First the ideologues came for evolution, making it uncomfortable for teachers to teach it, even when it is not only legal, but mandated by state education standards. What will they suppress with indirect social pressure next?
How about those bits of history the fascists and the religious find objectionable?
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government-backed study has revealed.
It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
As I said in the previous post, this struggle in which we’re engaged is more than a fight against a few specific clowns — it’s for a broader ideal of striving towards a truth, against those who want to twist perception of reality to support short-sighted, selfish, and silly beliefs. It’s not just science, it’s history, politics, culture. If you side with the primacy of faith over reason in science, there is a long list of other virtues you will also be sacrificing on your altar.
Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant has a good rant on the subject.
Then what if there is a Jew in the class? Or anyone else for that matter?
Beliefs do not change facts.
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government-backed study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
The inverse Marxism: farce repeats itself as history.
like the National Park Service no longer discussing the age of the Grand Canyon for fear of offending young earth creationists. sad, so sad.
Sickening. Absolutely sickening, and utterly shameful. History is in large part the story of people being horrid to other people; every society has a responsibility to revisit the demons of its own (and others’) past. Teach about these tragedies while children are still young and their natural revulsion at such ideas has not been replaced with hardened tribalism, and maybe we will finally learn from the past instead of having to repeat it.
Also: it seems that the idea that homeschooled kids are necessarily “sheltered” from facts and ideas that are universally taught in public schools is becoming less and less tenable.
Really, what do these Holocaust-denying morons say about really happened to all of the Jews and 6 million other “undesirable” the Nazis rounded up and murderered?
They all went on a mass vacation that they never came back from?
Teaching about holocaust – noble and must continue, for obvious reasons. But teach also about killing of entire nations of native Americans by the whites and other atrocities, (e.g by Stalinist Russia). Not only Holocaust.
By stating this as the reason, they are basically calling all muslims holocaust deniers. Yeesh. Could it get worse than horribly insulting the majority of muslims AND pandering to the views of the whacko fact-challenged among them?
There goes my standard rhetorical response for teaching ID: “Should we teach Holocaust denial next?”
I heard someone said they all went to New York City. No joke. Of course if you look at the census numbers the 6 million-person spike in the city’s population, or any noticeable spike at that time for that matter, is simply not there. If I remember correctly it would involve increasing the city’s population by some inordinate percent of the population at the time as well.
Rey, that’s a hell of a comeback. I may use that one myself. Thanks.
Rather a useless rant, IMO. How does the guy hope to persuade rational people when he’s frothing at the mouth? Guys like that are real liability to the atheist side.
British Media 101:
Take anything in the Daily Mail with a big pinch of salt. Especially if it has a hint of immigrant-bashing about it.
If it’s happening, it’s horrible, but I’d guess it’s a standard hyped-up Mail scare story about scary brown people coming over here with their burkhas bleeding the NHS dry and why aren’t there any red phone boxes any more I remember when there was proper music with a tune you could whistle.
Go screw yourself, Nathan Parker. We’re not struggling against rational people (if you hadn’t been paying attention).
OT but interesting in light of recent history:
http://www.kansascity.com/195/story/56863.html
As the number of life sciences help-wanted signs increasingly sprout in this region, the issue of finding highly trained workers is receiving heightened attention.
Work force development, for example, is a priority this year for the Kansas Bioscience Organization. The life sciences institute is part of another effort in this area that is backed with a federal grant.
Many of the companies included in the inventory apparently could use the help.
Nearly 60 percent of 100 businesses detailing their employment plans said they boosted their staff rosters in 2006.
Over the next 36 months, 87 percent plan to add workers. During this period, four of the companies indicated, they plan to expand by more than 100 employees each.
“We are going to need more people,” Duncan said. “Quite a few more people.”
Let’s consider the source here.
That article cites no references to what schools, what teachers, or what studies it based its statements on.
Also, the author of the article writes what appear to be filler garbage type articles- follow the link by her name in the article to see her other writings.
