Learning from the Past, Building for the Future

The Illinois Holoc aust Museum and Education Center (IHMEC) strives to engage youth as citizens through Make a Difference! The Harvey L. Miller Family Youth Exhibition. Teaching about the Holocaust is complex and challenging work. Holocaust education is mandated in Illinois elementary and high schools, yet the Museum finds that many teachers are unsure of how to teach such sensitive and complex topics; such as civics, character education, the Holocaust, human behavior, and genocide. In fact, direct teaching of the Holocaust is not recommended by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum until 7th grade or later due to the level of emotional preparation needed to study this material. Thus, IHMEC takes a spiraled approach to learning, in which younger children's emotional preparation is supported through more basic studies of civic engagement, creating character and understanding human behavior resulting in activities that the children can carry out on a day-to-day basis. This spiraled preparation enables them to tackle the deeper issues of the Holocaust as the children mature.