Seen this on several other forums

article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770


Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

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

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.

The report concluded: "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."

But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."

The researchers also warned that a lack of subject knowledge among teachers - particularly at primary level - was leading to history being taught in a 'shallow way leading to routine and superficial learning'.

Lessons in difficult topics were too often 'bland, simplistic and unproblematic' and bored pupils.

lol muslims

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Eternus Ifrit Server Atariii LS member
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Whats the point of learning if you don't learn the truth?

Seems utterly simple and I hate that its such a PC world now because everyone is afraid of offending someone else and in situations like this, it causes denial and lies which, in my eyes, are a thousand times worse than offending an individual or group; who cares if someone is offended, ITS THE TRUTH.

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Offensive or not. Its the truth. Its dumb to sugercoat the truth just because it may offend people's religion. Thats completely absurd. This is another example on how church and state shouldn't mix at all.

Schools should teach the facts, Church will teach religion. Thats that.

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Yes but in what ways does this relate to teaching evolution or slavery for example (they are all factual)? Where I live we were taught about slavery and that it was wrong obviously in High School. We were also taught about evolution (theory based off of carbon dating something 1000+ years old). I live in the Bible belt and this city also has a high concentration of rednecks. If those two subjects can be freely taught here, then why the hell can't the Muslims learn the truth about the Holocaust? This is something that has happened during the lifetime of people that are still alive, there are survivors and witnesses. This is fact and the Muslims hate Jews so much they try to deny it happened. They would be better off saying it is exaggerrated, but denying it completely makes you look like you have an agenda.

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oh yea, and the moon landing never occurred, it was staged on a Hollywood set!

Oh yeah in before the US bashing. The article is in the UK and so are the schools in question. I wonder if the Brits teach about how they gave the land that used to be Palestine to the Israelis after WW2? That would probably piss the Muslims off more.

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You have to remember though, the UK is a very diverse community, when I was over there I was amazed at how diverse it was in London and the amount of couples that were different races. Not saying its wrong, but in the US we don't see it that much.

But on topic, yes, I do believe things of such historical events like the holocaust should be taught in teh schools no matter what, I don't care what you believe, school isn't for beliefs church is. You don't have to believe everything you are taught...I know I didn't, and I was proven right a few times in college.

But also, there is a very large muslim population in the UK, and well as we all know, the UK is quiet unstable as a whole right now. They had a few sailors kidnapped/jailed in Iran, Tony Blair stepping down and other things, and many probally don't want to upstep the muslim population there for the time being and just "alter" a few things to help in a smooth transition.

As for the states...I don't ever see the Holocaust being removed from the cirriculum when even the government has been stern on the Mulsims for believing that the Holocaust never happened. Remember a few months ago when the Iranian president had a conference on the Holocaust never happeneing and how upset our government was?

Edit: Sorry if this sounds butchered and what not...trying to watch the Cubs game as I type and work on homework at the same time.

I don't know where you live in the US, but I see plenty of diversity here lol. Plenty of racially mixed couples, and I live in the South (where you would think it is more rare). I only visited Germany, Switzerland and France, but all I saw there mainly was French/German/Swiss people. Very little diversity if any at all in those countries. Australia and the United States are the two most culturally diverse nations in the world... that is a well known fact. My parents visited Ireland and England a few years ago, they didn't seem to notice any difference in diversity.

The US is in the same war as Britian (Iraq) and has just as much tension between it and Iran. There are plenty of Muslims in the US as well, we just obviously aren't as sensitive about omitting facts so we don't offend them. Britian is very aware of rising the ire of the terrorists in their own nation. I was in Munich when they tried to hijack 18 airplanes at Heathrow airport (delayed my flight home). It is very well known now that the UK has a Muslim extremist culture that is very vocal, they couldn't get away with that here. It seems ok if they have terrorists in Britian that scheme to attack the US, as long as they don't touch England.

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Hmmm this is something new thats developed after I left school for certain. We were taught in no uncertain terms what the holocaust was, the industrialised genocide by a western european nation of 6 million Jews, Gypsies, disabled and handicapped people, as well as a few other ethnic groups. We were shown the evidence for it; the pictures of the gas chambers and ovens, the men sorting through bodies looking for gold teeth, the lampshades made out of human skin, eyewitness accounts. At the end of the day we didn't need our teachers to tell us what happened, it's all there to be seen with your own eyes.

We were also assured that we would never be examined on it, but that the school felt it was an "important part of history" for everyone to know of. This is in a primarily Catholic school, but with quite a lot of other religions present as well, including Jews and Muslims.

As for Britain "owning" Palestine and "giving" it to Jews, no that was not something we learnt about explicitly, just that after WW2, lots of new countries were created to house people, one of which was Israel for the Jews, I'm sure if someone had asked who made the new country, the teacher would happily have told us it was Britain, it's just it wasn't something we needed to know for the exam.

And like Eternus said earlier, if schools can decide to not teach historical fact to people for religious reasons, why is it that teaching evolution is ok?

I was taught as a child that god created the earth, in school we learnt a more scientific approach (except this one nut who tried to make us beleive the Bible was the truth, lol cover teachers), so all I had to do was choose the one I wanted to believe, whats to stop Muslim children doing the same?

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Diveristy depends where you go, some cities are very "English onry" and others are much more mixed. Birmingham is no longer even dominated by people of british descent, we only make up 48% of the ethnic mix, the rest is minority groups. Even within cities this can change greatly, 10 years ago every family on my street was white British, now it is about 50% british and 50% asian descent (not saying I mind this at all, just pointing out how it changes)

Is the US government (congress & senate) as diverse as its population? I think there are quite a few MPs from non British backgrounds now, but not really sure to be honest.

