British drop Holocaust lessons from history class to avoid offending Muslims.

[TteFAboB]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...70&ito=newsnow

Teachers are voluntarily (unless it's an order from above) dropping classes about the Holocaust because they fear upsetting the Muslim pupils. Crusades are also being forgotten because apparently there's risk of contradicting what may have been preached at the nearest Mosque.

Fantastic. This is exactly the society that awaits us. Discussion? We won't ever reach that point! What discussion? We're in the consensus world. We're all in agreement. Always been, always will be. When we find a contradiction or opposition, we simply cut on one end or the other et voila, pretend that the problem never existed. As long as we fool ourselves and continue to believe in this lie with all our strength it's all good.

This is a great new history methodology: don't make minority alien students adapt to your history, adapt your history to suit their demands instead. Should work really well for math.

Now I don't blame the teachers as long as they're acting on their own. I'd be afraid of getting London on fire aswell. Without the backing of the higher ups and the assurance of my safety, I wouldn't teach factual history either. I'd demand at least one full-time Bobby body-guard. Of course, this isn't recyprocal. We don't have the opposite happening in the Muslim world. Maybe we're learning how to teach the Holocaust from them.

I'm neither with the holocophobes or the teachers though untill I can confirm that the history books you Brits use aren't another page of Bizzaro world themselves.

EDIT: Apparently the title is misleading. Sheesh, glad we don't read a book by its cover! Trying a new title.

EDIT2 : Nevermind, I can't edit the title.

[AG124]

Do muslims hate Jews so much that they don't even want to hear about how they suffered through one of the worst periods in human history? It's not as if they were responsible, although I'm sure there are some (Ahmadinejad maybe?) who would like to see the Holocaust repeated.

I read a story on CBC's website earlier this year; apparently, muslims in Ontario are outraged that teachers are informing Canadian students that there are militants in the Middle East and that muslim terrorists were responsible for 9/11. Such lies. Don't worry though - I'm sure some school board in the area has come up with a PC solution that will make 'everyone' happy.

[baggygreen]

There's a lot of things that have been done by every civilisation which members regret.

Whats next - the Egyptians complaining because it reflects badly on them that the pyramids were built by forced labour? The chinese complaining about people propagating the 'claim' that they invented gunpowder, cos it led to guns??

It happened. Altering 'history' is daft. when all the evidence points to one conclusion, even if there are proven facts surrounding it, it is beyond stupidity to try and pander to a vocal, narrow-minded minority who complain about anything and everything.

frankly, if a few select people are going to complain about stuff like that, i suggest forcing them on a tour of some of those nastier places through poland and germany..

[Tchocky]

Gah, this is backwards. Talk about holding up the species.
I was taught some dodgy history, but once I challenged our textbook, the teacher agreed with me and we got a couple of good classes out of it. It wasnt malicious, just some over-simplifications and the like. Nothing like this BS

[SUBMAN1]

Re-writing history books again I see. Nice. This one is bad though because it is done under the PC pretext.

Last one I heard is that the Japanese are re-writing the history books on WWII to sanitize it of any Japanese wrong doing. Seems history may yet elude us in the future!

Does anyone draw any similarities between this and what the Nazi's did in trying to burn all their books? Same thing is happening. One world government may be in our future since no one will know any better since no one will know what happened in the past!

Scary

-S

[CCIP]

False alarm, let it rest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/6563429.stm

[Sagan]

There is a simple solution for this.

State over Church. Even Henry VIII knew that.

[TteFAboB]

Originally Posted by CCIP

False alarm, let it rest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6563429.stm

That's not the suggestion of my link.

Originally Posted by BBC

The source of the rumour may be a report that some history teachers were uncomfortable with sensitive subjects.

The report that may have given rise to the alarm was commissioned by England's Department for Education and Skills from the Historical Association, which promotes the study and teaching of history.

It said: "Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned.

"Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes.

"In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

The report gave as an example a history department in "a northern city" which "recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils".

So the report exists. And as I've suggested, teachers are afraid, or in euphemism mode, "unwilling", to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship. In other words, teachers submit to pupils. Better that they do challenge them unwillingly than not at all. Otherwise we should call England's Department for Education and let them know that some teachers are not enforcing the compulsory curriculum.

I see two confusions. The first is the conflict with the policy to regard Holocaust denial as a crime. Apparently there are priviledged classes that are immune to that. The second is multiculturalism. It wasn't in the plan to make people co-exist together by making one bunch afraid of the other bunch.

Question: if you aren't supposed to learn anything in history classes as long as you come home (or from the community, or from the place of worship) steeped in highly contentious or charged versions of history, why not abolish history lessons for those who meet this criteria? It seems these pupils already know everything they need to know, why should they be forced to waste time at history lessons? Give them an extended lunch-break.

***
EDIT: I have found the famous report of the Historical Association. It has 48 pages. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data...iles/RW100.pdf. I don't have time to read this little booklet but for history's sake, here's our historical document. The relevant citation is at page 15 and Acrobat's search engine give me 58 results for "Holocaust".

