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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."

21 of 1,286 comments (clear)

  1. urgh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Disgusting if true, but the Daily Mail is the UK's equivalent of Fox News...

    1. Re:urgh by ronadams · · Score: 5, Informative
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    2. Re:urgh by iainl · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.
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  2. LOOK AT THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE by ronanbear · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:LOOK AT THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
  3. Not true, according to the government by BabyDave · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not true. 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).

  4. This is Bullshit by shma · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    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."'

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  5. It's the Daily Mail by Peregr1n · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:That Is Pathetic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    Or at least thay would be if it were true.

    Here's a hint for you left-ponders -- the Daily Mail is the UK
    equivalent of Fox: a racist rag which will print anything which puts
    muslims, women, gays, trades-unionists or the working class in a
    bad light. Check snopes before posting a story from them.

  7. Re:Denying holocaust? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    In fact, I think if you read the book, the Jews may have been promises the 'promised land' but they committed genocide in the process of claiming it.

    Really? Could you show us all the extermination camps? Where the victims were tossed into ovens, or babies tossed into the air and impaled upon bayonettes, or the poison gas showers?

    Reading your post, that line came straight out of the arab narrative. They love to claim genocide, holocaust, war crimes, and so forth. In the process, they denigrate those terms, the real victims of those actions, and impede progress at a resolution. This also presumes the objective truth of the arab narrative, which, history has not been kind to. It appears that numerous fictions were invented purely to continue and prolong this conflict. One of those fictions are the `palestinian' people. They were invented in the 1964 time line. Not in 1948.

    What happened in 1948 was the founding of one country and the immediate launching of a war to eradicate said country by angry arabs that didn't get their way. The arabs were given over 80% of the region that was supposed be divided, Jordan or Trans-Jordan was part of what the Balfour declaration had provided as part of the Jewish national homeland. Churchill wanted to provide a place for his hashemite buddies to hole up after being kicked out of the arabian peninsula by the wahabbis, who we know as the `modern' house of Saud. So Churchill sliced off everything west of the Jordan river and created Jordan. The Jews were supposed to live with the rest. All during this time, from 1900 onwards, well, 1880 if you read other histories, the arabs behaved there about the same as they behave today. Killings, bombings, kidnappings, property destruction. You should note that in 1948 a new arab state was proposed, along side of, and slightly larger than Israel. Israelis accepted this. The arabs didn't. The arabs had demanded that arabs in Israel leave right before the 48 war started, this is well documented, and only revisionists for whom this is an inconvenient reality complain otherwise. After Israel was founded and survived, jews in the arab states were expelled forcefully, without possessions, compensation, usually at the point of a gun. A population transfer, not unlike the pakistan india transfer occurred. But the arabs could never accept this. So the UNRWA was formed to perpetuate the crisis (this is what they have done, they have solved nothing). Compare this to *every* other conflict mediated by the UN where the high commissioner for refugees handles this. The other conflicts get settled within about a decade. UNRWA has been perpetuating this conflict for about 6 decades.

    Most of what existed prior to 1967 was a construction entirely of the arabs own making. Jordan annexed the west bank, and no one apart from the UK acknowledged and accepted this. Egypt annexed Gaza. Both Jordan and Egypt avoided all out war, but largely failed to comply with terms of the armistice. In 67, with Pan-Arabist Nassar in charge in Egypt, things were brought to a head again. Straights of Tiran and other cassus belli against Israel. Left it with no choice. After the smoke cleared, Israel had gaza and the west bank.

    Notice how there are no execution camps in this story. None existed in Israel.

    There has not been a genocide against the arabs. The arabs have launched or at least tried to launch genocides against the jews, many times. In Hebron in 1929, every jew who lived there (several thousand, with a multi-thousand year history there) was killed by arab mobs after friday prayers. Now why would that be? There were no "occupied territories"? In 1936-1939 the arabs rioted thoughout the area, killing jews left and right. Again why was this? In WWII the arabs mufti in Israel was directly and overtly allied with Hitler (yeah, invoke Godwin's law).

    The jews did not line up the arabs against walls and machine gun them. They did not gas them. They did not spear them, experiment on th

  8. Re:Denying holocaust? by alexhs · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's not informative, it's just plain wrong.

    I found a rebuttal of that theory in one of the first google links for "allah moon god"

    Last paragraph :

    Finally, Jesus Christ and many of his disciples spoke Aramaic. In the Aramaic language the word for the Almighty God is 'Allaha' and the name of Jesus is 'Iessa'. There are records of Jesus praying in Aramaic to his God 'Allaha". Also I would add that Allah means God in arab (like Dieu means God in French), and it isn't the name of God. See Yahweh, 99 names of God.

    The God is the same as you can find in the Islam article :

    [Muslims] do not regard Muhammad as the founder of a new religion, but as the restorer of the original monotheistic faith of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. Islamic tradition holds that Judaism and Christianity distorted the messages of these prophets over time either in interpretation, in text, or both.
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  9. Re:Well by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 4, Informative

    And the Armenian Genocide. 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.

  10. Re:Interesting by PatrickThomson · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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  11. Mail's founder admitted formula is "Daily Hate" by Dogtanian · · Score: 5, Informative
    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

    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. 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.
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  12. Re:Interesting by Mattintosh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  13. Re:Interesting by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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  14. Re:That Is Pathetic. by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Informative

    They could, of course, have completely made up a fake government report. Or they could have quoted selectively from it to make a better story, like they do with quotes and facts in general.

    I wouldn't dismiss this issue altogether simply because it came from the Daily Mail; if their slant on it could be taken at face value I would consider it cause for serious concern. Unfortunately, the Mail in itself is not trustworthy; I prefer to read these things via a less potentially biased source before passing judgement.
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  15. Re:Your Fox post was flamebait. by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah -- Fox News, Fair and Balanced.

    You are aware that they do things like assessing reporters politcal loyalties during the interview process and giving regular memos directing their newscasters to do things to support Republicans, right? You aware that even the CEO admits using it as a propaganda mouthpiece to sell the Iraq War, right?

    If you can't tell that sort of stuff by watching them, then they're succeeding.

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  16. Re:Zionist Propaganda by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    Read up on history. Nowadays, you see a person protesting in front of a synagogue (we got one here recently), and it's like, "what cave did you crawl out of?" Yet, antisemitism used to be completely mainstream. Remember Henry Ford, who published a book, "The International Jew: The Worlds Foremost Problem"? And he was widely respected! Yet, he was hardly the only one. Around America and across Europe, anti-semitism was the de-facto standard. It's a sad part of the reason why the increasing violence against Jews in Germany wasn't taken very seriously, and why "Save the Jews" was never a rallying cry for the war, to say the least.

    You see the opposite thing in the Middle East. Some of the world's oldest Jewish populations exist in the Middle East, where they, while being a minority and occasionally suffered for it, but only rarely got the same sort of persecution that middle ages, European Jews had to suffer. It remained this way largely up until the 1930s, when the influx of foreign Jews into Palestine and the spawning of Jewish terror groups and militias, culminating in al-Nakhba, led to a violent level of antisemitism in the Middle East. This, in turn, led to most Arab countries likewise pressuring their Jewish populations out, turning a slow Zionist trickle into a major exodus. Many of these Jews migrated to Israel, which increased the strains with Israel's neighbors, and so forth.

    I can go into more detail with more modern history if you'd like, but you're probably well aware of the world (outside America)'s increasing dissatisfaction with Israel's foreign policy.

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