A Massachusetts middle school principal has become the center of controversy after he reportedly issued an apology to students who felt “unseen” during a Holocaust education lesson. Diamond Middle School Principal Dr. Johnny Cole said the lesson was aimed at teaching the students to recognize hate and to speak out against it, something he called “an important goal.” However, Cole then said that he was writing the email after some students’ families had expressed that the lesson left them feeling “unseen.”
Criticism of the Apology
Critics slammed Cole’s apology, with many of them saying that Holocaust education was not supposed to be comfortable. The lessons of the Holocaust are essential to understanding how antisemitism develops and manifests in modern society, and those who oppose teaching about the Holocaust and modern-day antisemitism often seek to distort historical facts to advance ideological narratives that undermine the Jewish experience and the lessons history teaches.
StopAntisemitism said in a statement that school administrators have a responsibility to defend factual history, not retreat from it, and those unwilling to uphold that responsibility should carefully consider whether they are suited for positions of educational leadership.
Fox News analyst Guy Benson was among those who criticized Cole’s apology, arguing that Holocaust education should not be tailored around students’ feelings. Hen Mazzig, an Israeli activist, also criticized the apology, arguing that Holocaust education should not require an apology.
The controversy over Cole’s apology follows a separate incident in which he allegedly made a student remove a sweatshirt that read “Save the bees. Plant more trees. Clean the seas. Punch Nazis.” The student who wore the sweatshirt, Teagan Murtagh, wrote about the incident in The Lexington Observer. Murtagh, the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, wrote that her great-grandmother “didn’t let all the terrible things she had seen and experienced stop her from living.”
Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
