Introduction

Facing History and Ourselves is a course designed to educate students on racism, bias, and discrimination in a historical context. This course covers the history of genocides and the Holocaust to compare history with the moral and ethical decisions we make every day of our lives. This course provides awareness to diversity and discrimination of different societies throughout the world. The first section of this course, Identity, covers how national and self identities are formed. The next section, Membership, covers how members of a specific identity can contribute to stereotyping and conflict without conscious. The third section covers History, such as the Holocaust and human behavior. Judgement, Memory, and Legacy is the next section that this course covers. In this section students study the concept of guilt, judgement, and responsibility. The last section of the course is Choosing to Participate. This section shows how the past connects to present day issues. Throughout the course students will discover more about the person that they are themselves.

 As a high school senior I chose to take this course because I’ve always been interested in history. Unfortunately, during my core history classes we never went into detail about certain genocides or the Holocaust so I wanted to educate myself more on these subjects. I’m so glad I decided to take the Facing History and Ourselves course. I’ve become more aware of the type of person that I am by taking this class. I believe that every high school student should be required to take a class such as this. If everyone is educated on the events that occurred in the Holocaust we can make sure nothing of such extent could ever happen again. I have to thank Mr. Gallagher for bringing this course to my high schoool and for being such a great teacher.