There's an announcement of that report here (http://www.history.org.uk/pdfs/Teach%203-19.doc) from which I extract the following quote: "Such areas of study include the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Holocaust and aspects of Islamic history. These areas are sometimes avoided by teachers to steer away from controversy in the classroom.". At least the Brits are looking at the issue.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by CCIP

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/6563429.stm

In fact the government has reaffirmed that in England, teaching children about the Holocaust is compulsory, and it is not banned elsewhere in the UK.

As far as I am aware it is not a compulsory subject, typical useless government not doing there home work. I have checked this with a friend of mine who is a teacher and they said the subject is part of learning about WW2 but not a separate subject on it's own.

Which was true in my day and as that was over 20 years ago for me.

As for the subect at hand it must be told in a way to school children will understand and learn what the Nazis did was pure evil.

[Safe-Keeper]

Fantastic. Christian fundamentalists in the United States trying to shut down teaching of evolution, the Earth's age, sex ed and tolerance of homosexuals and 'heathens', and Muslim radicals in Britain censoring the Holocaust and Crusades (let's hope the latter does not give Christian fundies in the States an idea).

As for Muslims not wanting to , nothing new there. Try telling certain Christians that there there are people killing and bombing and raping for Christ. Tell them about the Indian and African terrorist campaigns and inform them Timothy McVeigh was Christian. And just to have something contemporary, tell them the Virginia Tech shooter invoked the name of Jesus. I'll provide the flak jacket and pay your lenghty hospital stay:p.

Look, my point is this: Stop thinking about this as specifically an Islamic problem - all Abrahamic religions are incompatible with education and progress. Was it up Christian fundamentalists, we'd never even have airplanes (see, Daddy God didn't give us wings, so we're not meant to fly). We'd have even more people getting unwanted abortions and STDs (condoms are apparently Satanic).

Oh, and as for Saving Private Ryan: The inclusion of the dark guy does not neccessarily have anything to do with political correctness - anyone watching the whole thing and listing the blatant slaughter of historical accuraccy realizes it's just that they had zero clue as to what they were doing when they made the damned movie.

[Heibges]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

Oh, and as for Saving Private Ryan: The inclusion of the dark guy does not neccessarily have anything to do with political correctness - anyone watching the whole thing and listing the blatant slaughter of historical accuraccy realizes it's just that they had zero clue as to what they were doing when they made the damned movie.

I agree. I think Speilberg just wanted to show the American's and particularly The Greatest Generation (of which my father was part in the 43rd Infanty Division 1/172nd Infantry Regiment in the Pacific with Big Mac) as totally good and show the German's as totally bad. What bothered me was that it was made to look "realistic", and some folks might assume it is the truth.

On a side note, one thing that I had never heard of until I moved to California was how 100 million Chinese were murdered by the Japanese. 100 Million people, yet very few folks in America are even aware it happened.

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by Heibges

On a side note, one thing that I had never heard of until I moved to California was how 100 million Chinese were murdered by the Japanese. 100 Million people, yet very few folks in America are even aware it happened.

Probably because the number is closer 10 million. Not that it makes it any better.

On a side note to my side note, why is it that certain people increase or decrease the number of people killed in an atrocity to make a certain group look better or worse? Like people are going to think the Nazis were saints if they exterminated "only" two million Jews, or honestly believe that communism has killed more people than old age.

[Safe-Keeper]

Where? I live here and that is no where to be found.

What, Christians trying to take over schools? It's everywhere. [url=http://www.fstdt.com[/url]FSTDT does a good job at collecting quotes from them.

[Heibges]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Probably because the number is closer 10 million. Not that it makes it any better.

On a side note to my side note, why is it that certain people increase or decrease the number of people killed in an atrocity to make a certain group look better or worse? Like people are going to think the Nazis were saints if they exterminated "only" two million Jews, or honestly believe that communism has killed more people than old age.

I had never heard of either number until I moved to San Francisco and saw the protests around the Japanese Consulate on Geary Street.

There was famous Holocaust scholar, Raul Hilberg, who calculated that 5 million Jews were killed and he was pilloried for it.

Stalin did brag to Winston Churchill that he starved 10 Million Ukranian Peasants to death.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Heibges

There was famous Holocaust scholar, Raul Hilberg, who calculated that 5 million Jews were killed and he was pilloried for it.

Who "pilloried" him for this?

Stalin did brag to Winston Churchill that he starved 10 Million Ukranian Peasants to death.

Look around and you'll find that Stalin never said such a thing to Churchill. He referred to the number of peasants he had to deal with.

In addition, death estimates of the peasants generally range from 3-4 million, with some historians saying 5.

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

What, Christians trying to take over schools? It's everywhere.

One could just as easily conclude from this article that anti-Christians already have taken control over the schools. Both are incorrect conclusions.