The Ontario government is introducing and expanding mandatory Holocaust education in the Grade 10 History curriculum starting in Sept. 2025.
This move comes following a 2021 survey conducted by Liberation75 that states one in three teens in Canada and the United States believe the Holocaust was fabricated, exaggerated or are unsure it actually happened. On top of that, in its 2022 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, B’nai Brith logged 2,769 incidents that year, marking one of the highest rates of hate crimes ever recorded in Canada.
“Our government is decisively combatting the rise of antisemitism and hate in all its forms,” Minister of Education Stephen Lecce said in a statement on Wednesday.
“By including new mandatory learning in Holocaust education in elementary and secondary schools, we are ensuring students are never bystanders in the face of hate and division. We will ensure that ‘Never Again’ is our legacy to the next generation, as we safeguard and promote those fundamental Canadian values of democracy, freedom, civility and respect,” he continued.
In addition, the province has announced it’s investing $650,000 in community partnerships that provide resources for students and educator training to expand learning on fundamental Canadian values.
This includes an Antisemitism Classroom Toolkit curriculum resource for Grades 5 to 8 and a training workshop for teachers on how to teach students about the Holocaust and continued investment towards a resource hub by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, among others.
The new expanded learning about the Holocaust will include its explicit link to extreme political ideologies, such as fascism, antisemitism in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s, and the contemporary impacts of rising antisemitism.
Moreover, the Holocaust education builds on the current Grade 10 history curriculum and provides further context as to how the event impacted Canadian society and the attitudes of people in Canada toward human rights.
“The course complements new mandatory learning on the significance of the Holocaust included in Grade 6 Social Studies, strengthening students’ ongoing understanding of how to identify, respond to and change harmful assumptions and stereotypes that can lead to tragic events like the Holocaust, including antisemitism and other forms of racism,” the media release read.
To accommodate the changes, the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) will create new course guidelines for teachers that will be ready by 2025.
