Section 1: Teachers' Notes

Some students may need support to understand the terms ‘social concept’ and ‘social institutions’.  This can be done before, during or after group discussions depending on the abilities in the group.  For those who don’t understand the terms, they can be encouraged to select this statement for the ‘don’t know’ category.

Social institutions include:  schools, law courts, local authorities, the media.  The term can be as limited or expansive as you choose to give time to.

This activity is in 2 parts.  The first is a chart for students to complete a simple matching task.  This activity is followed by discussion and prediction activities about the cartoon in part 2.  Part 2 shows a Nazi cartoon with stimulus questions for discussion.

The discussion task introduces the concept of stereotyping.  This is developed elsewhere in this section in the activities on antisemitism.  You may wish to define the term ‘stereotyping’ at this stage.  See glossary.

The initial quote taken from Mein Kampf refers to the Aryan race. You may wish to define the term Aryan .  See glossary.

Task 2 based on the chart ‘Purpose of the Racial Laws’ introduces the concept of morality.  You may wish to define and discuss this concept before, during or after this activity.  See glossary.

The first task relies on an amended version of the ‘Purpose of the Racial Laws’chart.  In order to fit this onto one page, it is in a small font.  It is suggested that you print this off and enlarge it to A3.

The caption and image matching activity introduces the concept of racial measurements.  This is likely to stimulate discussion about Nazi concepts of race and citizenship.  You may therefore wish to outline briefly the quasi-scientific nature of Nazi racial theory which involved definitions of race being dependent on the measurements of facial features, skin colour, eye colour, hair colour etc.  It is important also to mention, however, that such theories were cynically suspended when necessary – suggest they look at Hitler’s complexion by way of an example.

If you are working off line and from worksheets, the final part of this activity requires a reference back to the ‘Purpose of the Racial Laws – Answer Page’ so you should have copies of this available.

It is very important when covering this section to try to dispel the stereotypes of Jews that still exist.  In order to do this, students must recognise Jews as real people, with whom many are familiar and without whom our culture would be less rich and varied.  This is true for other minority ethnic groups and is a useful introductory task to any anti-racist work.  You may, therefore, wish to refer to Jewish people past and present in the media and society in order to begin this work: eg.  David Schwimmer (Friends), Stephen Spielberg, Whoopy Goldberg, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller, Rachel Stevens (S Club 7)!

For further reading and activities about The Churches, Christianity and the Shoah – see Section 111 Faith, Morality and Ethics published CJJ and HET (ISBN 0 9516166 9 2).

The notion of steps to tyranny - as mentioned in the introductory comments to this activity - comes from a BBC documentary ‘5 Steps to Tyranny’.  ‘Us and them’ is step 1.  The other steps are as follows and you may wish to explain these to students after completing this activity:

1. Us and Them
2. Obedience to the leader
3. Do them harm
4. Join in doing them harm or stand by to let others do them harm
5. Exterminate them

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For the sequencing task, it is probably best to print this out, enlarge it to A3 then chop it up for students to be able to move around the text.  It is quite hard to do.

The activity based on the cartoon is much easier.  You may wish to differentiate this work by giving the text sequencing activity to students with high level literacy and organisational skills and the cartoon-based true/false task to the less able.  

This part introduces concepts of racial superiority, hereditary diseases and eugenics.  It is Science for the non-scientist and apart from general knowledge, requires no scientific expertise on the part of the teacher.

A debate around the ethics of embryo research and genetic engineering is an appropriate extension activity here.