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State budget includes reviewing, updating Holocaust curriculum

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New York State’s 2024-25 budget includes $500,000 to review and update school Holocaust curricula, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assemblyman Announced. Assembly Nily Rozic.

What do you want to know

  • The state budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year allocated $500,000 to update the Holocaust curriculum

  • Schools are already required to teach students about topics such as genocide, human rights issues and the Holocaust.

  • According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents increased by 110% last year.

This comes about two years after the passage of a law requiring the state Department of Education to examine whether the Holocaust is properly taught in schools. This survey showed that all school districts that were required to include Holocaust education in their curriculum did so. The 2022 review also showed that most districts taught students about the Holocaust in social studies and English language arts (ELA) classes, not through specialized classes or events.

Wendy Weisbrot, co-president of the Holocaust Educational Resource Organization, said this funding is crucial to ensuring that future generations do not repeat history.

“You have to know your past to access the present,” Weisbrot said. “And we hope that listening to the survivors, hearing the second and third generations, learning the history, will give these young people a voice.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents increased by 110% last year. In New York State, incidents of harassment increased by 226%.

For more information on educational resources and programming, visit the HERO website.

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