I saw another article on this on Digg recently that had a different take. Sadly, I don’t have a clue where it was. Anyway, the point was that they were avoiding discussions of the Holocaust not for fear of offending Muslims, but because anti-Semitic students would start mouthing off, causing a discipline problem and making things even harder for the Jewish students. Of course, even in that scenario you have a school system wussing out when they should be teaching the truth, but at least (at small least) it’s not fear of offending idiotic religious views.
I actually think there is a grain of this same rationale in this Daily Mail story, just hidden so the DM can spin it as more of an anti-PC thing:
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.
It sucks either way, but at least one reason isn’t quite as bad.
This takes place in Britain. However, neither the British nor the Americans had anything to do with the Holocaust.
I don’t know about Britain, but in the U.S. there are at least three Holocaust Museums: Washington, Los Angeles, Florida. Yet there is only now a Slavery Museum underconstruction.
This museum will be built far outside of D.C. while the Holocaust, remember which Americans are in no way responsible, Museum is in the center of D.C.
Just how much about slavery is taught in British or American schools? That seems to me to be much more important than harping on the holocaust. After all, those two were among those chiefly responsible for the traffic.
Americans, except for a few like Prescott Bush, didn’t make money off of Hitler and the persecution of Jews and others in Nazi Germany. But many Americans made fortunes from the slave traffic.
For that matter, the White House and the Capitol Building were built by slaves.
http://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/slaves08-13-2002.htm
Creation cretins and ID idiots weren’t the first to sanitize history.
In my history books, we were always the good guys in every war — The Great War, World War Two, the Korean War. Well, of course, once the bad stuff is sanitized, the good is all that’s left, so we look good — unalloyed good. Even today, we are still getting that crap about the Greatest Generation Ever. Sure, they look good — after the war crimes and atrocities get omitted.
The Japanese today are still sanitizing the Rape of Nanking, and still deny kidnapping Korean women as sex slaves.
In the South, the Civil War never happened because the War Between the States isn’t over yet, it’s in hiatus, and they want slavery back. (Nobody doesn’t know what flying the Stars and Bars really means.)
I just wonder what’s next. Will the English-only cranks insist history and geography books start omitting countries where English isn’t the first language?
The full report on which the Mail based its story is here.
According to the report, one history department once chose another topic instead of the Holocaust because of worries about anti-Semitism or holocaust denial among Muslim students. It’s not described as being in any way common or part of a trend (although of course one time is too many) – it’s simply given as an example of how teachers can find it difficult to teach emotive topics in history.
The other example given is that in a different school, Christian parents objected to the teaching of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hmm, which one of these examples makes a Daily Mail story?
Yes, religion should be kept out of the schools like headlice. But this story is just Malkinesque anti-immigrant hysteria.
Really, what do these Holocaust-denying morons say about really happened to all of the Jews and 6 million other “undesirable” the Nazis rounded up and murderered?
They all went on a mass vacation that they never came back from?
Nobody saw it happen… You weren’t there… There are gaps in the German records and/or they’re inaccurate… It’s all a political stunt, the product of a powerful lobby… The establishment won’t let in alternative views… Everything you were taught was a lie… It’s politically incorrect to question the Holocaust… It takes more faith to believe that it happened than to believe that it didn’t…
Sound familiar?
Also, William Dembski and Friends claim that “evolution” killed the Jews. Never mind that Hitler and his deputies expressly denied the theory of evolution (common ancestry being anathema to Aryan ideology).
If this is all it takes, then I’m a calculus denier.
bernarda,
Slavery was bad. We know that, and it is taught as such in many schools across the country including the high school in Memphis where my cousins went (and mine in the Midwest too). One thing I’d like to say, the issue of the destruction of American Indian nations is much more of a Holocaust than slavery in the U.S. (in the Carribean slavery and genocide against the aboriginal peoples were even worse than here).
