18 April 2007
There has been controversy in the United Kingdom over alleged plans to drop Holocaust education from schools' curricula. Citing government research, the “Guardian” newspaper had reported earlier this month that schools were avoiding teaching about the Holocaust and the Crusades in history lessons because they were apparently concerned about causing offense to Muslim students or challenging "charged" versions of history which children had been taught at home. The report for the Department for Education and Skills found that a history department in an English city had avoided selecting the Shoah as an exam topic for fear of confronting "anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial" among some Muslim students. Another school had decided to teach the Holocaust despite anti-Semitic sentiment among students, but avoided the Crusades as "their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques," the “Guardian quoted the report as stating.
In the meantime, and responding to international criticism and rumors, the UK government has reaffirmed that teaching children about the Holocaust was, and would remain, compulsory and strongly denied that the subject had been banned, as was alleged in widely-circulated emails that led to criticism from some Jewish groups.
The full report can be consulted on the following website:
http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/Others/Teach%20report.pdf
