GENED PROJECT Visits AGCC
Fresno — On February 17, the Armenian Genocide Commemorative Committee of Fresno welcomed Executive Director of the Genocide Education Project, Roxanne Makasdjian, who provided a historical summary on the various aspects of the Genocide and discussed with the group the best ways to impart such information to high school teachers in the Central Valley. The presentation was held at the St. Paul Armenian Church.
The GenEd Project is a nonprofit organization assisting educators in teaching about human rights and genocide, particularly the Armenian Genocide, as the modern predecessor of subsequent genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries. It develops instructional materials and provides workshops, consultation, and presentations.
Makasdjian emphasized that as a human rights issue, the crime of genocide is the culmination of a larger repressive process carried out by state government against a vulnerable and disenfranchised minority. Citing the genocide scholar Dr. Gregory H. Stanton’s work ” Ten Stages of Genocide ” she explained that the systematic extermination of a people is conditioned by pre-genocidal measures on the part of the government (classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, and persecution) to accentuate the subjugated status of the victim group and further isolate it from mainstream society. By recognizing the development of these earlier stages, says Makasdjian, the broader society as well as the global community can take action to prevent an impending genocide from happening. Following extermination, the final stage is the denial of the crime by the perpetrators—a stage best illustrated by Turkey’s century-long effort to cover-up and refute the reality of the Armenian Genocide.
Beginning in 1985, the California Legislature approved a series of acts mandating the teaching of issues of genocide in public middle and high schools. Most recently, Tom Torlakson, State Superintendent of Public Education, has urged California’s school districts to implement Assembly Bill 1915 (passed in 2014), which encourages the incorporation of materials on the Armenian Genocide into human rights curricula. Torlakson has additionally pressed text book publishers to revise and expand their sections on the Armenian Genocide. In the past decade, remarked Makasdjian, the quantity and diversity of books, visual media, and other materials on the subject of the Armenian Genocide has increased vastly and has provided teachers with a wide body of resources for instruction.
With the assistance from the GenEd Project, the Educational Subcommittee of the AGCC plans to continue raising awareness about the Genocide by organizing teacher workshops among the valley’s school districts.