Slashdot Mirror
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."
I guess if your "beliefs" include Holocaust denial, then you're excactly the person who needs a history lesson.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
We already have schools ignoring real science to avoid offending radical Christians.
Why does accommodating religion nearly always harm society?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
Corollary to Godwin's Law: As political correctness increases the chances of ignoring the holocaust approach one.
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.
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.
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.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
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.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
> ...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 otherwise. The Holocost is objective reality. The fact the whole Middle East was on the Axis side is also objective reality. The fact they LOST WWII is objective reality. And in the end that last fact is the heart of the matter. Because if all three of the facts I just stated are reality their own worldview can't exist, so they collectively went into denial. Because it all comes down to their objection of the Western powers setting up Israel. Here in Reality winning WWII gave the victors the right to remake the defeated enemies territories including, granting Israel to the surviving Jews, splitting up Germany, tearing apart Japanese society and remaking it in our own image, etc.
The difference is we didn't occupy the Middle East and force their backwards asses into the 20th Century, mostly because before oil was discovered nobody cared enough. That was a mistake, but hindsight is always better than foresight. What is happening now with appeasing the crazies is obviously stupid to anyone outside government and the far left. If we won't stand up and defend the teaching of objective REALITY how is the West supposed to muster the courage to defend it's BELIEFS?
Democrat delenda est
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.
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.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I posted this a few days ago, may as well repost it ..
The usual pro-confederacy arguments are that they were fighting for states' rights and not for slavery. These are both patently false.
The southern states were the ones arguing for federal supremacy over states. They wanted the federal government to enforce slavery laws in free states. They argued that a slave owner should retain ownership of those slaves while traveling in free states, and that slaves who escaped to free states should be returned to their owners. Hardly a states rights position!
The war of 1812 was a disaster, economically, for the New England states which depended so heavily on trade. They spent three years getting up the nerve to send a delegation to Washington to bring up the subject of secession, but the war ended before they could do anything. The southern states were the most vocal in condemning secession as treason. How interesting that when their ox was being gored, they acted immediately, not even trying to negotiate with the federal government. So much for honor!
As for economics, which is the usual neo-confedrate blame for northern aggression, it was slavery which put the south at a disadvantage, in that it made labor so cheap that industrialization was too expensive. It really hurt the small farmers who had to do their own labor. I have never understood why poor whites, then or now, backed the slavery system which kept them in poverty. No self-employed man can compete with slaves. The expense of overseers doesn't come close to compensating for the cheap maintenance (crowded crappy housing, no elders to take care of) of slaves.
It was a war for the rich white southerners. Nobody else would have benefited from secession.
Infuriate left and right
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.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
The Gypsies were persecuted with as much fervor as the Jews. According to Wikipedia, 500k to 1m died. While it's not as large a gross number, proportionately, it's just as high if not higher. Interestingly, the Roma were the original Aryans who had traveled rather than staying in Germany. So the Nazis, in a rare show of coherency, only allowed part-gypsies to be exterminated but allowed full-blood Roma regular status. Later, it was argued that no one could have not become corrupted and the Roma were uniformly exterminated.
If they weren't victimized as systematically, why so much official propaganda and policies on the subject? See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Should we have protesters outside of christian churches every time there is a sermon on 1 Timothy (it is blatantly sexist)? Should we chant and jeer outside churches that teach the parts of the bible about male genital manipulation (circumcision)?
Sure, why not?
Idiotic delusional nonsense is just that regardless of what the particular trivial details that are the only distinctions between these various "absolute truths", so they should be ridiculed mercilessly until people are just too fucking embarrassed to be associated with such idiocy.
Where's the problem exactly?
I'm not really sure how you can say that objectively, I'm a non-republican/non-democrat who regularly watches fox news just because I find the way that they present things somewhat genius, it's kind of like watching Goebbels in action. A good example of their 'slant' is in how they reported the story about the kid who planned on bringing bombs to Falwell's funeral. What I saw on Fox news was that a college student has been arrested after he was caught with bombs in his car, that he intended to bring to Falwell's funeral. With that and other coverage of Falwell's passing it implied that the guy was some left-wing nut who wanted to bomb his funeral, when in actuality the kid was a student of Falwell's university and intended to bring the bombs to 'keep protestors from disturbing the funeral', which makes him a right-wing nut who is obviously totally out of touch with reality. Stuff like that, which an omission of a couple words completely changes the story, puts an incredible slant and spin on the story and honestly borders on outright disinformation.
Honestly, I think if you paid a little closer attention to what they report, how they report it and what they don't report I think you would find their slant pretty incredible, and as I said, their tactics somewhat genius.
Ah yes gratious guests.
These are Palestenian REFUGEES. And where are they refugees from?
There own homes
50 years ago those people were kicked out of there homes and forced to leave. They have no identity, no home. They aren't citizens of Lebanon.
To put this in perspective how would you feel if someone kicked you out of your home with all of your neighbors and you had no place to go but a neighboring country. You and your neighbors and family members have no home no identity no citezenship and have to live in slum camps for 50 years.
You may not rob a bank, or blow up a building, but your grandson might.
