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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz There's a phenomenon I actually see extremely commonly when literature is used to teach history to middle school and high school students. Let's call it "pajamafication." 12:57 PM 1/29/22 Twitter Web App 17.9K Retweets 3,194 Quote Tweets 54K Likes 27 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 22h Replying to @gwenckatz So a school district nixed Maus from their curriculum, to be replaced by something more "age-appropriate." IIRC they didn't cite a specific replacement title, but it will probably be something like John Boyne's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas." 8,606 28 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 22h The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is tailor- made for classroom use. It's taught at countless schools and it's squeaky-clean of any of the parent-objectionable material you might find in Maus, Night, or any of the other first-person accounts of the Holocaust. 14 5 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 22h It's also a terrible way to teach the Holocaust. I'm not going to exhaustively enumerate the book's flaws--others have done so--but I'll summarize the points that are common to this phenomenon in various contexts. 6 JEW! Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 22h First, obviously, the context shift. Maus, Night, et al are narrated by actual Jews who were in concentration camps. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is narrated by a German boy. The Jewish perspective is completely eliminated. 20 1867 THEY RAN SCREAMING HOME. HELP! MOMMY! A JEW!! Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 22h Second, the emphasis on historical innocence. Bruno isn't antisemitic. He has no idea that anything bad is happening. He happily befriends a Jewish boy with absolutely no prejudice. 2 QUICK, THE MOTHERS CAME OUTSIDE TO SEE WHAT WAS! RECETGES 9 DON'T BE AFRAID, LITTLE ONES. I'M NOT A JEW. I WON'T HURT YOU. 15 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 22h Thus we're reassured that you too, gentle reader, are innocent. You too would have have a childlike lack of prejudice and you too would be such a sweet summer child that you would have no idea the place next door is a death camp. 1 507 AND WE CAME HERE TO THE CONCENTRATION CAMP AUSCHWITZ, AND WE KNEW THAT FROM HERE WE WILL NOT COME OUT ANYMORE. 4 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 22h In Maus, by contrast, the children are not innocent. They are perpetrators of injustice just like adults. THIS GUY WHO WE PULLED BIG PILES, OLDER OFTEN THE 10 ONES Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 22h Maus also smashes the claim that people just didn't know what was going on in the camps. 4 Gwen Now, AND EVERYBODY CROWDED INSIDE THE DOOR CLOSED HERMETIC, AND WORKED 564 5 Gwen One how 454 BODIES THE 385 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 22h Third, nonspecificity. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas turns a specific historical atrocity into a parable about all forms of bigotry and injustice. I'm sure Boyne thinks he's being very profound. But the actual effect is to blunt and erase the atrocity. 12.7K I believe and out. be complete of big survived. 369 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 22h There's the too-cute-by-half way it avoids terminology: "Off-With," "the Fury." Harsh language becomes "He said a nasty word." AWAY THE F Notice how "it's a fable" ties in with the goal of eliminating anything parents might object to. 8 CLUBS, 9 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 22h And that's our fourth point. Bad things can happen, but only abstractly. Someone's dad disappears. He's just...gone. How? Who knows. People stand around looking hungry and unhappy and saying "It's not very nice in here." THE MIDDLE BROTHER, 708 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 21h The ending is sad, but it's sad like a Lifetime movie. It's sanitized, it's quick, there are no details, it's meant to poke that your heart that loves crying. bit of 6 264 8,962 ↑ Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 21h Maus's description of the gas chambers, meanwhile... FACTORY Lately feeling has 550 THERE, APART STRONGEST THE WITH ON TOP, AND BABIES CRUSHED BELOW... SKULLS WERE SMASHED... WITH HIS WIFE WAR CAME, BUT WHEN WAS THERE, HE WANTED 5 254 IT WAS BETWEEN IT DEPENDED GAS BUT SOON WAS NOBODY ANYMORE ALIVE. 