Holocaust denial is very real. The U.S.A. participated monetarily in these events. To believe most Americans (at the time) were horrified or even cared is to misrepresent history. To kowtow to any group on the facts of history is to compromise the integrity of the educational system and, through indifference or fear, cause irreparable harm to the minds of students.
To add to what Pygmy Loris said, there were plenty of Brits cheering on the Nazis. Including, incidentally, the Daily Mail, which supported Hitler and Mussolini until the Government threatened to close the paper down in 1939.
Besides, even if it were true that we ‘didn’t have anything to do with it’, we’d need to teach it so people know what horrors “civilized” nations are capable of given a twisted enough ideology.
it’s for a broader ideal of striving towards a truth, against those who want to twist perception of reality to support short-sighted, selfish, and silly beliefs.
****************************
Fully agree and why I am wary of the framing in the manner that Mooney, Nisbet and Dietram Scheufele are encouraging.
Nisbet:
“That’s the power and influence of framing when it resonates with an individual’s social identity. It plays on human nature by allowing a citizen to make up their minds in the absence of knowledge, and importantly, to articulate an opinion. It’s definitely not the scientific or democratic ideal, but it’s how things work in society.”
Scheufele:
“And the strategy of recasting opponents of expanded stem cell funding as anti-science and anti-life may very well work on November 7. But more importantly, these attempts to establish one frame over another are good indicators of what we can expect for future debates about emerging technologies, such as nanotechnology.
And they highlight a key aspect of successful communication. Neither proponents nor opponents of stem cell research build their arguments on scientific information. What they rely on are heuristics or cognitive shortcuts that will allow voters to make decisions without understanding the obvious complexities surrounding the issues. And it doesn’t matter if these shortcuts are based on religious beliefs, celebrity, or personal hopes. Packaging matters … regardless of which side of the issue you’re on.”
These shortcuts take us away from engaging based on the truth & facts and instead based on the subjective, our personal biases. This is dangerous especially in a country with sexism, racism, homophobia to name a few of our disturbing biases.
The Daily Mail took the report out of context in order to advance a position that “OMGZ TEH ARABZ R TAKEENG OVER!”. The Daily Mail is a notorious right-wing rag that is always pushing some sort of evil agenda.
The report was specifically about the GCSE coursework not the complete coursework that the students are taught. As was mentioned earlier christian parents objected as well. Let me quote the relevant passage.
It certainly is a cowardly position for those administrators and teachers to take but nothing in the report says it’s a standard practice across all schools or all coursework. Besides MICHELLE MALKIN, quoted the same article and took it as fact that sharia law is becoming the law of the land in Britain. Does anyone here really want to agree with her?
Here’s a copy of the whole report. http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/Others/Teach%20report.pdf
Read the whole report if you want, but don’t trust The Daily Mail.
stogoe wrote:
The article wasn’t written for the people we’re struggling with, it’s written for fence-straddlers. Using foul language only hurts our cause.
MissPrism, you omitted another example given in the report: “In another history 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 because their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”
There is also an interesting letter, on page 40, from Farid Panjwani, Senior Instructor, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, The Aga Khan University, London. Here is one paragraph:
“One topic where this clash is clearly visible is the Qur’an. The Qur’an is the most sacred book for Muslims. It is accepted as the Word of God, given to the Prophet Muhammad and through him to the community of Muslims. On the one hand, there are scholarly attempts to place the Qur’an in history through the application of historical and textual studies. This exercise raises questions about the compilation and the making of the Qur’anic text. The proclaimed results of such research have sometimes been offensive to some Muslims. In response, there has been an effort by Muslims to establish the authenticity of conventional Muslim claims about these same issues. The image of the Prophet and the details of his life are equally sensitive. The recent cartoon controversy can also be seen as a reflection of different understandings of the idea of history.”
Qur’anic research can indeed be risky; ask “Christoph Luxenberg”, who was advised by Muslim friends to publish his linguistic analysis of the Qur’an under a pseudonym. See: Low profile for German Koran challenger.
