Sample activities:
- Assess the responsibility of historical figures for an important event. Assess how much responsibility should be assigned to different people,
and evaluate whether their actions were justified given the historical context. - Examine various media sources on a topic and assess how much of the language contains implicit and explicit moral judgments.
Sample topics:
- perpetrators: regimes and leaders
- demographics: vulnerable minorities
- heroes, bystanders, perpetrators
Key questions:
- What were the underlying social (or economic or cultural or political) conditions in Germany that led to the Holocaust?
- What was the role of individuals within the Khmer Rouge in determining the events of the genocide in Cambodia?
- Are all Khmer Rouge leaders equally significant in causing the genocide?
Sample topic:
- eight stages of genocide:
- classification
- symbolization
- dehumanization
- organization
- polarization
- preparation
- extermination
- denial
Sample topics:
- indigenous peoples and cultures
- Beothuk extinction
- Armenian genocide
- anti-Semitic pogroms
- Soviet Union and Ukraine (Holodomor famine)
- Japanese occupation of Korea and China