Holocaust Dropped From Some UK Schools

dteichman2 writes "It appears that some UK schools are ignoring the Holocaust. A government-backed study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, found that some teachers are reluctant to teach history lessons on the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. Additionally, similar problems are being encountered with lessons on the Crusades because these lessons contradict teachings from local mosques."

Well

I guess if your "beliefs" include Holocaust denial, then you're excactly the person who needs a history lesson.

Re:Well

I believe it was Bill Maher who said a couple of years ago:

"Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance".

I think this is that kind of a scenario. And, as always, complacency will only lead further into oblivion. If this is what is happening, then it really is time for the UK to wake up. Really, that time has already come and gone, but if they finally do realize what is happening, we can forget that they're late to the party, and embrace the fact that they showed up at all.

However, the hard question is what is there to be done about this. Frankly, I am hard-pressed to see a solution to this crisis. As the percentage of the people who espouse these beliefs rises within the UK population, they are going to feel increasingly empowered, both by the virtue of their numbers, as well as due to the apparent utter impotence of the British in the face of their assault.

Re:Well

"Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance".

I think that's a perfect statement here. To me, this situation is unbelievable.

"The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'."

By that logic, schools in the US shouldn't teach about slavery, fearing a confrontation of an 'anti-black' sentiment among racist hicks.

I don't think any reasonable person could argue that the holocaust didn't happen. If there's a strong anti-Semitic view in the mosques of England, I suppose there's nothing we can do about that. But that doesn't erase the fact that the holocaust happened and school children should learn about it.

Re:Well

<blockquote>Yeah, god forbid an underpaid teacher decides to concentrate on education and makes a hard to swallow decision to promote a little equilibrium.</blockquote>

Equilibrium?!

This is called appeasement... or better yet - catering to the demands of terrorists. Yes, you heard me. If a teacher is afraid to teach the [i]history[/i] of the Holocaust (and let us not kid ourselves - it's not a P.C. kind of fear, but fear of disruptive behaviour and violence), then this is terrorism by definition.

Remember - "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

Re:Well

How many US schools teach the full history of the US army genocide of native american indians? Do they talk about how the cavilry would ride in to an indian village and shoot anyone they saw, women and children preferably? Burn whole villages? Slaughtering whole nations? Round up the rest and put them in concentration camps (called reservations)?

The history has been toned down A LOT in most US schools, to the extent that if it is mentioned at all, it's just Custer's last stand.

Unfortunately, it appears that a lot of americans are uncomfortable with the idea that America has just as bad a history as all those evil-doers out there. And because of that discomfort, the subject is dropped or sevearly watered down.

The cut has already been made. The only question is was this appeasement or terrorism?

Re:Sunshine and ridicule would work wonders

... if we start exposing religions for being racist, sexist, and overflowing with evil anti-social ideologies, they will all crumble, not just extremist Islam.

... and that would be a bad thing because ... ?

Re:Well

This kind of thing comes from the misguided view that tolerance means all beliefs have close to the same value. That is simply not true. Tolerance means leaving people alone as long as their beliefs are not hurting others. It's an essentially libertarian principle.

Ignoring the scientifically-confirmable, historical reality of the holocaust hurts others. Lots of others. I don't think it's going too far to say that a pedagogical approach like this is *catastrophic to any society that implements it. You could end up with an entire generation that doesn't know where fascism tends, and what the real human cost of demagoguery is.

Re:Well

Not true. It can hurt people.

A reason for teaching of history's atrocities is to show people what horrible things can happen. It's so we don't repeat our mistakes, and that the educated citizenry can identify trends that could lead to a repeat and (hopefully) do something about it.

Could something like the holocaust happen again? Sadly, yes. But the likelihood of it happening is diminished with education.

Re:Well

Could the holocaust happen again? It already has:

Cambodia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge [wikipedia.org]
Rwanda: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1288230.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Darfur: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict [wikipedia.org]

Re:Well

And the Armenian Genocide [wikipedia.org]. Of course, that was the Religion of Peace exterminating Christians so don't expect the government education monopoly to mention it.

And it predates the Holocaust. Actually, Hitler likely viewed it as a successful proof-of-concept.

Re:Well

At the risk of sounding cold, but couldn't it simply be because we are not as closely tied to those parts of Africa and Asia as we are to the rest of Europe? It could just be because its not as culturally relevant to us. It *should* be, but I'm hesitant to whip out the race card at the drop of a hat.

Fear of Islam

This is one of the reasons why I changed my mind on the Danish cartoons that enraged the muslim world so much.

