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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."
I have seen posts violently modded down on /. for evening mentioning the holocaust or holocaust denial. It is interesting that it is now a full story here. I always felt the global usership of /., and differing opinions, had something to do with it....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I believe when i last saw this pop up it was a single school somewhere, and i believe it was a single Muslim school.
I came out of education a few years ago and we got plenty of education about the Holocaust, GCSE level History was two years mostly spent on the German history between WWI and WWII. Infact, i remember hearing that the German ambassador (or somesuch) was unhappy about how much our history lessons centred on this.
I clicked the link and laughed as soon as i saw the URL: http://www.dailymail.co.uk./ They make no references to the number of schools or anything else.
Holocaust denial is generally an antisemitic point of view. The Muslims, Jews, and Christians all believe in the same deity... apparently, but that doesn't stop them from hating one another. Other famous holocaust deniers are good friends of the KKK.
It is AFAIK a religious belief. There are many arguments for or against it, but the simple fact that it happened is the strongest argument for it. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen. Genocide is one of humankind's hobbies... if you will. There was Pol Pot, Husein, Chechin?, and other examples like what the Europeans in general did to the new world. The Japanese have their history, as do many other countries on this planet. There are several really good examples in the South American continent.
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.
Not to get on a rant, but genocide does seem to be rather common. There is no reason to think that the Germans weren't trying a bit of it on their own.
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One's religious beliefs give one a sense of security, as well as justification for how they live their lives. When you present to such a person ideas that contradict their religious beliefs (and especially if you have any evidence to back them up) this challenges the integrity of their belief system, and hence makes them feel insecure and possibly unjustified.
Of course, no one likes to feel that way. The brain will often prevent one from having to feel that way by engaging in various defense mechanisms, the simplest of which is outright denial "nope, you have it all wrong." Though that usually doesn't come by itself, anger usually comes up too, with some yelling and other sorts of anger-based behavior. This engages parts of the brain which process emotions, and dis-engages parts of the brain which process logic, and as such the person can babble utter nonsence in defense of his beliefs without even realizing how irrational his arguments are.
Such emotionally-charged behavior can become dangerous, so I can see why some teachers might want to avoid it. It is a shame though...non-religious education should not have to cater to the teachings of a religion.
I also extend the private school argument to intelligent design. Give people choices because in any free society which should include freedom of thought, FREEDOM IS ALWAYS THE ANSWER.
Will you teach the prophet then ? He's long dead, yet here's what he said :
... this is slashdot ... this is to be buried deep with the ratings system, and whoever reports this is to be fanatically attacked for shaking up the "all-cultures-are-equal" idea. Even if it means killing the messenger.
... all values that slashdot pretends to defend.
...
Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
Obviously muslims teach this to children starting at 4-year-olds.
Don't forget
After all there is nothing wrong with islamic ideology, right ? Well, except that they kill dozens of their own children in hopes of wounding a single Jew. Except that they beat everyone into submission, except their complete opposition to free speech, except
Maybe it's just that you don't know about repression (english translation of the arabic word "islam"). So here's a message in hopes of making this clear.
Obviously it won't stop at Jews. They are equally against Christians, just not as public, equally against cripples (because allah punished them for a reason you know), and, God forbid you'd ask what "allah" does to gays (they are to be buried alive on sight, even if some man were to be raped by a gay attacker, he is to be buried alive). That is what the prophet did. That is what every muslim is striving to do.
Illustrations
-> gaza/westbank
-> iraq
-> afghanistan
-> mecca (non-muslims are to be killed on sight in mecca in case you didn't know)
-> cartoon crises
->
The single, best argument to the contrary I have ever heard is that not one defendant at the Nuremburg trials stated, in defense, that the holocaust never happened....
The Islamist repsonse to that is to claim that the "Europeans" (Nazis) were actually Zionists who fabricated the Holocaust in order to carve out a homeland for the Jews land that belonged to the ummah. So naturally the defendants at the Nuremburg trials wouldn't have denied such a thing: the Nazis were hard-core Zionists (the worst stripe of Evil(TM)) and went to their grave to defend their Jewish masters.
Muslim hatred for Jewish people is stronger than that of Klan hatred for Jewish people: the hate is not merely cultural, it's theologically-justified. It's a big problem for those of us who believe in freedom of conscience and tolerance for other people.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Nice try at re-writing history.Well, personally I have met two survivors, so I know there is no convincing me that it didn't happen. My next door neighbor being one of them was the sole survivor from her family. When her train arrived at Auschwitz she was separated into the "other line" from her family. Her family went right to the gas chambers. She obviously survived until they were liberated. It's sad, but very true.
