Shoelaces

I found out from Lois Lowry's blog that there's a bit of a controversy going on regarding the Holocaust and shoelaces.

Here Lois posted about a teacher who is having students collect shoelaces - six million centimeters of them - to help them understand the magnitude of six million as a number and as a death toll of the Holocaust. The teacher was inspired by the documentary Paper Clips, which I saw last summer and thought was wonderful.

A couple of days later, Lois posted this, and included the address of Roger Sutton's blog, where many commenters have said what they think about this shoelace project, for and against. (I just checked out this link, and it takes you to the Horn Book home page. Roger Sutton is the editor of the Horn Book. If you click on "Blog" and then go to the post from Sunday, March 25th, called "Six Million What?", you'll see what I'm talking about.)

While I do think the giant pair of shoes is a bit much, if this project has a fraction of the impact of the Paper Clips project, it will have achieved something amazing. Go and read the comments, though, on Roger Sutton's blog. I guarantee that you'll find them thought-provoking.