Just to clarify my position, I saw the article and reacted to it, as I do with most of my posts. I’m not out to “convert” anyone – I just rant. I use “foul” language because, well, I enjoy it. Sometimes things get under my skin and this was one of them. If I’m actually arguing with someone who believes in invisible folks in the sky, my language is calm and rational because, as Nathan says, foul language and insults are no way to get a point across.
That being said, my site is my place to freak out about things that piss me off. I have about six people who regularly read my stuff (as far as I know) and they know what to expect. So enjoy it…or don’t. And thanks for reading it today.
Mike–I digged your post, f-bombs and all. Because sometimes the only appropriate response is a nice bout of mouth-frothing.
The usual run with grisly historical facts is for the perpetrators to launch into full denial mode, as for example the Turks and the Armenian genocide, or the slaughter of indigenous peoples by the Europeans who invaded the Americas.
The ‘Holocaust’ is an exception to this, sort of. While jewish victimhood is pumped up to the max, here in the West, other aspects are downplayed or ignored. For example:
1. IBM (before it had that name) leased computers to the Nazis to do the death-camp record keeping, and these computers were operated by IBM personnel. IBM historians do not deny the company’s involvement; but claim, absurdly, that they ‘did not know’.
2. The Nazis successfully floated a bond offering in New York, the proceeds of which were to be used to liquidate the confiscated property of the jews who had been sent to the gas chambers.
3. Jews attempting to flee the holocaust had great difficulty securing places in the west. After the war, mid- and upper-level Nazis like Klaus Barbi did not have the same kind of trouble, due to their impeccable anit-communist credentials. Many of them were able to find refuge in Latin America, helped along by elements of the CIA and Catholic Church, as well as the largely white ruling classes in Latin America itself.
4. Many in the west positively adored Hitler, and a list of his fans reads like a who’s who of corporate America at the time: Ford, Walker (Grandfather of GW Bush), Dulles, Kennedy (father of John F.), Standard Oil (synthetic gasoline, without which the nazi war machine could not have left home), ATT, etc. etc. The revolution in Russia scared the crap out of Western elites, and they were desperate for a ‘savior’. Until it became obvious that his ambitions were a threat to their own wealth and power, Hitler was a knight in shining armor.
5. The crime was carried out by an emphatically christian nation, not a muslim one. The present Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth, and if the Papacy at the time objected to Hitler’s policies, they did a great job of hiding it. The Fuhrer was constantly posing with cardinals and bishops, and could scarcely get a sentence out without talking about his ‘mission from God’. Sort of like someone else I could name…
The question to my mind is not ‘is the holocaust real’. The fact of it is so richly documented as to be beyond scholarly dispute. The question that interests me is another one: Why, in spite of the West’s obvious complicity in this crime, do we make such a big deal out of the victimization of jews specifically?
So here’s a prediction: if the day ever comes that Israel ceases to be a useful instrument of Western power in the Middle East, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not be the only one holding ‘holocaust denial’ conferences. In a decade at most, we’ll all be Ronald Reagan, convinced that the SS were ‘Hitler’s victims too’.
I don’t really think it matters that the Mail is blowing this out of proportion for their anti-immigration slant. We don’t care if people are immigrating; immigrants are fine. Hell, we don’t even care if they’re devout to their beliefs and complain to teachers about reality-based teaching re: the Holocaust, Crusades etc. People are what they are. The angry point here is the lack of support teachers have from their school boards, principals, etc to continue teaching the subject as it should be taught. We’ve seen it in the US re: evolution and this new report shows real hints of it in England re: Holocaust as school boards back down a bit. And we should get angry that this is happening.
Missprism, “Besides, even if it were true that we ‘didn’t have anything to do with it’, we’d need to teach it so people know what horrors “civilized” nations are capable of given a twisted enough ideology.”
But why is it more important than slavery or the massacre of the Indians in North and South America?
There is nothing exceptional about the Holocaust. How many of you have even heard about the Congo Free State? At the turn of the 19th century, the Belgian government massacred millions of people in the Congo. Only today Congo does not have an all powerful lobby, or maybe you would hear about it.