314 HE At least fifteen foreign offers to turn TO RUSSIA 1630 Gwen It might Life Slave Slave example. HOW without teaches about real did experience it. 413 C. WITH I've been depressed. Gwen Thus, books are C. Katz the striking the cast is TOLD Wars, the Apartheid: a target. 13 INTO THE SHOWER ROOM, THE LIGHTS TURNED DARK. 3 AND 30 MINUTES- MUCH IN '38, WHEN I NEEDED CASH TO HELPED HIM COME BACK TO HIS MY FACTORY, HE GAVE SO NOW I WIFE'S FAMILY Zyklon B, a pesti- cide, dropped into hollow columns. 1,730 enry THEN THE GERMANS TOOK FROM ANJA'S FAMILY. 270 TO WARSAW. In May 1968 my mother killed herself (She left no note.) LEVEK, HE RAN WHEN THE HOW IT of THE MOTHERS ALWAYS TOLD SO: "BE CARE- FUL! A JEN WILL CATCH YOU TO A BAG AND EAT YOU!" SO THEY TAUGHT TO THEIR CHILDREN. Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz 21h A historical atrocity can never be a because the metaphor for all bigotry specifics are what makes it an atrocity. The Nazis didn't just do "bad things, generally," they did THESE things. And leaving out the details is simply historical erasure. HE SAW TO RUN BACK. 8 Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 21h fifth: Fiction. Finally, However Bruno and much poor little Schmuel might rend your heartstrings, you retreat into the knowledge that they aren't real and they didn't really can ultimately die. 9,188 445 like not 9,455 WE KNEW THE STORIES-THAT THEY WILL GAS US AND THROW US IN THE OVENS. THIS WAS 1944... WE KNEW EVERYTHING, AND HERE WE WERE. 1593 C. Katz @gwenckatz 21h I write historical fiction, and obviously it But 14.3K c This ends the first there's more... 6 9,987 12.5K to AM of Frederick ME.... THEIR FINGERS WERE BROKEN FROM TRY- HOOKS. ING TO CLIMB UP THE WALLS... AND SOME- THEIR ARMS AS LONG AS 573 SORRY, MISTER. YOU KNOW HOW KIDS ARE... HEIL HITLER. a place, in the classroom no Holocaust education can nonfiction that people who genuinely 12.6K THEY PUT or Solomon with modern ↑ @gwenckatz. 21h about Maus is things and how few of them 8,726 BIG OUR 461 9,253 E' HEIL HITLER. to editions are coming out. my book into a TV-special or movie. 1865 Civil any "icky" I APPROPICHED OVER TO THEM... part the with much 798 Katz mean replacing IF I RAN AWAY THEY WOULD SEE: "YES. IT IS A JEW HERE." 11.2K TIMES WERE THEIR BODIES, PULLED FROM THE SOCKETS. ENOUGH! 17.7K MONEY AND SHE LEFT HIM AND HE KILLED HIMSELF. 9,320 Levek. Sosnowiec 27 ANJA'S HER AND IT'S THE PHOTOS. C. Katz @gwenckatz. I DIDN'T WANT MORE BUT ANYWAY HE 10.5K WHO THOSE THEY PUT TO SMUGGLE BACK COST A FORTUNE. I SENT TO RICHIEU... 4 21h Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz Because it's a true story, Maus can also explore neglected aspects like the intergenerational trauma, which simply vanish in a pat fictional story that is just finished when you get Pajamas equivalent way a false construction of history. ↑ THE OF BODIES LAY RIGHT NEXT TO THE 10.1K 2 DOOR WHERE THEY TRIED TO GET OUT. Josef Sonia. RAN TO RUSSIA, SIBERIA AS TRAITORS, BUT OVER IN WARSAW, IT WAS. IF THEY IN RUSSIA, COULD MAYBE Douglass, PARENTS, THE GRANDPARENTS, SISTER TOSHA, I've gotten (I don't Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. 20h The Maus incident is not 11.6K BIGGEST PILE ALL WHAT Northup's historical the end. 11.4K TOLD ME. 735771 9,314 SOME LITTLE BIBI THE BORDERS MONEY... YOU THEY TO HEAR, 8,764 21h The Boy in the Striped an age-appropriate teach the Holocaust, but Rights movement, KNOW HOW ONLY STILL NOW ... STAYED 10.1K BE ALIVE, of the thread. But an isolated case. It's part of a broad of replacing the trend literature used to teach history with more "appropriate" kid-friendly, And outside alternatives. Holocaust, it usually doesn't meet controversy. 6 ... IS LEFT, @gwenckatz. 20h Narrative of the an American 4 serious wanna.) ... UNIV ... Twelve fiction, Alright Mr. Spiegelman... We're ready to shoot!... TH Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz. But it plays out along the modern lines: Primary sources fiction, victim perspectives perpetrators, specificity with Star-Bellied Sneetch-style replaced with replaced "Why can't we all just get along?" metaphors. .... replaced with 20h same general ... part of history can be ... Years a for

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Pajamafication


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Uploaded Jul 18, 2022 at 04:37AM EDT

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pajamafication, the boy in the striped pyjamas, maus, gwen c. katz, holocaust, school, education, long, jews

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