A vile outrage at Gompers? Some would say so.

Marsha Sutton, education writer at SDNN, has uncovered what some locals claim is a vile outrage: an educator drawing analogies between the Holocaust and events that happen in a school.

I believe that evil starts out small and grows, and needs to be identified in its early stages and nipped in the bud. Ms. Strom was wise and good to teach children to do this.

Keep up the good work, Ms. Strom. It's clear from her article that Marsha Sutton is also impressed by your work. Perhaps some locals only said that such analogies are "absolutely vile" because they wanted to gain an advantage in a court case.

Below is the story from Gompers Preparatory Academy (Charter Middle School).

Stars come out at Gompers gala
By Marsha Sutton, SDNN
Thursday, April 15, 2010

...[Katie Strom] also teaches students about the
Holocaust during World War II.

“They haven’t ever had it before,” she said. “I always
do lessons about the Holocaust because I want them
to understand it.”

She said she lets the students wander in smaller
groups in other museums, but she has them stay
together in the Holocaust Museum.

“In the Holocaust Museum I actually make them go
through with me and we stop at each place and I
explain to them what’s going on,” she said. “We look
through the readings together and I take questions
from them, just so they really get the whole
experience.”

She said they talk at length about the quotes on the
walls.

“For example, one of my favorite quotes is: ‘Don’t be
a victim. Don’t be a perpetrator. But above all don’t
be a bystander.’ And then I talk to kids:
‘What does that mean to you, and how
can you connect that to what happens at
your school on a daily basis?’”...

MORE FROM THIS STORY:

Celebrating five years of positive change, Gompers Preparatory Academy – formerly Gompers Middle School – held a gala event Sunday to raise money for the school, honor its leaders and recognize the success of its students since turning charter in 2005.

The gala, attended by about 155 people, was co-chaired by Gompers board chair Cecil Steppe and former California State Senator and Gompers board member Dede Alpert.

The Honorary Advisory Committee included Calif. Assembly member Marty Block, United States Congress member Susan Davis, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Congress member Bob Filner, Calif. Senator Christine Kehoe, San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts, Mayor Jerry Sanders and Patricia and Christopher Weil.

Attending the event, which was held at the University of California San Diego’s Institute of the Americas, were Steppe, Alpert, Block, Filner, Kehoe, former City Council member Toni Atkins, University of San Diego director of the Center on Education Policy and Law Scott Himelstein, San Diego Unified School District interim superintendent Bill Kowba, USCD professor and Gompers board member Bud Mehan, and other local dignitaries, community members, parents and students.

Located in the Chollas View neighborhood in southeast San Diego where 85 percent of students qualify for the free or reduced-price lunch program (an indicator of poverty), Gompers successfully transitioned to charter status after a raucous school board meeting on March 1, 2005. Last year, the San Diego Unified School District approved the school’s request to expand from sixth through ninth, to sixth through 12th grades.

Gompers leaders report that, since going charter in the fall of 2005, test scores have risen 80 points, from 541 on the state’s Academic Performance Index in 2004, to 621 in 2009. Suspensions have plummeted in that same five-year period, from 1,000 to 200. And teacher retention, which was 24 percent in 2004, now stands at 72 percent...

The Holocaust couldn't happen here...or could it? 70% of ordinary citizens willing to administer 150 volts if told to do so

How many Americans are capable of critical thinking at a critical time? About 30 per cent, according to a new study. Do schools and parents put too much emphasis on automatic obedience to authority figures?







Shocking revelation: Santa Clara University professor mirrors famous torture study
By Lisa M. Krieger
Bay Area News Group
12/20/2008

Replicating one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a Santa Clara University psychologist has found that people will follow orders from an authority figure to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks.

More than two-thirds of volunteers in the research study had to be stopped from administering 150 volt shocks of electricity, despite hearing a person's cries of pain, professor Jerry M. Burger concluded in a study published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist...

The study, using paid volunteers from the South Bay, is similar to the famous 1974 "obedience study'' by the late Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. In the wake of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's trial, Milgram was troubled by the willingness of people to obey authorities — even if it conflicted with their own conscience.

...The haunting images of average people administering shocks have kept memories of Milgram's research alive for decades, even as recently as the Abu Ghraib scandal.

The subjects — recruited in ads in the Mercury News, Craigslist and fliers distributed in libraries and communities centers in Santa Clara, Cupertino and Sunnyvale — thought they were testing the effect of punishment on learning.

"They were average citizens, a typical cross-section of people that you'd see around every day,'' said Burger.

In the study, conducted two years ago, volunteers administered what they believed were increasingly powerful electric shocks to another person in a separate room. An "authority figure'' prodded the volunteer to shock another person, who was playing the role of "learner." Each time the learner gave an incorrect answer, the volunteer was urged to press a switch, seemingly increasing the electricity over time. They were told that the shocks were painful but not dangerous.

...participants were told at least three times that they could withdraw from the study at any time and still receive the $50 payment...

Like Milgram's study, Burger's shock generator machine was a fake. The cries of pain weren't real, either. Both the authority figure and the learner were actors...

Burger found that 70 percent of the participants had to be stopped from escalating shocks over 150 volts, despite hearing cries of protest and pain. Decades earlier, Milgram found that 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks. Of those, 79 percent continued to the shock generator's end, at 450 volts...

The experiment shows that people are more likely to comply with instructions if the task starts small, then escalates, according to Burger.

...Finally, they had been told that they should not feel responsible for inflicting pain; rather, the "instructor" was accountable. "Lack of feeling responsible can lead people to act in ways that they might otherwise not,'' said Burger...