As Norman Finkelstein said attributing the quip to former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, “There is no business like Shoah business.”
I think it was Michael Shermer, in Why People Believe Weird Things, that had an excellent comparison of the similarities between the Holocaust-deniers and the evolution-deniers.
AAAAAARGH! Do not cite a Daily Mail story! They’re the very antithesis of scepticism. They endorse every woo-woo alternative therapy and gadget under the sun (they’re frequently quoted in Nexus magazine ads, for example) and on top of that they’re the UK’s right-wing paper. A collage of their headlines would read “Teenage immigrant yobs will eat your babies”. And in this case it’s not surprising they got the story wrong so they had an excuse to decry political correctness and claim the government is favouring Muslims over the white population.
The report actually says that schools are afraid of teaching potentially-offensive history subjects in general: not just the Holocaust, but the slave trade, for example. It’s not just a PC issue: the worry is that it’ll lead to bullying. The BBC has a far, far, far more accurate version of the story, and it’s far more complicated and interesting than you’d believe from the version linked to above.
Off topic, but I’m surprised PZ that neither you nor any commenter has posted about the lengthy front-page article in today’s (12 April) Wall Street Journal about the rise of atheism in Europe, militant atheism at that (it even mentions Dawkins briefly). While the WSJ’s editorial page sucks, their news reporting excels, even on topics far afield from business. The Journal is available on line but only with a subscription, so one may have to visit the library to read it, find a friend with access, or decode the code needed for access.
As for this topic, too often schools and society attempt to sugar coat the past, because they think it’s not nice. Well, much of our history is not nice. I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a new hire at a publisher where I worked back in the late 60’s. In meetings or private conversation I was noted for my candor on most any subject including the reliability or skill of my collleagues. In the course of a lunch time conversation about an ex-employee, I offered a critical assessment of that person’s skills. This new hire–the holder of an EdD in audiovisual technology and a former junior high school principal–haughtily advised me that “If I couldn’t say something nice about someone, I should say nothing at all,” and huffily left the table. We seldom spoke after thatk, but when we had to in meeting, I heard he always approached them with fear and trembling.
While being tactful is important, lying is counterproductive and being honest about events is the only way one can achieve something of value. It’s the basis of scientific discourse and it should be the basis of education. If toes are stepped on in the process, so be it. Most of us can benefit from some bruised toes at times.
I echo what Miss Prism said, and I’m reposting what I’ve said on various other blogs about this:
“They’re the very antithesis of scepticism. They endorse every woo-woo alternative therapy and gadget under the sun (they’re frequently quoted in Nexus magazine ads, for example) and on top of that they’re the UK’s right-wing paper.”
Sorry to be a pedant, but the UK has lots of right wing papers. The Mail is the really nutty, racist, anti-science right wing paper.
What I wanted to say was said quicker by Peter #6. I was astonished at how much world history as perpetrated by the English is not taught to the English. My English husband is boggled when my friends and I tell him about the origin of the blanket as a weapon in genocide in Canada; or about the opium war with China; or about the English and African slavers and their influence on the racial makeup of many parts of the new world.
And he’s a history teacher at the secondary level!
How are we ever to understand each other if we aren’t taught the same history?
Offend MUSLIMS? It ought to offend Xtians, too!!! I am constantly puzzled by the modern attitude that The Holocaust just happened because the Germans had a bad hair day, or something, and then they got better after we bombed the crap out of them and the Russians stomped them and now the fact that the whole thing was a Xtians versus Jews rumble (and rather one-sided if I may say) is just swept under the rug.
Of COURSE Hitler was really about power and politics. But his speeches are full of entreaties to kill the Jews to defend Xtianity, etc. Hitler blathered about God and Jesus almost as much as President Bush does.
Why are the Muslims denying The Holocaust happened? Because the SS division of Islamic troops that were raised from the Balkan Muslim population sucked in battle? Or because Hitler lost? WTF!
mjr.