Fear cannot be allowed to dictate what we say or teach.

If you say what you think and someone threatens your life for saying it, they have broken the law in most civilized countries. Send them to jail.

In this case it's not even a matter of belief. It's a matter of fact. The Holocaust happened and denying it is in itself illegal in some countries. Rewriting history is a very serious thing, even though it's being done on a daily basis. History is there for us to learn from so we do not repeat it. We better learn our lessons or we're bound to make the same mistakes over and over.

Re:Well

A recent study in the US showed that 80% of Muslims were opposed to using suicide bombing as a tactic to defend Islam. I was shocked about the remaining 20%.

Re:Well

Yes, but according to this article [salon.com], 24% of US citizens believe bombing aimed at civilians are justified "often" or "sometimes" and another 27% think it is justified rarely. So yes, that poll is disturbing, but not necessarily more than such a poll of any other group of people would be.

Re:Well

Doesn't have to be a large majority. Just a vocal minority that causes the problems. There are a lot of peace-loving muslims around the world.

(FWIW, I am not a muslim.)

Re:Well

If next month Christian suicide bombers in ten separate incidents killed a lot of non-Christians, I can 100% guarantee you Jerry Falwell would be denouncing them.

Well I can 100% guarantee that it won't be Jerry Falwell.

Re:Well

Well, I think what uspets people is that they don't hear condemnation of this kind of thing *from Muslims*.

Do most people in the US talk to muslims? I hear condemnation of suicide bombings from muslims all the time.

If next month Christian suicide bombers in ten separate incidents killed a lot of non-Christians, I can 100% guarantee you Jerry Falwell would be denouncing them.

As I'm sure you're figured out by now, Falwell died last week. I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists. Sure, there are very vocal TV personalities who refer to themselves as christians and loudly proclaim all sorts of things. Sure televangelists would go on TV and and denounce people who set off bombs, but I bet they would not refer to them as "radical christian bombers" and neither would the papers. Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers? Most of the suicide bombers are not acting for religious reasons so much as political reasons. It is just that religion and politics are as tied together there as they are in the US, but there they admit it.

Why don't you learn to speak arabic and get a satellite dish. Then start watching religious and political programs from the middle east and report back as to how many christians there are on said TV denouncing the actions of the US military in the middle east.

Re:Well

I do hear it condemmed by my Muslim friend in CA, my old coworker from Turkey, my coworker from Somalia, etc. The only problem is that the media seems to prefer to broadcast ONLY the extremists. You see, interviewing reasonable people doesn't make for exciting news.

Re:Well

I agree with you, but why limit yourself to Muslims? Maybe every inhabitant of the middle east _is_ part of the problem, maybe every member of a Abrahamic religion _is_ part of the problem, or maybe every human being on the face of the earth _is_ part of the problem. After all, _no_ man is an island.

Re:Well

I think you'll find that Muslims are far more tolerant that you'd think, and that the stereotype of them being otherwise is the result of Fox and other right wing sycophants supporting the need for a bad guy to keep people scared. It never ceases to amaze me that nobody wonders what Muslims were doing through the decades when the Commies where the bad guys of the day.

Anyways, if you think that Muslims hate Jews "Just Coz", then you may want to consider the fact that the best time in Jewish history (according to most Jewish historians) was actually when Jews lived in a Muslim state. Here's a titbit from the pages of history that also gets skipped in history classes:

http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/jewish/jew-history.ht ml [ataa.org]

Even under Israel, the vast majority of Jews do not have the ideological freedom they used to. If you are willing to have pre-conceived ideas challenged, perhaps you'll find the following interesting:

http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=5006&aid= 19 [evtv1.com]
http://www.notinmyname.org/ [notinmyname.org]
http://www.nkusa.org/ [nkusa.org]
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/index.cf m [jewsagainstzionism.com]
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/jews_against_zio nism.html [whatreallyhappened.com]
http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/jewish_anti_zion ism.htm [zionism-israel.com]
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7887&aid= 19 [evtv1.com]

DISCLAIMER: I am a Muslim. I have Jewish friends. Lots of them. Jews and Muslims have lived together for centuries, it is just not true that Muslims and Jews hate each other out of some culturally ingrained ideological perception. It is the nationalist incarnation of the Jewish identity in the militant form known as "Zionism" that Muslims and indeed most Jews oppose. Unfortunately, Zionism seems to have the support of the political right in western countries, which is why it *appears* that Muslims oppose the west. We do not. We oppose the occupation being carried out by Israel, in the same say that we oppose any injustice caused by anybody, including other Muslims.

