CRIF salutes the humanistic nature of this proposal and considers that the last year of primary school is the right moment to awaken children to the risks of anti-Semitism and racism.
CRIF considers that the proposal will need some practical adjustments for it to be able to play its educational role as an effective civic alert and a stimulus for personal historical work.
In particular, CRIF considers that it would be better to extend the memory ownership to a whole class and would like to see the stories of deported children associated with stories of rescued children. This would encourage the teaching of tolerance toward others, whoever they might be.
CRIF considers that the criticism levelled at this proposal has in many cases been excessive, inasmuch as there was never any question that this should be some kind of morbid identification, while in other cases it has been downright nauseating, stemming from a refusal to admit the universal nature of the Holocaust and accentuating confusion and competition among victims.
The national daily Le Figaro surveyed 10 to 11 year-old children about the President’s proposal. According to the newspaper, while the children are not very familiar with the historical facts, they do wish to understand.
Teachers, who are not always at ease when dealing with this period of history, sometimes prefer to ignore it. “Studying the Carolingian dynasty or the chateaux of the Loire Valley is easier,” explains Hubert Tison, the general secretary of the Association of History and Geography Teachers. Not to mention the fact that local municipal authorities, who are financially responsible for the schools, prefer, for lack of sufficient resources, to buy maths and French manuals rather than history manuals.
A poll ordered by the French Ministry of Education reveals that 8% of pupils know the meaning of the word “Shoah” [Holocaust], the location of the Vel d’Hiv [the place of the infamous round-up of Jews in 1942] and the number of Jews who died during the Second World War, according to Le Figaro. 37% of high school pupils think that “less than two million” Jews were exterminated and 21% are incapable of giving any figure.
According to a poll published on Thursday 21st February, 85% of French people disapprove of Nicolas Sarkozy’s idea of entrusting each 5th grade schoolchild with the memory of a child victim of the Holocaust. 82% of parents think the idea is bad.
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