Bid to teach pupils about genocide

A new education pack to help pupils learn about mass genocide in Europe in the 1990s is being launched for Scottish secondary schools.

The teacher training resource is being unveiled by the Remembering Srebrenica Scotland charity in Edinburgh to highlight what can happen when intolerance and preju- dice takes hold. The organisation said many young Scots do not know that more than 8,000 people, mainly Muslim men and boys, were murdered in the Bosnian town by the Bosnian Serb army in 1995.

Twenty-seven teachers from across Scotland are attending the charity’s teacher training conference today where they will learn how the material can be effectively used in the classroom. The Scottish board of the charity is chaired by former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Very Rev Dr Lorna Hood.

She said: “Every time genocide happens, the world says ‘never again’, yet history shows that it happens again and again. Understanding why it happens, and how it can be prevented, is crucial in the education of children and young people.”