Another titbit that you won't hear mentioned in school: No real Muslim supports the governments of Saudi Arabia or the other monarchical crackpots currently referred to as "the leaders of the Muslim world". These tinpot dictators were put in power at the end of WWI by the allied powers to secure their interests over middle eastern assets such as the Suez Canal and this new stuff called "oil". This policy of putting puppet regimes is so commonplace I don't understand how people can think that fucktards like the king of Saudi Arabia even remotely represent the attitudes and beliefs of Muslims when they have such an incestuous relationship with with the western neo-nobles like the Bush family.

Holy crap, I really intended for that to be a short post.

Old news.

We already have schools ignoring real science to avoid offending radical Christians.

Accomodating religion

Why does accommodating religion nearly always harm society?

Re:Accomodating religion

Why does accommodating religious fanatics nearly always harm society?

Fixed with a reminder: Allowing someone to practice their beliefs is good. Insisting everyone switch to yours is not.

You have *got* to be sh!tt!ng me.

And I thought American schools were bad for "teaching the controversy" of Intelligent Design.

What happened to "lest we forget"???

You know, there's verifiable evidence of the Holocaust. Photos. Movies. Graveyards. Camps. Survivors.

This is a dark day for the human race.

So what about the Jewish people?

So we don't want to talk about the killing for 6 million (mainly Jews but of course we have gypsies, POWs, political prisoners, etc) because we will offend some radical Muslims. So by NOT talking about it we have offended the Jewish people, the Jewish faith, and anyone who thinks not talking about the mass murder is a bad idea.

I am sure I can see the reasoning though (being serious now): If we piss of the Jews they will complain vs. if we piss off the Muslims the radicals will riot, burn things, etc.

The day we stop discussing facts/history because somebody may be offended is the day we are all screwed.

LOOK AT THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE

It was an April Fool's joke. And it was done in bad taste (what do you expect from the Mail).

It's a pretty notorious one. Cmon editors.

Re:LOOK AT THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/65634 29.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Not true, according to the government

Not true [bbc.co.uk]. The example given is that allegedly one school didn't choose it as GCSE (Key Stage 4 - 14-16 year olds) coursework, for that reason. However it's still compulsory to teach the Holocaust in Key Stage 3 (11-14 year olds).

It's a faaaaake

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/65634 29.stm [bbc.co.uk]

This is Bullshit

Not only is this 'story' over a month old, but it is 95% bullshit. Snopes, though, has you covered [snopes.com].

Quoting: 'There are no plans to stop teaching the Holocaust. Indeed, the education department's plan seems to be ensuring that it is taught everywhere. A spokesman for the Department of Education and Skills (DES) maintained that "The Adjegbo report on citizenship [a different report authored by Sir Keith Adjegbo and released in January 2007] said key British historical events must be taught" and that while "the national curriculum is a broad framework and there is scope for schools to make their own decisions, teaching elements including the Holocaust and key British events will be compulsory."'

It's the Daily Mail

I'm British. I'm guessing most of the readers here are not. PLEASE don't assume that the Daily Mail is representative of, or in touch with, any part of British culture. They are a populist tabloid who don't shy from publishing any old headline-grabbing bollocks without the slightest grain of truth. It was the Daily Mail, as I recall, who published a list of paedophiles, most of whom turned out to be paedotricians. Without even checking the source, I can reliably recommend that the Slashdot editors pull this story; there won't be an ounce of truth in it. Believe me, if there was, it would be all over the mainstream press, not just one particular tabloid.

It's just coherent behaviour

Let's be real. The "history" we learn is nothing more than the history we like to learn. That's always been so, and UK teachers just adapt to new circumstances with new pupils that won't like the old history. There are many facts that are either ignored or twisted to fit the needs of the political whim of the moment.

The Nazis were defeated mainly by the USSR, not by the USA, even if that's not what you learn. The Japanese _were_ defeated by the USA, but the way of doing it, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of civilians in an atomic inferno is presented as rather the right thing to do, or, at the very least, as a great technical achievement. The holocaust is much remembered, and special laws passed to forbid the denial of the fact, but other much bigger killings go as footnotes in history books. Japanese don't teach about "comfort" women. The paper of England in the slave trade is usually hushed in the classrooms. Spain is indignant when Ben-Laden speaks about it being part of Al-Andalus, because in its history books, it's defined as a re-conquering, even if the people that re-conquered it had nothing to do with the people that lost it in the first place. France prefers not to speak too much about torture in Alger. Israelis will tell you that it's all right if they took the land from Palestinian people after WW2, because it "belonged" to them, somehow. I doubt they would return the land to some previous inhabitants of it, if the situation ever came up.

