Weaving the threads: helping Year 9 to engage effectively with ‘other genocides’

In this article, Andy Lawrence returns to arguments made in Teaching History 153 about the importance of teaching young people about other modern genocides in addition to the Holocaust. Building on those arguments with his own rationale, Lawrence also acknowledges the constraints on curriculum time that compel all departments to make very deliberate choices about the topics included in their schemes of work. He therefore seeks to illustrate how the careful weaving of concepts and themes across Key Stage 3 can prepare students to engage with the particular contexts in which those ‘other genocides’ occurred. The article concludes with an explanation of a short sequence of lessons built around the concept of historical significance and drawing powerfully on survivor testimony.