majority maxed out the machine and even went back down.  It showed that when people are not made responsible for their actions, they are willing to do things that they would not normally.  It made me realize how many of the Nazi members could have justified what they were doing to themselves, even if it was so wrong.  I tried to put myself in the people of the Milgram experiment and think about what I would do in that position, and although I hope I wouldn’t end up causing the other person pain without regard, I’m not sure if I would have been able to say no.  I realize that the taking away of responsibility makes it much easier for a person to conform to.  Learning about the experiment though, has made me want to really look at myself in any sort of similar situations and question whether I am going against what I think is right just because I don’t have responsibility over my actions and if I am causing someone else pain just because I am not responsible for their injury.

Works Cited

Works Cited

Concentration Camps. Google Images. Image. 24 May 2012.

Holocaust. Google Images. Image. 24 May 2012.

Jane Elliott Experiment. Google Images. Image. 24 May 2012.

Milgram Experiment. Google Images. Image. 24 May 2012.

Milgram Experiment Graph. Google Images. Image. 24 May 2012.