Sylwia Holmes. 
‘I didn’t stop being racist because of (learning about) Holocaust […] I’ve always not been racist.’ (Ella, Year 12 student, Peterborough).
In popular, political and even educational discourse, it has become a commonplace to assert that it is crucially important for young people to learn about the Holocaust as an intervention against racism and prejudice in the present day. But in a focus group interview exploring secondary school students’ attitudes towards encountering this history, Year 12 student Ella begins to turn that proposition on its head.
Ella was one of more than 9,500 students consulted by UCL researchers as part of a three-year national study investigating ‘What students know and understand about the Holocaust’. Drawing primarily on survey responses (more…)