…what surprises me more: that some teachers and schools in the UK are softpedalling teaching about the Holocaust and the Crusades to avoid offending Moslems…:
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.
[A British government study] 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. …[another school] 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.”
…or that any schools in the Western World teach any of this stuff in the first place.
I’m not aware of either of my kids being taught about the Crusades at all, or anything about the Holocaust at more than the most cursory possible level.
Well, not in school anyway.
I’ve never seen anything about the Crusades taught in public schools — either in my own life or my kids’. As to the Holocaust, my older daughter is taking what appears to be a pretty good (albeit slightly politically correct) course in it this semester at MLA. (Metropolitan Learning Alliance — it’s an alternative school funded by five school districts, so it’s technically not a charter school, but it functions about the way one does. It’s been a real big win for her.)
I’d love to see the Crusades taught, fairly. I think there’s lots of lessons that can be learned that have modern — and ongoing — significance, and not just the obvious ones.
I learned a little about the Crusades when I was in Middle School (back in the early 1970’s) but not a lot and mostly in the context of the fact that the land that is now Israel has been the grounds of fighting between Europe and Islam going back centuries! We did get more on the Holocaust in High School because that tied into the 20th Century History classes that we were getting.
The Junior Logician has learned some about the Holocaust in school. As a matter of fact, he happened to be sitting next to me when I was reading this story yesterday. His comment was that the policy in question was “totally bogus!”
LL
I went to school about the same time Mitch dd.
For the crusades, we had a film of some kind – memories fuzzy, and there was mention that it was a way for the various 2nd sons and minor nobility to get out of Europe and stop causing problems at home. There was also the obligatory bit about it fueling the rennaisance.
I also was taught about the Holocaust over three separate years, and we had a camp survivor talk to us when I was a little kid, don’t remember what year that was. It might have been different in the Richfield schools, since most of the city was populated by returning war vets. We always had a monster 4th of July parade and the 2nd largest Legion post in the country, so the events and fallout of WW II always played a larger role when I was in school.
As for offending the Moslems – if their mosques are lying to them, that’s no damn excuse to … well, I’m sure almost everyone reading this agrees with me on that point anyways. They play with history the same way a five year old plays with fingerpaints, with predictable results.