Utilitarianism In Public Schools

Utilitarianism is ultimately concerned with the outcome that will produce the most positive result for the entire community. Museums are essential to educating our society about the good and bad in our past. In a 1999 lecture by Emmanuel N. Arinze it was expressed that museums “must become institutions that can foster peace, they must be seen as promoting the ideals of democracy…and transparency…they must become part of the bigger communities that they serve and reach out to every group in the society”. Perhaps the most important topics that need to be addressed are the tragic ones, so that we learn from our mistakes. Trial and error is how every human being learns how to walk and talk and it is debatably the most important strategy to learning, …show more content…
A study done in 2010 at Bristol University proves the benefits of learning from other peoples’ mistakes. They monitored the brain activity of participants while playing a computer game and they discovered that, “while players learned from their own successes, shown by an increase in neural activity, they had very little reaction the artificial opponent’s win. But when the competitor fluffed his go, and failed the task, the brain activity jumped back up” (“Study shows we learn more from other’s mistakes”, 2010). By presenting images and other displays of the negative impact of the Holocaust, museums are potentially activating the part of the brain that recognizes and learns from other people’s mistakes. However, displaying images and other objects related to the Holocaust could be traumatic to the victims and other people involved. Is educating an entire community worth potentially causing emotional harm to the Jewish community? Reliving a trauma (whether by talking or seeing images) can “actually worsen a victim’s trauma by reactivating it in the brain, and embedding it deeper” (“Why There’s No Need to Relive the Trauma All Over