Hey folks,
I hope this is relevant. As I have spent months browsing fascism and communism related material on Reddit, I've recognized how valuable posing this question to the community might be. I am attempting to design curriculum (as a social studies and history teacher) surrounding the challenge to liberal democracies that originates post-WWI across Europe in the form of fascism, communism, and socialism, often coupled with authoritarian and potentially totalitarian ruling methods. Students (and people in general) tend to really struggle to both define and understand these ideologies and resultant labels today despite their increasing use, often in the form of insults. As a result, I have a few questions as I undertake this process:
One of the ways I am going about designing the teaching of this is to draw clear and direct parallels of the systems of liberal democracy, fascism, and socialism/communism to the organization and governance of a school system (specifically the school systems my students are currently in). I recognize that this can be simplistic and poorly done, and thus I am hoping to ensure that I generalize to this organization (the school) in the most valid and accurate way possible, even if there are necessary problems in this analogy.
Fundamentally, I am working with this assumption: the division of power, decision making, and control in a school system can be analogous to the division of power, decision making, and control in society and thus can be used as an analogy to help students understand these different methods of society's organization (fascism, socialism, liberal democracy)
Finally, can anyone help me add to (or correct) my current conception of the school-society analogy:
Obviously there are far more parallels to draw, what do you think of mine so far? I know this is not inherently a historical question, but I hope it still qualifies as valid to ask on this board as it has been an invaluable resource in my planning and understanding, and your responses (rest assured) will have important impacts on our future generations.
Honestly, I'd agree with u/Kugelfang52 here that using Soviet/Nazi schools as they actually existed is a much more straightforward approach here that would hopefully retain a great deal of relevance to the students. There's some great scholarship on the subject, and certainly the ways that Nazism functioned in schools offers some crucial and fascinating insights into the nature of the regime. Material on the Hitler Youth (as well as 'alternative' youth groups like the Edelweiss Piraten) would also provide a logical and overlapping topic to discuss.
Trying to push the analogy of school as state, however, is going to lead to some really difficult implications, not least when it comes to race. I don't see that there's any way of dealing with the nature of Nazi ideology and rule without acknowledging that race rather than class was the basis of their worldview. Who are the Jews in this analogy, in other words? Is there a way to designate them that is not inherently (and incredibly) problematic? Equally, how on earth do you leave out Jews - and other groups considered racially undesirable by the Nazis - from your model of Nazi society and governance?
I'm also personally not keen on the analogy between workers (and working-class organisations) as analogous to students, given that it seems to implicitly paint working-class political movements of the period as inherently less legitimate or powerful than other political groupings. It's also potentially quite confusing if one of your analogies is going to be liberal democracy. How is any normal school in such an analogy going to resemble the structures of a democratic polity?
So, I may comment with some more thoughts later, but here are some suggestions as far as stuff to consider and look over.
There is actually some work being done on the relationship between education and democracy/totalitarianism/etc. One work to check out is Thomas Fallace's In the Shadow of Authoritarianism. He addresses how various perceived forms of authoritarianism, such as "prussianism" and totalitarianism, shaped educational ideas in the US.
As far as primary sources, I have my own personal scans of two sets of NYC BoE publications which address such topics. I have the 1933-196? editions of High Points, a journal published by the BoE and with many articles on topics related to your interests. I also have Strengthening Democracy, a monthly paper focused on how democracy is fostered and taught in schools (ie. through democratizing educational bureaucracy and other such ideas). message me and maybe we can figure a way to get some to you.
In High Points, there is much said about both communist and nazi educational systems. In particular, in the early 1930s, many the publishing educators advocated for a more soviet style system that would guide society toward equality. Later, however, such articles decreased and a general fear of regimentation, propaganda, and indoctrination increased.