Introduction

David Whalen

Facing History Introduction

1 a) Facing history and ourselves is a course that provides the opportunity for a student to look into the darkest moments of history as well as the darkest parts of themselves.  The course provides students with an understanding of whom they are and why they would make some of their decisions.  The course largely centers on the Holocaust, one of the most severe examples of human relations.  The example of the Holocaust clearly depicts the people involved as one of five categories.  The five categories of perpetrator, bystander, resistor, rescuer, and victim together make up all the roles for when a person is forced to accept less than what they expected.  The course shows how the world could get to the stage of genocide.  The students in the course learn that they can’t be a perpetrator, bystander or helpless victim.  The students learn throughout the course that genocide or any other case of dehumanization must never happen again.

b) I choose to take the course mostly because of its reputation.  There is truly no other course like this.  I heard that is also made a nice break because of how different it was.  Honestly the idea of a movie almost every day was also a very big deciding factor.  I remember how often others mentioned the course and all the comments about it were good ones.  I thought of how much I wanted to take this course and it was enough to outweigh any negative of having to deal with such depressing concepts almost every morning.

c) I am the kind of guy that likes solving problems.  Not problems like ethical dilemmas because no one wants to get in a fight about that.  I like thinking about paradoxes.  When my mind starts to wander about such deep topics as discussed in this course I feel like I’m part of something so big that others are just oblivious to.