We will study the rhetoric of dehumanization in order to approach the essential question of How did Hitler convince an army of otherwise normal young people to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust? We will begin by looking at propaganda posters to analyze them in terms of audience, purpose, and message. We will then expand that to look at other dehumanizing propaganda (Rwanda, racist political cartoons from America, redlining in America, etc) to point out that the processes of dehumanization are pretty much always the same. We will then study Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, picking out the rhetoric and policies that helped the Nazis. We will finish by studying white privilege and how it has allowed prejudice to grow in this country. The final project will be a Socratic in which students will discuss what they have studied, synthesizing the information, coming to their own conclusions without interference from me, their teacher.
By owning these books, students will be able to annotate for the rhetoric of dehumanization, adding in examples quickly so the flow of reading is not hampered by stopping to write down ideas. We have had a lot of success with annotating, and students are more engaged when they have their own notes in the margins of their own books.
About my class
We will study the rhetoric of dehumanization in order to approach the essential question of How did Hitler convince an army of otherwise normal young people to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust? We will begin by looking at propaganda posters to analyze them in terms of audience, purpose, and message. We will then expand that to look at other dehumanizing propaganda (Rwanda, racist political cartoons from America, redlining in America, etc) to point out that the processes of dehumanization are pretty much always the same. We will then study Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, picking out the rhetoric and policies that helped the Nazis. We will finish by studying white privilege and how it has allowed prejudice to grow in this country. The final project will be a Socratic in which students will discuss what they have studied, synthesizing the information, coming to their own conclusions without interference from me, their teacher.
By owning these books, students will be able to annotate for the rhetoric of dehumanization, adding in examples quickly so the flow of reading is not hampered by stopping to write down ideas. We have had a lot of success with annotating, and students are more engaged when they have their own notes in the margins of their own books.
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