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The white people will eventually be a minority in the US (even though Spain is a part of Europe and Mexicans are mostly Spainish with some native Mayan/Aztec/etc). You say British backgrounds, there is no set "American" background. I have a relative that is the only Revolutionary War soldier buried in the state of Florida (Vaughn is the last name). I don't know too many Americans that are just one culture, I myself am Irish, British, German, and Polish. While that makes me Caucasian, that alone is more diverse than just having 50% of one culture and 50% of another. We have represenatives that are pretty diverse, but I do not know if it is even close to the % of what each culture takes up as voters in our country. I forgot, Canada is also very culturally diverse as well. Canada, US and Australia are the most culturally diverse nations in the world from what I read.

None of that is an excuse to not teach the truth and cow-tow to anti-Semitic Muslims. The teachers and people who purposely exclude the Holocaust from WW2 lessons are either spineless or probably have an agenda themselves. If this were to happen in the US you bet there would be an outrage, not just from the Jewish community either.

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We teach very little about the Trail of Tears. American history textbooks are disgustingly Eurocentric (and even moreso anglocentric) and rarely teach cover human rights outrages performed by America and Western Europe

edit: and I can only criticize the US because that's all I know but it sounds as though the UK has its own problems. I was reading something earlier about the UK debating whether or not to ban the wearing of burkas in schools, as it conflicts with education but is a cultural garment

No, it's actually hilariously white. Despite massive amounts of redistricting to draw district lines among ethnic population centers, almost everyone in our congress is a white male. While there are a number of members in the House that aren't white, most of the power players are from affluent white regions

edit: and may I add that Europe has much more political and religious diversity than America. Almost all Americans are some Christian denomination but in Europe there's a minority yet strong Muslim community (especially in France and Spain if I recall correctly) and the political spectrum is far more diverse than in America.

History class in highschool, 2 years from now..

The world was created yesterday.. nothing happend, EVER!..

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I wish people were more easily "outraged" in the UK about some things like this. I'm not a muslim hater or anything like that, but it makes me laugh when I hear the rhetoric from our leaders about not giving into terrorists, yet its all the issues that might offend Muslims that are swept away under the carpet for fear of alienating them.

If in 10 years time say, the holocaust is just a distant memory that nobody under the age of 20 has even heard of, should we take to the streets rioting, getting other Christian/Jewish countries around the world to lobby us to make it change back. That doesn't actually make sense.

Also the BBC is covering this story too, and the holocaust is whats known as a "protected subject within the curriculum" so that it must be taught to kids between 11-14, it's just not compulsory for the 15-16 yr exams.

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I learned about the Trail of Tears in 3 or 4 separate grades throughout school, however I never once learned about WW2 in History class. We only ever heard about the Holocaust in literature. There was only one History class that reached 20th century history and it was not required. I believe 6th grade and every year after had at least 1 Holocaust book in english class.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

My world history class taught about WW2 and the Holocaust during the last semester. My teacher also told us stuff about WW2 most high school text books won't have, or so he said. The American history class I was in didn't say anything about WW2 except it was bad and we won.

I've only ready Night as a Holocaust book at school, but I've ready others. I don't blame people for not wanting to teach it, but doing that won't change what happened.

Hate to pick on you again, but the fact that you mistook "read" for "ready" makes me think you have a serious linguistic issue on your hands

Are you serious? I had a ton of Holocaust lessons but only enough about the trail of tears to know what it was, not how bad it was. There's very little mention of American imperialism during the turn of the 19th Century onward in almost all texts it seems (even my AP World History text, which I'm sure many of us are familiar with)

Yeah I'm 100% serious. Learned about trail of tears a touch in elementary and middle school and got the whole brunt of it in 10th grade. I think Jersey may actually have a policy about holocaust stuff because I never once saw it mentioned in History (all mine was pre20th)nor heard from anyone else about learning of it in History class, but we all got it every year in English. I can't remember all the books we read but Night was the strongest and is probably national curriculum.

None are alive now but a generation earlier my family had lingering survivors. Pretty hardcore, they still had their numbers.

My rolodex memory only serves to store useless shit, so even though History was my favorite subject (and still an area of interest) I remember little of it.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

Yeah they didn't leave out the Trail of Tears in my history books lol. Where do you think they forgot to tell people of how many Native Americans died in both North, Central and South America. All of those civilizations got crushed. The white man had guns in all of these situations. Tons of killing in the Americas by Europeans basically.

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lose the edit button? its still top right.

Probably not the best source of info, and I'm too lazy to research it myself but Bill Bryson in at least one of his books that involves white people colonising new lands (Down Under, Made in America, Short Hist of N.Every...) the fact is mentioned that lots of natives were killed by guns and war, but maybe 10-20 times as many were killed by all the infectious diseases like influenza that we are continually adapting to, and have some resistance, but the natives were totally unprepared.

Actually I think it wasn't influenza, but anyway some kind of disease that Europeans had acquired immunity to but Aboriginal people, Native American Indians, Central American tribes had never seen before and were decimated by it.

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Are you familiar with the scenario where white americans gave blankets to the native americans as a sign of good well but they actually laced the blankets with smallpox?

no but they wouldnt have needed to do that to transmit the disease anyway.

and thanks, it was smallpox I meant earlier

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