It is rare that I am able to unite my former life with my current one, but something has come up that brings both Memphis and Poland into focus. Some of you many know that Memphis has an international festival every year where it celebrates a different country. Its pretty cool. Consider how surprised I was this year to find that Memphis was celebrating Poland! As a middle school teacher, I got very excited when I thought about what sorts of activities I could incorporate into my classroom. I began to look over the curriculum guide when I got to the page that listed the top Polish tourist cities and down at number 10 I was horrified to read Auschwitz. Now, I can understand someone completely unfamiliar with history conflating Auschwitz, a Nazi extermination camp, with the Polish city of Oświęcim (none of the city names used Polish letters) in which the camp was located. I am severely displeased, however, when a curriculum guide, ostensibly written by people who have researched the topics therein contained and delivered to educators who will then spread the information to a generation of youngsters, contains such brutal disinformation (dis, not mis). It seems that the curriculum writer got the list of cities from travbuddy rather than, perhaps, looking at a Polish tourism website like poland.travel. I have written to the leadership of Memphis in May to let them know about this problem. Ill post how they respond. Please feel free to share this post. Ive set it to public.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 15:12:41 +0000