Teaching about Holokaust as a factor of nourishment of memory culture and preservation of national identity

Abstract

The paper presents results of theoretical and empirical research on teaching about holocaust as a factor of memory culture development and preservation of national identity. Holocaust is a name for systematic state prosecution and genocide of different ethnic, religious and political groups of people during the World War 2 by the Nazi Germany and its collaborators. There are numerous tendencies nowadays trying to present Holocaust as a legitimate and justified process. In addition to it, the teaching contents which contain facts of Holocaust are lessened in the primary and secondary school curriculum. In order to find out to what extent the teaching about Holocaust may contribute to the development of memory culture and preservation of national identity, in the months of May and June in 2014 using 107 students of the Teacher Training Faculty-Prizren-Leposavic a research presented in the paper was conducted. Data collected by the research and processed according to calculated t-values for non parametric estimation on a small sample using Man-Witney Y test and two factor uni-variant analysis variance showed that there was no significant difference in the knowledge of tested students depending on the type of secondary school they completed and their success during studies, and there was no difference in the student estimation of importance of memory culture in the development national identity in the interdependence of the type of secondary school influence or their success during the studies. Research results are shown in the form of conclusion and pedagogical implications are given.