UK Schools Too Sensitive to Feelings? Yep.

I was speaking with my mom this afternoon and she asked me if I had heard about how UK schools weren't teaching about the holocaust. Instinctively, I explained that it probably wasn't as bad as some people are saying. Odds are, it's just UK teachers being too sensitive to any possible offense they could cause to their Muslim students. I doubted there was a systematic choice by the UK equivalent to the Board of Education saying "Teachers can't teach the holocaust because Muslim parents have complained."



See, because most Muslims don't believe the Holocaust didn't happen. And by "most" I mean, the majority. However, there's a right-wingish group of folks on the Internet that like to stir up shitstorms where there wasn't even feces in the first place. This is a good example of it in action.



As an April 2, 2008 article from BBC News (capped above, original here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…517359.stm ) illustrates, it's more of a case of teachers over-reacting to their own concerns with creating conflict in their classes. Turns out there was a study done that found this was going on--so it was not something the system forced on teachers.



What I don't get is why UK teachers don't do what NJ teachers did in my own public school growing up: Only teach history before 1900.



Problem solved!



See, my teachers did that I had to base my knowledge of World Wars One and Two, Korea, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, the Suffrage Movement, and a lot of other things on movies and TV shows made about those things.



For the longest time, I thought Korea was this not-so-bad war where funny doctors played tricks on jerks and hot blonds and saved lives.



Seriously.



I also remember the first time I learned about Vietnam. I was with my Mom--maybe 11 or 12-years-old--and we were coming out of a Caldor (like a Target or K-Mart) and I asked my mom the awkward question: "What's Vietnam?"



I'm not even sure what inspired the question--maybe I saw someone with an MIA T-shirt on or something? I don't know. But she explained it to me then. "It's a war that no one likes to talk about."



"Why's that?"



"Because we lost it."



My world view was shattered, but shouldn't I had known that the US doesn't win every war it starts? Isn't it more important for me to know what happened and have a discussion about it rather than have me mentally knocked on my ass in a Caldor?



In the end, I just wish teachers both in the UK and in the US would realize that the truth isn't politically correct and that the best place for people to learn that fact is...a *school*.
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Orignal From: UK Schools Too Sensitive to Feelings? Yep.