Today Tour for Humanity started off another busy week at a secondary school in Hamilton. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Daniella was working with Grade 12 students today, two law classes, one genocide course and one politics class. Each class on the bus participated in the Global Perspectives workshop, which fit in perfectly with each class' curriculum. For the two law classes Daniella made sure to add extra emphasis on Simon Wiesenthal’s legacy of Nazi hunting as well as more background information about the Nuremberg Trials.The politics class is currently studying the effects of government control on ordinary citizens, so Daniella spent a lot of time talking about the restrictions of the Nuremberg Laws in Germany, as well as restrictions put in place in both Rwanda and Cambodia. The genocide class was just about to begin a unit on the 10 stages of genocide, and the teacher said after the workshop that our lesson provided an excellent starting point. There were some interesting questions, both from the students and the teachers. One of the law teachers had just finished discussing the case of R v Keegstra with her class. (James Keegstra was an Alberta teacher charged with spreading hate through Holocaust denial and antisemitism in his classroom in the 1980s). The teacher asked Daniella her opinion of free speech versus hate speech, so she tied her answer back to Simon Wiesenthal’s quote “Freedom of speech is not freedom to propagate hatred” - Daniella also told the class the quote coincidentally happens to be our Speakers Idol quote this year!

In addition to the Tour for Humanity in Hamilton, we were also presenting the Roots of Hate and Intolerance workshop to Grades 7-8 students at a public school. The Tour also visited this school in fall semester and we will be returning in a couple weeks to do the Leadership 101 workshop. FSWC Educator Elena gave 3 workshops over the school day and each workshop was 1.5 hours. Elena focused on the history of intolerance in Canada and looked at a number of issues including slavery in Canada, the treatment of Indigenous Canadians, the Chinese head tax, antisemtism in Canada leading into World War II and the internment of Japanese Canadians. Elena also spent a good deal of time talking about hate crimes in Canada today because this section sparked a lot of conversation with the students.  Many of the students had examples of hate crimes they had heard of happening in recent years and while looking at some of the images of hate crimes including KKK graffiti there were questions about how the KKK fits in with groups like the Nazis and whether they had ever worked together. One of the more meaningful conversations of the day came when we talked about hate crimes in Canada today. Elena was very impressed by the ability of some students to openly acknowledge how they had been bullied in their own lives. One student talked about being made fun of for being overweight. Another student said that he had been called names by people on his soccer team. We talked about some of the pressures facing teens today and the relationship between social media as a new frontier for bullying and various forms of hate speech.