One school delaying teaching is a bit unfortunate, but hardly a trend
I strongly agree. I would suggest you treat the Daily Mail the way you would treat Fox News. There’s a grain of truth in the story, but you won’t easily get it from the Mail.
Considering Islam is one of the most dogmatically intolerant religions around, I find it astonishing that anyone would want to avoid hurting Muslims’ feelings on issues like this.
Ten million. Ten-and-a-half million people died in the Holocaust, approximately six million of which were Jews (by the Nazi’s definitions).
I find it darkly ironic that people decrying public ignorance of the Holocaust can’t even cite the correct statistic.
I always thought it was 16-20 million. Why are there so many different numbers being thrown about? Is it linked to how the Gestapo tried to burn all the records before the Allies arrived?
Just when those of us who figured out the god myth get it right, they give us these country bumpkins in burqas to accomodate. Here is a link for todays local Minneapolitan Muslim accomodations scandals.
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1076787-p2.html
“Minneapolis Community and Technical College is poised to become the state’s first public school to install a foot-washing basin to help the school’s 500 Muslim students perform pre-prayer rituals. “We want to be welcoming,” MCTC President Phil Davis said”
And I might add: some profs over at MCTC read PZ religiously, but sure seem to remain silent about this whackoness.
I better go reprime myself in the holocaustic rhetoric now, just in case I pissed off Allah ….
Wikipedia on ‘Holocaust’
Because many people don’t consider the Holocaust to include the deaths of non-Jews.
I wrote about this a week ago and quickly realized that perhaps I did not exercise adequate–shall we say?–skepticism regarding the report, and several commenters took me to task. Although I continue to believe that even a hint of pandering to religous bigotry by not teaching the Holocaust is a reason for concern, I now suspect that perhaps this report was the result of a press release by someone or some group with an axe to grind. Caveat emptor.
Right. The commonly-known phrase is “six million Jews,” and that’s what anchors Holocaust awareness. People who choose to seek out more information will find it.
The Guardian (vastly more reliable that the Daily
RantMail) also reported on this:http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2048161,00.html
There were a number of interesting and informed replies:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2048702,00.html
The first reply, from Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust, is well worth reading. Some excerpts:
I think a link to the uncyclopedia on the Daily Mail is in order: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
I would suggest you treat the Daily Mail the way you would treat
Fox Newstoilet paper.This was reported in a number of UK papers. Interestingly, all these reports used extremely similar wording and headlines, and all painted a picture almost totally unsupported by the actual report itself. I strongly suspect that someone sent out a highly skewed press release, and I don’t think it was the Historical Association.
For those interested but too lazy to read the report in full (it’s linked upthread, and runs to 48 pages), these newspaper reports are based on 2 or 3 out-of-context sentences lifted from section 4, subsection 6, page 15.
I’m deeply saddened that so many otherwise fine sceptical bloggers have fallen for this misrepresentation. Read the primary sources, people!
Just to add some additional context, I should perhaps point out that when I took the equivalent of what is now GSCE History, there was no mention of the Holocaust at all. Why? Because the curriculum we followed was British Politcal History 1812-1918. And there was plenty “contentious” stuff covered…
Oh, and I notice that the Mail version of this story completely omits the fact that the only actual complaint received from parents about history teaching came from Christians.
Yeah. American readers may not realise that British history teaching, like the rest of British education after the age of 16, is extremely specialised. There’s no systematic learning of British history from start to finish, presumably because it’s such a long history. Basically when you start doing history as a young ‘un, you go through in really basic fashion things like “The Vikings”, “The Romans” and “The Middle Ages”. As soon as you start learning history proper, with primary sources and such, you settle on a few fairly narrowly prescribed topics. Britain’s probably one of the few countries where the historian’s exuse of “That’s not my period” can be heard from 15 year olds.
PZ, I suggest you read Deborah Lipstadt’s fine post on this topic, which I found via Orac’s latest .