School District Won't Punish Students In Nazi Salute Prom Photo Due To First Amendment

[liberalhistorian]

35. You beat me to it. I think that

education, rather than punishment, is actually the best course of action here. We are far enough away from WWII and the Nazi era that most people living now, especially younger people, had no first-hand experience with it and it's frankly often not taught the way it should be in schools. My son graduated in 2010 and the whole thing was covered for maybe just a few days in high school. The only reason he knows as much as he does about it is because of the lengthy and detailed education he received on the subject from my mom and I. Most kids (hell, most adults now!) have very little sense of just how satanically evil the Nazis were and the cost of that evil and the cost of finally defeating them. They simply think of it as a "cool" way to "rebel" and shock.

But if they were to actually have a visceral education in these matters, to include not just movies like Schindler's List but things like actual news reels and documentaries showing actual concentration camp footage (one showing the liberation of Dachau by American and Allied troops is especially powerful, including their utter disbelief and horror upon discovery of the surviving prisoners and the stacks of dead bodies), I think a lot of that would actually change. Punishment, however, without any requisite education so that they'd understand exactly WHY it was so offensive, would simply cause resentment and bitterness and have the opposite effect of that intended.