Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) on Monday protested an Oswego County school teacher’s assignment asking students to make the case for the European Holocaust as part of their training in “critical thinking.” Hikind demanded the resignation of NY Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia who defended the teacher.
“I am calling for the immediate resignation of New York Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia following a reprehensible assignment from a high school teacher in Oswego county that asked students to defend Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ to exterminate the Jewish people. The Commissioner actually defended the assignment as ‘critical thinking,'” Hikind wrote on his Facebook page Monday night.
“Had the assignment been to argue in favor of slavery or other human atrocities, would anyone dare to defend it?” he asked, adding, “I honestly couldn’t believe this story when I heard it.”
The Assemblyman noted that “this abhorrent assignment follows a State Education department inclusion of an anti-Israel cartoon in a Regents examination. I objected strongly to that cartoon and the Department of Education later apologized.”
Finally, he stated, “This despicable ‘Final Solution’ assignment demands far more than an apology. This is a stab in the back to Holocaust survivors. The Education Commissioner is condoning the wrong type of education and has no business overseeing the instruction of New York children.”
The teacher, Michael DeNobile, issued the assignment in February to high school seniors in his “Principles of Literary Representation” class. The assignment was stamped “Top Secret,” and instructed students to put themselves in the shoes of the Nazis who argued for or against the Final Solution.
Of course, none of the participants in the 1942 Wannsee Conference on the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish question” is known to have expressed any reservations regarding the plan for the industrial annihilation of the Jews of Europe.
The assignment suggested to students: “This is an exercise on expanding your point of view by going outside your comfort zone and training your brain to logistically find the evidence necessary to prove a point, even if it is existentially and philosophically against what you believe.”