I am Lebanese, and while I understand that you might not be as educated about these issues as I am, or for that matter even care, but I want you to realize that this is a SERIOUS problem, and it is only getting worse with ignorance and neglect. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but I believe that ALL people deserve basic human rights.
There's nothing like a rabid racist lunatic trying to justify himself in this manner.
The mass murder of the large bulk of European Jewry, which happened during the lifetime of many people still living, is of tantamount importance if you take the teaching of history to be an exercise in educating us as to deeds done and how they can be avoided.
For instance, blaming everything on Zionists was precisely the kind of monstrous ideology that allowed the Nazis to kill so many Jews. By recreating a group of individuals into some sort of dark shadow cult out to take over the world, the Nazis were able to more easily demonize Jews. It's sad that there are still evil little monsters like yourself so happy to ape the discredited notions of Nazi anti-semitism. You do, through your hate, make it clear that teaching about the Holocaust is still of the utmost importance.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I know I'm making a mistake attempting to have a rational discussion of this on the internet, but here goes.
The most prominent primary target of the Nazi's killing spree was indeed the Jewish people, and their story of systematic, legitimized oppression, and how the general German populace went along with it by degrees is the most harrowing. It teaches us that when you start institutionally marginalizing a people or class of persons, even if only slightly at first, you go down a road which may lead to something truly horrific.
That having been said, the current state of holocaust education effectively denies the deaths of the millions of non-Jews by focusing exclusively on the deaths of the Jews. It invalidates their suffering. You yourself implicitly said it was unimportant. And thus, people grow up thinking that genocide is some kind of rare thing which confines itself to one people at a time, and not only is this not correct, but the message is injured. Think I'm wrong? Ask an average American high school kid about Darfur, or the Armenians, or the purges in the Soviet Union, or Cambodia.
I would rather teach kids that if they start letting intolerance into their hearts, not only is it going to be the people of x super-vilified minority who go against the wall, it's going to be your little sister with a bum leg, your evangelical uncle, the sad beggars in downtown, those two boys holding hands, anyone who voices a dissident opinion, and everyone you know who's not white, brown, yellow, or whatever the uber-race is supposed to be.
There is a difference between Judaism and Zionism. If you don't realize this, you're part of the problem.
There are legitimate complaints about the very concept of Zionism (the argument that Jews should immigrate to the Middle East to form a homeland, even if it means displacing the locals).
There is a legitimate argument to be made that Zionism has, quite contrary to its intent, encouraged a new round of antisemitism and made the world less safe for the Jewish people, not more safe.
There are legitimate complaints to be made about how the Israeli government is currently running its foreign policy.
By treating anyone who has any problem with the concept of Zionism or the policies of the state of Israel as being inherently anti-semitic, you're part of the problem, just like those who deny the Holocaust are part of the problem from the other side.
GIVE US THE CUTTLEFISH!
but raisin' em so ain't asking much
Indeed. Mutilating infant boys without their consent isn't much at all.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
That should not be assumed here. If I don't know all the facts of a political story for sure, and read it in a newspaper with a known reputation for right-wing bias and pandering to its readership to sell papers, I'm quite entitled to be sceptical. Is the message false? who knows but instead of trying to figure it out you assault the messenger. Example: If Hitler said 3+5 is 8, you would say its WRONG because HITLER said it. No, I wouldn't, because I know for a fact that 3 + 5 = 8. Your suggestion that I would is a blatant misrepresentation of my position.
Please read this comment of mine, which you'll note was posted almost 90 minutes before your comment. Salient points emphasised (here) in bold:- 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. Next, you say We need a serious look at Logical Thinking in this country. Its a major reason why we are splitting apart in the country that people like Sean Hannity uses Logical Fallacies all the time. If that was supposed to be an attack on me, it's irrelevant, because I don't come from "this" country (i.e. the U.S., where Hannity apparently lives and works).
And, as I made clear, my message was *not* an "ad hominem" attack against the facts. It's a valid questioning as to whether the facts as presented are accurate. Since you misinterpreted it as such, it may be true that *you* need to look at logical thinking in *your* country- starting with yourself. As to the Daily mail, they may do all the things you state and that just means you have to get more to get to the truth but it does not mean its false or even their SLANT on it is false either. No, but since I don't know whether it is or isn't true and/or unbiased, it means I do have a right to be sceptical.
This isn't denying that 3 + 5 = 8. At best we know that the right-hand side is 8, but we aren't sure what the two numbers on the left are. Am I going to take the word of someone with a vested interest in 3s and 5s? Am I heck! They might be 4 + 4, or 6 + 1, or whatever... I am rather conservative myself but its more harmful to lie using logical mindtricks than to just face the truths. And- as demonstrated by my explanation and the linked comment above- I did no such thing.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
A new round of antisemitism?
The difference being the people involved. The old antisemitics largely had no evidence other than racism. Antizionists on the other hand have friends and family, or themselves, who have been kicked out of their homes and regulated to ghetto life in the West Bank, Golan Heights, or the Gaza Strip. Some of them aren't even Muslims, but Christians- it's amazing the zionist racism that has gone on in Bethleham of all places.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.