South Carolina Holocaust Education

We the undersigned protest the suggested elimination of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust. The South Carolina Council on the Holocaust was created to establish an educational program for the people of South Carolina to prevent future horrific events similar to the deaths of 6 million Jews. It was designed to educate the people of South Carolina to the horrors of the Holocaust and to honor the survivors and their descendants. The South Carolina Council on the Holocaust is a detrimental organization for the educational system of South Carolina. Its mere $31,000 grant (compared to South Carolinas budget of $5 Billion) should not be cut. It is an excellent organization that furthers the education of the children in South Carolina.

Furthermore, it is illogical to have educational standards that require students to study the Holocaust when South Carolina Legislators have no intent to give teachers the resources to enrich their students education. In a draft of South Carolina Education standards effective March 2009, standard 7-5.6 expects students to be able to summarize the Holocaust and its impact on European society and Jewish culture, including Nazi policies to eliminate the Jews and other minorities, the Final Solution, and the war crimes trials at Nuremberg. Obviously the professionals in the field of education believe that studying the Holocaust, among other genocides, is highly important, because they included it in the educational standards. But you cannot tell a student to learn something if they do not have the resources to do so. Cutting the funding of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust would be unfair to the students and people of South Carolina. We, the undersigned, demand that the funding for the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust be maintained.