Earlier this school year, five teachers in the Rialto Unified School District developed an assignment for their 8^th grade classes in order to improve their critical thinking skills and satisfy Common Core standards. The assignment was for students to write an essay debating whether the Holocaust really happened or if it was “merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”

This project was approved by the district and assigned to students in December, and completed in February. In the past month, talk of the assignment has created a large scale controversy on whether or not it should have been assigned at all. The assignment has since been pulled and the staff has made multiple apologies, one of which took place at an emergency staff meeting on Wednesday, May 7^th. Many of the staff who had been involved with this assignment have since claimed to have received many death threats, inciting police presence at said meeting. At the meeting, Board President Joanne Gilbert claimed that the project had turned into a “horribly inappropriate assignment” due to a lack of internal checks and balances. Rialto ‎interim Supt. Mohammad Z. Islam also said “From the bottom of my heart, I feel sorry for this whole thing happening,” and took full responsibility for this incident.

For the assignment, students were asked to interpret three sources in order to formulate their argument for whichever side they would pick. One of these sources described the Holocaust and “The Diary of Anne Frank” as hoaxes. As soon as Superintendant Islam claimed to have become aware of the topic of the assignment, he acted quickly, yet declines to acknowledge whether or not any disciplinary action has been taken towards the teachers and staff involved. At the meeting Wednesday, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said he “hoped that no one in the district still believes the assignment served to develop critical thinking.” Cooper went on to suggest that instructors in the district be re-educated on the Holocaust and mandatory annual visits to the Museum of Tolerance be made.  This offer has been taken up by the school district as all students and teachers will be given the opportunity to visit the museum before the school year’s end.

Many members of the community still believe more action should be taken, one such student who participated in the assignment, Oyuky Barragan demanded an apology from the district‎ because of “the idea they planted in kids’ minds.” There is no evidence of a larger agenda behind the assigning of this project, yet many community members still feel skeptical. Several Colton High teachers were approached to comment about the subject, but none wished to voice their opinions, underscoring the sensitive nature of the topic.

One question might be, was this assignment simply executed poorly? Perhaps, for example, say that the assignment had been to show how a source that claims the Holocaust wasn’t real is incorrect and why, would that be considered as insensitive? Would there still have been an outcry such as this if it had been handled in such a slightly different way? Are we simply not giving the students enough credit by assuming that just because they read obviously false claims refuting history that it might “corrupt” them? Or is it that we simply do not want to take the risk of exposing them to such slander at their age? One final thought to leave you with: perhaps a good assignment to come out of this would be a research paper on all the reasons why this assignment should or shouldn’t have been given in the first place. Now that’s what I call real critical thinking.