A Christian Eye on Politics
Back in April 2007, the UK Daily Mail carried this report from Laura Clark:
"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. 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.
The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.
The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.
It 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. The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
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.
"But the same department 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."
The full Daily Mail report can be read here.
Let us briefly remind ourselves what the holocaust was all about:
The holocaust was the wanton destruction of millions of people in the death camps (so-called 'concentration camps') of Nazi Germany. Over six million Jews died in this way at the hands of Hitler's brutal nazi thugs. Many other groups suffered in the same way, but it was the Jews who became the main target of Hitler's racial hatred. The result was perhaps the most devastating organised policy of state-approved mass genocide ever known, in which millions of people died, not because of what they believed, nor what they did, nor what they said, but simply because they were Jews, or other groups disliked by 1933-1945 Nazi Germany.
We must never forget what happened in Germany, indeed we should all be reminded of it regularly. But our children should especially be taught about this outpouring of national evil and racial hate. Many British servicemen (as well as those of our allies), laid down their lives in order that this regime of barbarous and unprovoked evil should not reach our national shores. Yet the memories of these valiant men of the Second World War are now being insulted by the fact that several schools of modern, 'peaceful' liberally-paralyzed Britain are purposely avoiding the whole subject of the holocaust in case it offends those children and their parents of a moslem culture which, even while enjoying our hospitality and our standard of living, apparently hold no respect for this nation and its traditions.
The government needs to act decisively right now to make it plain to all our school teaching authorities that the history of World War II, with special attention to the holocaust, must remain a vital part of required teaching in all British secondary-age schools. This should not be a matter of debate or negotiation, and those school head teachers who have purposely allowed these things not to be correctly taught in case of stirring classroom tensions should receive a reprimand!
Liberalism and political-correctness are increasingly paralyzing our peoples not because the average man or woman in the street support them (most such ordinary people certainly do not) but because large areas of our government, educational system and media are controlled by these unpatriotic liberals.
The Christian Hawk, September, 2007.