Law requires genocide education in schools

By Maura Kelly Lannan
Associated Press

The measure, which took effect immediately, expanded the previous requirement that elementary and high school students learn about the Holocaust to include lessons on genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan and Ukraine.

School districts have the entire academic year to meet the law's requirement, State Board of Education spokeswoman Becky Watts said.

"As we teach our kids the important lessons of history, we have to be sure that they understand that racial, national, ethnic and religious hatred can lead to horrible tragedies," Blagojevich said in a statement.

Glenn "Max" McGee, superintendent of schools in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette and a former state schools superintendent, said learning about genocide and other tragedies should be part of the curriculum.

"I think it is important for boys and girls to learn about these tragic events so that maybe they can make contributions that will truly change the course of history in the future," he said.

But McGee worried the requirement could become an unfunded mandate from the state.

"I hope and trust that the state Board of Education will provide resources and some training in teaching these and it won't fall in the district's lap to develop units," McGee said.

The law says the State Board of Education may give instructional materials to districts to help them develop classes. Local school districts would set specifics on the classes for each grade level.

The state board's curriculum and instruction division, which is responsible for learning standards, was researching what curricula exists and which ones would be most helpful to schools to teach about genocides, Watts said.

No decision has been made yet about whether the board will recommend a curriculum or help schools access parts of one by providing online resources, she said.

Schools will teach a unit on genocide and the lessons can last for different lengths of times, she said.

The genocides students will learn about include Rwanda, where about 500,000 people, most of them from the country's Tutsi minority, were killed in 100 days by a regime of extremists from its Hutu majority in 1994. In July 1995, as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the U.N.-protected Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica were killed in Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

In the Darfur region of Sudan, war-induced hunger and disease have killed more than 180,000 people and driven more than 2 million from their homes since rebels from black African tribes took up arms in February 2003, complaining of discrimination and oppression by Sudan's Arab-dominated government.

Richard Hirschhaut, project and executive director of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, praised the bill.

"The new law affirms the continuing relevance of applying the universal lessons of the Holocaust to the tragedies of genocide in our world today," he said in a statement.

The measure was sponsored by state Rep. John Fritchey, D-Chicago, and state Sen. Jacqueline Collins, D-Chicago.