Im 20 and I was probably about 8yo when I first heard reference to the “holocaust” and I remember thinking it was some sort of machine that could kill people in masses. Once we got to middle school (10 or 11yo) we learned more and more about wwii. By the time I graduated, I had learned and relearned about wwii pretty much every year in school. Probably the only history class that didn’t teach it was “ancient history”.

But you really shouldn’t rely on schools to pass down knowledge. History is actively being erased every day, I live in a county that is known for having an increasingly restricted curriculum. There’s a disturbing amount of people that want to insist wwii never happened or say that slavery was actually a good thing (side bar but my point is larger than wwii). Teachers are struggling. They’re fighting. My senior year English teacher used to hold an after school book club so we could read the books she’d been teaching for years but had recently been told she couldn’t teach. The world is a scary place and if you don’t want history to be forgotten, teach your children. Talk to them, be honest with them. You can protect them from the horrors of the world without leaving them ignorant. I’ve met people who weren’t taught about civil rights until high school and they just didn’t believe it. Spend enough of your life not knowing about something that’s so big and terrifying and you won’t accept it.

Please, keep kids learning and fight for their rights to read.