In addition, I also met someone who was expelled from Austria via forced emigration, who in fact had her papers signed by Adolph Eichmann himself.
To me the Holocaust is more than just the persecution of Jews, although they were the largest number. It is an admonition of what can happen under a police state and that said state determines you are an enemy of it. Not only were Jews killed in the Holocaust, but also gypsies, Slavs, Christian dissenters, disabled, mentally ill, and anyone who was against their ideology.
Sorry, my mistake, it was only 30-40%. It was a survey by the Pentagon. Now I feel better.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Am I the only person who sees this story coming from the Daily Mail as just a little odd, given their support for the Nazis during the pre-WWII era? I tend to take their views with a grain of salt (for example are the schools who decline to teach the Holocaust publicly or privately funded?).
With all of that said I find the concept of "balanced treatment" in an educational environment revolting. Plurality's sake shouldn't lend itself to falsehoods, lies and distortions and if a fact hurts someone's feeling I'm sorry, but maybe they should just accept that the Earth is round, not flat.
Correct. To make it even more interesting, the Christian Yahwe is not the same Yahwe as the Jewish one, having been retrofitted by the Catholic church to effectively be Jupiter in all but name. And then there is the concept of the the Trinity, which is so central to a large part of Christian belief that it doesn't make much sense to say they belief in the same god the Jews believe in.
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.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Isn't this what Islam is going through now?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
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.
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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.h
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
http://www.notinmyname.org/
http://www.nkusa.org/
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/index.c
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/jews_against_zi
http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/jewish_anti_zio
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7887&aid
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.
I hate printers.
PLEASE don't assume that the Daily Mail is representative of, or in touch with, any part of British culture.
I live in Britain. I'm guessing you don't. The Daily Mail IS representative of, and in touch with, a considerable part of British culture, specifically:
1 -- the part that just loves terrible journalism (this is a small part)
2 -- the part whose views are naturally middle-of-the-road, but have found themselves marginalized by an establishment that focuses almost exclusively on What We Can Do To Make British Culture More Acceptable To Immigrants and so forth, and who have therefore become propaganda-consuming rumor-believing extremists without having to actually move their views away from the center at all (this is a large part)
there won't be an ounce of truth in it. Believe me, if there was, it would be all over the mainstream press
The Guardian is about as mainstream as Fox News. You'll be happy to know, however, that they did cover this story (albeit briefly).
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.
I'd say it's more of an issue than you seem to believe. This winter, the leader of a mosque was arrested for preaching that all Muslims serving in the British military should be killed because they were traitors. It's not a non-issue, though it probably isn't anything worth getting worried over either.
This is something that infuriated my history professor no end when I was taking AP US history back in highschool. I spent my junior and senior year in an american highschool after spending most of my previous schooling here in Canada.
I was amazed at how such subjects as the Trail of Tears involving the Cherokee and the treatment of apache and sioux nations were barely mentioned, if at all. Subjects such as manifest destiny would come up, but when attempting to discuss such things as the "54 40 or fight" issue or the border conflicts in northern maine, or the burning of a portion of the soon to be whitehouse, our teacher would get frustrated with the fact that they were even brought up.
Such things were never involved in the testing or assignments, which would obviously mean such details would not imprint as forcefully in our minds, and thus is not truely taught.
I found this especially sad and alarming, but wrote most of it off to the fact that our history teacher was a mccarthyist freakjob, but it sounds a lot more standard that i would have liked to think.
Ice Cream has no bones.
and how the cease-fires are anything but on the paleoswinian side and how israel is mysteriously the only on ever to "break" the cease fire.
What world have you been living in? Palestinian deaths tend to go almost completely unreported unless there are dozens at once. My favorite New-Speak-ish phrase is "A period of relative calm", meaning "only Palestinians are dying".
Of course, thank you for keeping the level of discourse up by your spelling of "Palestinian".
GIVE US THE CUTTLEFISH!
Absolutely. The Daily Mail is a hate-filled racist rag at the best of times, this story is most likely a load of complete bollocks.
Don't be tempted to get riled up about it, that's their intention.
This is the same Daily Mail that supported Oswald fucking Mosely, don't forget.
It is interesting that Europeans also attempted colonizing Africa, Australia, and Asia. Outside of the Americas, they were really only successful in Australia. The native populations of every place was able to fight back except for the Americas and Australia. There is a reason for that.