And so on. There is not such thing as "objective" history, and those teachers are just recognizing it. After all, we must remember that George Orwell, who came up with the idea of automatic history rewriting, was British.

Re:urgh

Prefer their equivalent of CNN then? http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2 048161,00.html [guardian.co.uk] Or, if you like: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-2339118 8-details/Teachers+drop+the+Holocaust+to+avoid+off ending+Muslims/article.do [thisislondon.co.uk] But really, let's cut straight to the point: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/holocaust. asp [snopes.com]

Re:urgh

Thanks for the link, which rather proves the point. Unlike the Daily Hate, the Guardian story shows that the real news here is that the Government's Department for Education and Skills have found that teachers have been avoiding this particular optional component of the History Curriculum, on account of it being challenging when you've got children arguing with it.

So it's being made compulsory:

A DfES spokesman said: "It's up to schools to make a judgment on non-compulsory parts of the national curriculum. It is a broad framework and there is scope for schools to make their own decisions."

Teaching of the Holocaust is expected to become compulsory under the new national curriculum from next year.

Scaremongering

From the looks of it they are really talking about 1 school, out of the thousands in the UK that has decided not to teach, what are, optional subjects. From next year teaching the holocaust will apparently become compulsory. I wasn't taught about the crusades at school either but I don't think that had anything to do with offending the 2 muslims in the class and was more about their being other things to teach.

I wasn't aware that holocaust denial was a part of the Muslim religion, especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened and I'm not sure exactly what teaching about the Crusades goes on inside mosques but if this teaching is correct then teaching it in schools as well will just re-enforce the lessons and lead to better exam grades for Muslims.

Re:Deny everything

Corollary to Godwin's Law: As political correctness increases the chances of ignoring the holocaust approach one.

Re:teach both..

Sorry. History occurred one way. It's not a relative thing. You can argue the ifs and why, but at some point you have to look at the pure documented evidence and make a judgment. The mountain of evidence on the Holocaust can't not be washed away just because people think that people ought to decide for themselves if something occured or didn't. It did occur, and any belief otherwise can not be justified by the facts.

That Is Pathetic.

Did their clue bag get cut? Are they friends with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or David Duke or something? By avoiding teaching about one of the worst examples of intolerance and hatred in human history, they contribute to the problem. And let's face it, there are a lot of reports of Muslims in the UK becoming increasingly radicalized, because they are learning hatred and distorted history in the mosques. The Brits are cutting their own throats.

Re:That Is Pathetic...There is more

By avoiding teaching about one of the worst examples of intolerance and hatred in human history,

The denial of Palestinian human rights, their expulsion from their own homes, their denial of basic resources (water), economic strangulation, and the British government's key roll in creating and supporting those problems are also not taught in schools.

And it won't be for years, and probably never will, because whether people want to openly admit it or not... Arabs are considered animals and there blood is not as valuable as Jewish or Western blood.

And let's face it, there are a lot of reports of Muslims in the UK becoming increasingly radicalized, because they are learning hatred and distorted history in the mosques.

... And let's face it, there are a lot of British children growing up with this mindset about Arabs because they are learning hatred and distorted history from their own schools.

Re:That Is Pathetic.

I still think there should be a Godwin's Law counterpart for invoking the name of Fox News.

I call it K`Lyre's Law.

Re:That Is Pathetic.

Who modded this flamebait?

This deserves +5 informative - I read the summary, became briefly angry, and then thought, "wait - I bet that link is to the Daily Mail". A quick mouseover later and I am smiling a wry smile.

The Daily Mail will blow any story out of proportion, and put the most sensationalist spin on it possible, because it knows that if a story makes someone angry, they're more likely to buy the paper to find out more about it.

For the record, if I thought the story was true then I would be just as angry as any other reasonable-minded person. But because of its source, I'm strongly inclined to disbelieve it's anywhere near as bad as the summary makes it out to be. Also, I'm not going to RTFA as I don't want to give the bigots advertising revenue.

Mail's founder admitted formula is "Daily Hate"

Flamebait? Don't know if that mod was done in (misguided) good faith or not, but I certainly don't agree with the downmod either way.

To quote one article [guardian.co.uk]

The Mail's founder, Lord Northcliffe said his winning formula was to give his readers "a daily hate" - and it does.

It says a *lot* that the first thing that I thought of after reading the summary was to find out whether the story came from the Daily Mail... and that I wasn't remotely surprised when it did. The fact that the Mail's style and biases were obvious even via a secondhand interpretation of the story says a lot about it.

