State cuts
funding for
Shoa education
2 months ago | 488 views | 1 
| 10 
| 
| 
| 10 | |
That leaves no state funds currently appropriated for Holocaust education in Pennsylvania.
The Holocaust education funds were part of a broader ethnic heritage line item in the Department of Education’s budget.
For the last several years, the Department of Education has distributed the $60,000 to the Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council (PHEC), a “membership of educators who care that the lessons of the Holocaust be taught in Pennsylvania schools,” said Christopher Gwin, vice chair of the Council.
The governor’s press secretary, Gary Tuma, blamed the state’s dire financial condition for the cuts.
“It was such a difficult budget year,” Tuma said. “We cut a vast number of grants. We were faced with a $3.2 billion shortfall in the 2008-2009 budget, which necessitated a lot of cuts. ... About 80 percent of the budget was cut or eliminated.”
The PHEC, a volunteer organization that is made up of both active and retired teachers, has been using the funding “to support teachers, programs and the teaching of the lessons and history of the Holocaust in schools across Pennsylvania,” Gwin said.
The organization provides grants to teachers for educational materials, to bring survivors to their schools, and to help fund field trips.
Additionally, the PHEC places steamer trunks, filled with teaching materials, in high schools and middle schools across the state, according to Gwin. Schools may purchase trunks on their own, or may request matching grants from PHEC. Once the trunk arrives, the PHEC provides professional development for the teachers, and a PHEC volunteer to act as a liaison while the school integrates the trunk material into its curriculum.
More than 30 trunks have been placed so far throughout the state.
The PHEC also sponsors teachers to attend national conferences, and has piloted a summer teacher workshop and seminar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
As a result of the funding cut, the PHEC has put a hold on any new projects, requests or initiatives.
“We are simply funding what we had already promised to fund before the freeze happened,” Gwin said.
The Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition, a watchdog group that seeks to educate state government officials about issues affecting the Jewish community, is trying to determine how to assure funds for Holocaust education for next year, said its executive director, Hank Butler.
“We would like to see Holocaust education become its own line item, rather than part of an educational grant,” Butler said. “We are working on that now, and we’re currently looking into other potential resources for this year.”
(Toby Tabachnick can be reached at tobyt@thejewishchronicle.net or 412-687-1263.)
In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares “traditional” and “revisionist” views on the “The Holocaust.”
On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled “deniers,” who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.
The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe’s Jews.
This book is especially relevant right now, as “Holocaust deniers” are routinely and harshly punished for their “blasphemy,” and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized “Holocaust” narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.
The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of “Thomas Dalton,” is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.
This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=debating the holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING