My thoughts on Night...

Wiesel's Night is an amazing book, but I would argue that the book requires its readers to have a certain amount of maturity. Sure, the subject of the holocaust is a hard subject to talk about, and I think that young people need to learn about it, but Night has some aspects that might be hard for younger readers to take seriously. I think this book would be a good fit for a reader that is in the eleventh or twelfth grade, and all those who are older than that. I would like to point out the importance of this book. I do not have any knowledge on the elementary/middle school curriculum in public schools, but my thirteen-year-old sister does not know what the holocaust was. She also has little knowledge as to what the Nazi’s are and who Hitler was. She has indeed heard of the nae Hitler, but she doesn’t know the connection between Hitler and WWII/holocaust. As a Social Studies major, I was immensely surprised that someone who was in middle school did not learn about such an important time in history where millions of people were murdered because of what they believed. I know as a Social Studies teacher I can fix this problem, at least in my classrooms, but as a future English teacher, I can use Night to teach students about the holocaust while also using the novel to teach literature lessons. Furthermore, I think that by using this book, it would also be a good catalyst to teach empathy. Hopefully, the world does not have to see something like the holocaust ever again, but it can be a strong lesson of empathy that students can learn about and begin to understand. By teaching empathy in the classroom, students are able to take that lesson into their adult lives. I believe that this book needs to be taught for the same reason I think empathy and WWII needs to be taught. If these things are not taught in the classroom, then what’s to say that history will repeat itself?

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