More here. [google.co.uk] Can't say whether they're as bad as Fox News or not, because I haven't seen a significant amount of its output (due to living in the UK). However, I personally wouldn't trust the Daily Mail as far as I could throw it.

Anyway, there is probably some truth in the story, but I expect it's been exaggerated, distorted and "enhanced" by selective reporting. For example, I remember reading a story about ecstasy in New Scientist a few years back. It was all about a study which claimed that there were serious effects of the drug on the brain. However, the story also included plausible-sounding criticism and rebuttal of the study by other equally reputable scientists.

I saw the same story in the Daily Mail later that day. It also included the details about the study and the possibly dangerous effects of the drug, and was written in a moderately "reputable" manner. However, unlike NS's report, they didn't hint that there was *any* scepticism about the findings, let alone print those views. Result was that the effect of the story was very different, more one-sided and scaremongering. Fact-by-fact, the Daily Mail story was correct, but it lied by omission.

Mind you, the Daily Mail is full of scaremongering health stories; that's a staple of the front page for them. Along with reports on how something the government has done is going to affect the value of your house, and right-wing political half-truths.

Re:Interesting

have seen posts violently modded down on /. for evening mentioning the holocaust or holocaust denial.

I think you're inferring emotion, based upon your own preconceptions. Moderation is a numerical system. Things are not "violently" moderated. They might be "quickly" or "repeatedy" moderated. Can you show me an example of a post that mentions the holocaust or holocaust denial and which was not either completely offtopic, or an emotional appeal instead of a logical argument?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of discussion of the holocaust. My grandfather did not like to talk about the war, but he made a point of telling all of us kids that the deniers were full of crap because he saw the furnaces full of bones and the camps. For the most part, however, the topic is not pertinent to subjects being discussed on Slashdot and an impartial audience probably should mod them down, regardless of nationality.

Re:Interesting

I have no sympathy for holocaust deniers. Let me quote a good man:

Almost all of the survivors, verbally or in their written memoirs, remember a dream which frequently recurred during the nights of imprisonment, varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they had returned home, and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved person, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to. In the most typical (and most cruel) form, they interlocutor turned and left in silence. [Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Saved]

And the diatribe issued by a member of the SS to camp inmates upon arrival:

However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say that they are the exaggerations of Allied propoganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the [camps] [Simon Wiesenthal: The murderers are amongst us]

The nazis had such an effective shredding campaign, we only know the death toll is between 4 and 8 million. Inmates themselves were responsible for furnace operation and ash disposal, teams being regularly disposed of to prevent information leaks. The retreat at the end of the war was accompanied by systematic recall/slaughter of prisoners, and was given more importance than millitary strategy. Holocaust sympathisers are making the holocaust perpetrators win from beyond the noose. And yes, you may invoke godwin's law.

Re:Interesting

Well, I don't recall my own high school history being terribly accurate on the subject. It was presented in the context that 6 million Jews were killed in concentration camps for no reason other than being jewish. There was never any mention that the Nazis also killed 9 million non-jews (including Poles, Russian POWs, Gypsies, other christian sects like Jehovas Witnesses, etc), or that half of those 6 million jews were killed for being Polish as much as any other reason. I'm no scholar on the subject, and this post isn't meant to shed light on anything except that the typical high school education dumbs the whole complicated mess down to 2 things: Concentration camps and 6 million dead Jews. Except that the vast majority of the dead weren't actually killed in concentration camps. Again, let me repeat my point: high school history takes a complex event and dumbs it down to a couple of multiple choice questions. I'm inclined to think that a more accurate and detailed history lesson would draw fewer objections. The above paragraph takes a couple of stats haphazardly lifted from Wikipedia and contains no serious scholarship. No flames please.

Re:Interesting

Actually, Hitler was quoted as saying that he was going to exterminate Jehovah's Witnesses, too.

Oddly enough, JW's were the only group given the opportunity to sign a paper denouncing their faith and walk away. Very few of them did it.

Re:Interesting

As far as I know, the only groups that the Nazis determined to systematically exterminate were the Jews and the homosexuals.

Gypsies were also the target of systematic extermination.

Re:UK Schools?!!?

If there were no schools in the UK, Roger Waters would have written every song about his mother.

Reality vs opinion

> ...it's their right to believe what they choose.

No. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, not their own reality. You get to to have your own ideas about what facts mean but you don't get your own facts. 2+2=4 no matter how hard you believe otherwise.

Reality is that which doesn't change no matter how hard you wish it oth