Introduction

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to
choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.1
— Franklin Roosevelt

I. What Is Facing History and Ourselves?

Facing History and Ourselves is an international educational and professional develop-

ment organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an
examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development
of a more humane and informed citizenry. Our program is guided by the belief that edu-
cation can be an effective means of preparing youth for their role as active, thoughtful,
socially responsible citizens and can serve as a preventative tool against intolerance, dis-
crimination, and violence. Our materials and pedagogy challenge students to confront
moral dilemmas that arise in history and in their own lives, reflect upon choices made,
and “choose to participate” in creating democratic communities. Since its inception in
1976, Facing History and Ourselves has reached millions of students throughout the
United States and in several other countries. More than 80 studies of Facing History’s
impact support the following findings:

Facing History’s impact on students:

• Reduced racist attitudes, increased awareness of antisemitism, and more interest in
and appreciation of other ethnic groups
• More engagement in learning
• Advanced social and moral development
• Increased knowledge of history, including the events that led to the Holocaust and
other examples of collective violence
• Increased motivation to read and write; increased ability to think critically about
history and one’s social and civic responsibility
• Increased relational maturity, including the capacity to stand in another’s shoes and
to resolve differences with others
• Heightened social concern and increased sensitivity to the plight of others
• Reduced fighting behavior

Facing History’s impact on teachers:

• Revitalized interest and satisfaction with teaching and introduced them to new and
effective methods
• Promoted their capacity and motivation to promote students’ awareness of racism,
antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry in themselves and others
• Increased commitment, confidence, and capacity to address complex social, civic,
and ethical issues in their classrooms

The Facing History journey is different for each class and each setting. At the same time,
each journey is built around a core of common elements, described as follows.

Introduction • 5
Core Elements of a Facing History and Ourselves Journey
1. Connections between history and students’ lives
Educators are always looking for ways to engage students. Through decades of experience,
we have learned that students are engaged when classroom material is rooted in the con-
cerns and issues of adolescence: the overarching interest in individual and group identity,
in acceptance or rejection, in conformity or non-conformity, in labeling, ostracism, loy-
alty, fairness, and peer group pressure. A Facing History and Ourselves student said, “I
faced history one day and found myself,” articulating one of the main objectives of our
materials. Rather than explore moral dilemmas and concepts of human behavior through
hypothetical situations, Facing History selects particularly powerful moments in history
that can be mined for ethical choices that are relevant to adolescents’ lives and their
emerging responsibilities as members of a local, national, and global community.
Accessing the past through the voices of real people, especially the voices of young peo-
ple, helps students connect with the material in a more personal way. Our materials guide
students through the process of identifying universal themes among events, while recog-
nizing the specific context and particular choices that make every event unique. In Facing
History’s pedagogy, history becomes a tool that helps students understand their own deci-
sions, ideas, and contexts; at the same time, students’ experiences become a tool to help
them better understand history. Our goal is to help students develop the habit of con-
necting the past and the present so that they can make informed decisions in the future.

2. Teachers as learners: Materials are professional development tools for teachers

Facing History and Ourselves professional development efforts support teacher efficacy in
four interrelated domains: teaching for understanding; making the curriculum accessible
and relevant for the diversity of students they teach and differentiating instruction appro-
priately; creating safe, inclusive learning communities; and promoting deliberation that
fosters emotional and ethical growth and civic agency. In addition to providing work-
shops, individual follow-up, print publications, and online resources, Facing History and
Ourselves develops lesson plans and units, like this Holocaust and Human Behavior unit,
as another way to support teachers’ use of our materials in the classroom. Informed by
the best practices we have culled from decades of work in classrooms, we offer lesson
plans and units to educators as a vehicle for their own learning. We trust teachers as cre-
ative intellectuals and believe these lessons will be used to stimulate their own curriculum
development. The joy and brilliance of teaching often comes from following up on stu-
dents’ unanticipated reactions and questions, so we do not expect teachers to follow our
lesson plans as a prescriptive set of instructions. We know that students’ interests, prior
knowledge, skill level, and misconceptions uniquely shape each classroom, even those in
the same school. Therefore, we expect teachers will diverge from our lesson plans as
needed, creating their own pedagogical rationale in dialogue with their students. Our
lesson plans always provide several options, including suggestions for ways to extend
students’ thinking through incorporating additional resources, discussion questions, or
activities.

3. Facing History’s scope and sequence

The Facing History and Ourselves “scope and sequence” is a framework for teaching his-
tory and human behavior that connects the study of the past to adolescents’ social and
moral development. It was first designed to support students’ cognitive and moral growth
as they explored our core case study—the events leading up to the Holocaust. Yet, teach-
ers have found that the scope and sequence, also referred to as the Facing History jour-
ney, is a useful organizational structure for the study of any history.
Introduction • 6
The journey begins with a study of identity—the forces that shape who we are, how the
labels that we are given impact how we think about ourselves, how the multiple identities
we might assume influence who we think we are, and how we see others. It then moves
to questions of membership: how groups that individuals consider themselves a part of—
whether they are peer, ethnic, religious, or national—define themselves and how these
groups are also defined by others. Then students apply these concepts to their exploration
of a critical period in history. In this unit, they will study the events leading up to the
Holocaust. As students learn about the choices
made in the years before the Holocaust, they come
to understand the fragility of democracy and dis-
cover how history is not inevitable. Next, students
move to judgment—considering questions of
responsibility, justice, punishment, reparations,
legacy, and memory. The final stage of this journey
asks students to reflect on their own role as a par-
ticipating member in a larger local, national, and
global society. Our years of experience in the field
have demonstrated that as students move through
this journey, their historical knowledge, self-aware-
ness, and moral sophistication deepens.

