STAND is currently working to implement genocide education into America’s public schools.  While several states suggest or mandate that the extreme example of the Holocaust be taught as part of the social studies curricula, few states have equivalent requirements for teaching about other acts of genocide.  Only six states - California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York - mandate that the Holocaust be taught in the public schools.

And though eleven other states - Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington - recommend Holocaust education, they do not provide sufficient funds to train teachers in this area. More so, virtually no infrastructure exists to train teachers in the broader history of genocide beyond the Holocaust.  Additionally, very few teachers and scholars have decided to include the concept of genocide in the long lists of what they decide to cover in their classrooms of world and contemporary history – daunting subjects to teach, given the overwhelming amount of potential curricula.  

      As STAND seeks to provide students with the tools necessary to launch campaigns for genocide education, the Genocide Education Task Force has been formed to research the few pre-existing genocide education requirements.  Included in this research will be a case study of Illinois HB 0312, which was passed in August 2005 and seeks to:

Holocaust and Genocide Study: Every public elementary school and high school shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction studying the events of the Nazi atrocities of 1933 to 1945. This period in world history is known as the Holocaust, during which 6,000,000 Jews and millions of non-Jews were exterminated. One of the universal lessons of the Holocaust is that national, ethnic, racial, or religious hatred can overtake any nation or society, leading to calamitous consequences. To reinforce that lesson, such curriculum shall include an additional unit of instruction studying other acts of genocide across the globe. This unit shall include, but not be limited to, the Armenian Genocide, the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and more recent atrocities in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. The studying of this material is a reaffirmation of the commitment of free peoples from all nations to never again permit the occurrence of another Holocaust and a recognition that crimes of genocide continue to be perpetrated across the globe as they have been in the past and to deter indifference to crimes against humanity and human suffering wherever they may occur.

If you are interested in helping with STAND’s work to mandate genocide education or would like to learn about how to work towards launching a campaign for genocide education in your state, please contact STAND’s Education Director, Patrice Hutton, at education@standnow.org.