UK Schools drop the Holocaust from history

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 600686.ece

Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions

There is no hope for humanity.

Hmm so that is why kids today think the US was allied with Germany during WWII and not the Russians.

If the plan is to make each succeeding generation stupider than the last than I suppose the schools are meeting their objective. If I ever have kids I am not sending them to public school. It was this kind of logic that made me skip school when I was kid. Case in point in sixth grade my arserag of a teacher made the whole class stand in a circle and made us take turns saying two things we liked about another student or thanking a student for helping us that day. I never learned anything that year in class except for the South American countries.

As for history I am slowly learning the history that I actually wanted to learn in school by reading about it. It is a shame that teachers shy away from controversial debates in the classroom. Why can't children or at least teenagers be able to critically think about something as important as history? Not to mention bring up the fact that the nature of history in and of itself is controversial. Hello God is not writing it. It just drives me insane.

Pathetic.

This PC crap is dumbing down History. Certain things cause offence, but they're HISTORICAL FACTS, not opinions. Important parts of history should NEVER be covered up, no matter how offensive and disturbing they are. The world should never forget WWII and what happened.

Yikes.....

If enough people forget, then it will happen all over again. People are supposed to learn from history, not let bad things repeat themselves.

The facts should be taught - whether it's history or evolution or whatever. The British government already pays for faith schools; how long before evolution is no longer taught because it could offend somebody and that's not PC?
In the US, the liberals are often acused of loathing the West, and of anti-semitism. They're ludicrous accusations, but they wouldn't be if directed against British liberals.

This is a bit contextual, because British schools are also dropping (or have dropped) other historical subjects, and I believe have done away with ancient history completely.

Also, for a long time british schools have avoided teaching british history, and tbh there are great steaming holes in many other subjects too. For example: I imagine most american posters can name all of the states, and find them on a map. You would be hard pressed to find a current british student who could safely identify the UK on a map, much less tell you where Northumbria or Yorkshire are. (This has been going on for a long time though.. I had to work most of it out for myself, and i'm still hazy on some places, and I left school 15+ years ago)

At various intervals, there have been reports that students believe that Hitler was on OUR side, Churchill was a bad guy, and even that the War of The Worlds (the martian invasion of surrey, kent and the home counties circa 1899 ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

My own sons previous primary school declared a few years ago that they were going to start teaching the three R's (sic .. Reading wRiting and aRithmetic, dont ask, cause I dont know why). My first response was "What the f**k were you teaching them before?" Any system named after such a stupid grammatical abuse is surely destined to fail.

Our school system is falling apart, and it goes well beyond not teaching about one or two subjects, no matter how important.

They've already dropped the Empire. A rewriting of history is going on.

The UK is falling even quicker than the USA....
What was once the most powerful and developed nation on earth is becoming the opposite.
Quite sad, really....

I think everyone should drop out

Was there ever?

History has always been a squishy subject written by people with bias. I remember reading through a history book my mother used in the 1940s (written a decade or two earlier) that lamented the unfortunate slaughter of the brave Col. Custer by a band of blood-thirsty savages.

History can be a scholarly discipline, but it is often story-telling. America is not going to call the slaughter of a million Armenians 'genocide' because it would piss off Turkey, and they might close US supply routes. Japan's history texts still do not honestly deal with the atrocities they committed during WWII.

I am actually a bit surprised by this because I always was assuming USA education is the worst one. I know there was a contest between different high school students of many different countries around the world and USA was second from the very end. So if you are correct, then the last at the end HAS to be britain ... unless of course it is ONLY with history while perhaps America is behind in math and sciences.

How is math and science education in Britain doing by the way? In America what you learn during first two years of college in math and science is the same stuff that in Russia you will learn in high school. Now I konw it is not just Russia, I talked to ppl from other European countries, such as my thesis advisor who is from Italy, and he confirmed that in Italy it is nearly identical system to Russia and NOT to USA. I also have some family in Germany, and agian German education of math and science seems to be closer to Russian than American one. So I see two possibilities:

1)Britain is a huge exception to that rule and this is only country in Europe that is like America and NOT like Russia, which would make Britain the only candidate for the worst educatoin in the world.

2)Since I am comming from math and science and I dno't know much about humanities, perhaps in humanities education is entirely different and in humanities USA is not doing that badly.

I guess I am not sure what to think on that one.

How about the other side of the coin, that ppl get thrown to jail in a lot of countries in Europe by questioning some facts about holocaust. If history "in and of itself" is controversial, they shouldn't be doing that, either. So it is funny actually how they are trying to appease both sides ... first they throw ppl to prison for denying holocaust in order to appease holocaust orthodoxy, and then they get rid of holocaust in history classes in order to appease holocaust-deniars.

The holocaust is nothing to be debated due to being a fact. Kids should learn about history's lessons and be informed of what the world used to be.

Oh? But I thought the English and Europeans in general prided themselves on their, ah, long tapestry of historical achievements. To not teach the bad stuff is the same as pretending that stuff never happened. As arrogant as some Americans are, at least we don't deny the Native American genocide, or the Japanese-American detainment.

But really now. Not teaching kids about the Crusades? If they're gonna whitewash history and make it sparkling and inoffensive, they might as well just be sitting around reading comic books, which I'd have to say are much more entertaining for about the same educational worth.