4. The Pedagogical Triangle of Historical Understanding:

Ethical reflection, intellectual rigor, and emotional engagement
To serve as a touchstone for curriculum planning, we have created the “Pedagogical
Triangle of Historical Understanding.” Facing History and Ourselves believes that histori-
cal understanding is strengthened when classroom materials are intellectually rigorous,
engage students emotionally, and invite ethical reflection. Working together, these com-
ponents foster students’ sense of civic agency: their belief that they can play a positive role
in their peer groups, schools, communities, and the larger world, and their ability and
willingness to “make history” by acting on that belief.

Introduction • 7
Emotional engagement: Students find learning more meaningful when it touches both
their hearts and their heads. To teach history to adolescents, teachers need emotionally
compelling materials that resonate with students’ own experiences. Stories of inclusion
and ostracism, conformity and individuality, peer pressure and independent judgment,
obedience and resistance have particular resonance with young adults.

Intellectual rigor: Informed judgment is possible when students can apply a deep under-
standing of the past to choices being made today. Our resources prioritize depth over
breadth. Additionally, we place a tremendous premium on historical accuracy; the sources
we select are reviewed by prominent scholars and primary sources are privileged over sec-
ondary sources. To help students wrestle with the complexity and uncertainty of history,
rather than reach for simple answers, Facing History’s lesson plans and units include
activities to help students engage in different historical thinking skills, such as:
• identifying the significance of events, decisions, ideas and documents;
• recognizing how multiple causes impact historical outcomes;
• explaining how historical context influences why and how people acted in the past;
• using multiple pieces of evidence representing different perspectives, often from the
viewpoints of victims, bystanders, perpetrators, and upstanders;
• discerning the similarities and differences between the past and today.

Ethical reflection: To help students develop their ability to make moral decisions, students
need to go beyond simple explanations when interpreting choices made in the past and
the present. Therefore, Facing History materials encourage students to think about vari-
ous issues that influence why individuals and groups made particular choices, and the
implications of their actions. The goal of Facing History and Ourselves is not to promote
moral relativism but to help students understand the factors that influence decision-
making. In addition to analyzing the choices made by individuals and groups in the past,
Facing History materials ask students to think about their own decisions and their role as
participants in society.

5. Reflective classroom community

A Facing History and Ourselves classroom is in many ways a microcosm of democracy—
a place where explicit rules and implicit norms protect everyone’s right to speak; where
differing perspectives can be heard and valued; where members take responsibility for
themselves, each other, and the group as a whole; and where each member has a stake
and a voice in collective decisions. Facing History calls these spaces reflective classroom
communities. Our pedagogy is designed to nurture such environments by creating a sense
of trust and openness, encouraging students to speak and listen to each other, making
space and time for silent reflection, offering multiple avenues for participation and learn-
ing, and helping students appreciate the points of view, talents, and contributions of less
vocal members. A review of our suggested teaching strategies reveals an emphasis on jour-
nal writing and on multiple formats for facilitating large and small group discussions.

6. Literacy development
Facing History and Ourselves is committed to helping students develop as readers, writ-
ers, and thinkers because we believe that an informed, active citizenry requires advanced
literacy skills. In our materials, primary sources are privileged over secondary sources.
Students read the actual words of experts in their fields (i.e., historians, psychologists,
political scientists, etc.) as well as first-hand accounts written by people, especially young
adults, who lived through particular historical moments. We know that comprehending
Introduction • 8
and analyzing text that has not been explicitly written for a youth audience can be chal-
lenging. Therefore, Facing History’s units and lesson plans include strategies aimed at
helping teachers make difficult texts accessible for students of varying reading levels. Our
materials also help students learn to evaluate the sources of information, in terms of per-
spective, validity, and credibility, so that they can develop the media literacy skills
required of citizens in this information age.

Facing History lessons generally adhere to a specific structure (opener, main activity, and
follow-through) that reflects best practice for developing students’ literacy skills.
“Openers” activate students’ personal experience with decision-making and/or their prior
knowledge with the material they will be studying. In the main activities, students are
often asked to suspend their judgment as they explore a text or texts (of various media)
from multiple perspectives. Activities are structured so that students have support in com-
prehending and making meaning of material. Authentic understanding happens when
students are able to take an idea and make it their own. Therefore, the purpose of the
follow-through section is to provide students with the opportunity to deepen their grasp
of material explored in the lesson by reflecting on how these ideas resonate with their
own lives and issues they see in their world today.

7. Interdisciplinary
The Facing History and Ourselves curricular framework is interdisciplinary. It builds
upon the methods of the humanities and social sciences: inquiry, analysis, interpretation,
empathic connection, and judgment. To help students explore history from multiple per-
spectives, our lessons incorporate texts and ideas from various disciplines including politi-
cal science, history, geography, literature, fine arts, science, and psychology. Additionally,
because we respect and celebrate different learning styles, the teaching strategies we sug-
gest encourage students to learn and express themselves through different modalities,
such as writing, speaking, drawing, and movement.

Sources:
Betty Bardige, “Facing History and Ourselves Core Ideas in Brief: A Series of Conversations Among Theory,
Research and Practice“ (Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, forthcoming).
Facing History and Ourselves, “Bill Moyers Interviewed: Lessons to Be Learned from Studying the Holocaust
and the Nuremberg Trials,” Newsletter, Fall 1986.
Margot Stern Strom, “Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior,” Moral Education
Forum (Summer 1981).
Margot Stern Strom, “Facing Today and the Future: Choosing to Participate,” Moral Education Forum 14,
no. 3 (Fall 1989): 1–6.

Introduction • 9