About This Lesson
This interdisciplinary unit introduces students to the second stage of genocide, Symbolization, through the Cambodian genocide. Across three lessons, students learn to recognize how symbols carry identity, how the Khmer Rouge weaponized cultural symbols such as the krama, how survivors reclaim symbols and memory as acts of resistance, and how “symbol literacy” supports prevention and civic action today. The unit is grounded in Gregory Stanton’s “Ten Stages of Genocide” and integrates primary-source research, close reading, and argument writing.
