Last week, Maryland’s Department of Education announced it plans to expand instruction about the Holocaust in state schools.
Howard Libit, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, told Public Service News that he and other Jewish leaders are concerned that Maryland’s curriculum guidelines on lessons about the Holocaust are “too vague.”
“US history high school standards only talked about The Holocaust in the context of the US response to it and immigration policy,” Libit said, noting: “We thought that the state education standards, which drive curriculum across all of our local school systems, ought to be much more specific, much more explicit.”
Libit suggests the change is timely, in light of the rise in hate crimes in the US over the past three years.
According to Maryland’s Department of Education, the new guidelines include teaching in middle school about the roots of anti-Semitism, and adding Holocaust instruction in history classes in high school.