The fact is that most of the Indian deaths were from disease and infection. There were a whole host of diseases brought from Europe with which the native Americans had no resistance due to geographic isolation. Without a land connection to tropical locations in Africa and Asia where disease breeds even today, those diseases were unable to travel to locations in Australia and especially the Americas. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Americas was a relatively disease-free paradise. However, the native Americans ended up paying once the Europeans did arrive.
Every single European expedition that went through resulted in mass deaths of natives in that area. That's why when British colonists landed in North America there were large areas already cleared and ready for farming. The native people had recently lived there, but had died from mass disease.
And before anyone thinks the Europeans did this on purpose, let me remind everyone that germ theory came about hundreds of years later. The Europeans certainly did not know that merely coming in contact with the native Americans would end in mass death.
how about the The New York Times, or do you not consider NYT a "non-Israeli" newspaper? The The San Francisco Gate picked up the same article.
What the hell was your point?
Yeah, because we all know there has never been another period or place where Jews were oppressed even to the point of advocated murder. I don't know, but in my humble opinion the attempted systematic slaughter of an entire race of people whether unique or not is a pretty important theme. It's even more so since this objective was taken up by a modern industrialize nation in a period of time in which this kind of thing is frowned upon as rather barbaric at best.
Israeli colonial oppression today?You know, I read a recent Reuters article on the latest Israeli incursion into the Golan. It was a three page article explaining in minute detail the actions of the Israeli and consequences to the Golan Palestinians. It wasn't until the second to the last paragraph on the third page that there was one sentence explaining that the incursion was in response to dozens of rockets fired at Israeli settlements that had injured several Israelis. What do you think France's response would be to a group in Luxemburg continuously firing rockets at Thionville and injuring several French citizens (I know, I know surrender, ha, ha) and not only will the Luxemburg government not stop them but it actually supports them? Somehow I don't think negotiations wouldn't high on the list for long and a few collateral casualties incurred wouldn't be much of a deterrent to France using force to stop them.
Who is John Galt?
1) THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO HEALTH BENEFITS TO CIRCUMCISION
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Wrong. There have been a number of studies showing that it can significantly reduce the risk of contracting sexual transmitted diseases, including HIV. The WHO is now recommending it in Africa and projecting that if it was implemented, over 3 million people could avoid dying of AIDS.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6502855.stm
http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_art
Yes well your grandfather is Pontian Greek and not Palestinian. Palestinians DON'T want to be Lebanese citizens. At least a prevailing majority of them don't. They want to be Palestinians in Palestine. That is what they are fighting for. And they will never stop until they get it.
Greece is a great country but it didn't repatriate the decendants of the 130,000 greeks who fled the greek civil war of 47-49 until 1982. 33 years these people lived in exhile, and actually the total granted citizenship was 30k 1/5th of the original refugees. I applaud greece for talking the necessary steps to right social injustices, and on an unrelated note for being awesome hosts for the champions league cup.
I just looked at Trabzon. Wow that is an amazing part of the world.
The issue stems from this key point.
If Jew's are allowed a homeland Why is it at the expense of the Palestinians?
and why do they not have a homeland?
To force them to assimilate into neighboring countries is forcing them to erase there history, erase there identity and concede that Jews are more deserving than Palestinians. That is something they will never do. and they shouldn't have to.
I am dedicating my life to facilitating a solution, and probably this conflict will go on longer than I will live, but I can't stand by and do nothing. I am not Palestinian, but just a person who believes that they are just as deserving as Israeli's. I believe in a dual state state solution, however Israel must make concessions, and they never will unless they are pressured by the U.S. and Britain to do so. It really is in the best interest of everyone. But no ones wants to give up land for peace.
Interesting. Never gave much thought to that question. I suppose that, in my view of things, the best possible course would be to teach History more like Literature. You should teach the "History according to Gibson" one day, the next teach the same historic passage according to other source. In fact, you shouldn't "teach" it at all, but give books to read to the students, and let them draw their own conclusions. That way it would be clear that History is basically a kind of story-telling, based on some facts, many assumptions, and lots of bias. The topic should be re-branded "Comparative History" (That already exists in Universities, but make it the only way of teaching it), and make the students try to ascertain what are most likely facts and what not.
Not that it's going to happen, we like too much to impose our view of things on our next generation. We like to tell them that we are the descendants of heroes, not of bandits. And they like to be told that, too. You never go far trying to go against strong inclinations of the rest of the people.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.