FSWC Education Report: March 1, 2018

March 1, 2018

Education Report

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Today Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) hosted a group of fifty Grades 7 and 8 students from a Scarborough elementary school for our Roots of Hate and Intolerance workshop. This was a great group of diverse students, with many of Bengali, Pakistani, Punjabi, Filipino, and Jamaican cultural backgrounds. The diversity of the group was an asset to our discussion as everyone was familiar with the idea of Canada as a haven of human rights and a good place to live in comparison with the quality of life for many in communities around the world. One young woman even shared the fact that her family moved from Pakistan when she was still very young because her parents wanted better opportunities for her and her brother. 

As always, FSWC Educator Elena introduced the subject of hatred and intolerance through a brief discussion of the Holocaust and Simon Wiesenthal’s incredible mission to pursue justice for the victims of the Nazis. Before they took their lunch break Elena gathered them around Simon’s desk and pointed out the names of prominent Nazis and described a little bit about what they were guilty of. She also shared a few key Wiesenthal quotes with students and explained to them the distinction between justice and revenge. 

Because there were 50 students altogether, Elena did not spend as much time doing interactive activities. The first half of the workshop was devoted to covering examples of hatred/intolerance through Canada’s history including slavery in Canada, the Residential School System, and the treatment of immigrant populations including Chinese, Sikh, and Jews in the 1930s. 

After lunch Elena focused on hate crimes in the present day. She went over the most recent stats and talked about the fact that groups like the Ku Klux Klan are more public than they have been for decades. Elena asked the students all to also consider the fact that the majority of hate crimes that are committed are by young people and asked for reasons why. This led to a great conversation about the fact that young people have less knowledge so they are more likely to be manipulated, that it can be hard to go against what your friends are doing (peer pressure), or that people might do something without fully thinking it through. The final point Elena emphasized was that all religions and cultures promote the idea of “the golden rule”, which is essentially that you should treat others as you would like to be treated. A lot of students seemed familiar with this idea so that was an effective way to conclude.