related to the English primary and secondary educational system:
For example, a history department in a northern
city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a
topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting
anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among
some Muslim pupils. In another department, teachers
were strongly challenged by some Christian parents
for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict and
the history of the state of Israel that did not accord
with the teachings of their denomination. In another
history 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 because their balanced
treatment of the topic would have directly challenged
what was taught in some local mosques.
Appalling. I would caution against drawing much by way of general inferences about the English educational system from this, since there will inevitably be bad apples in every large system, and the report doesn’t purport to measure the incidence of this sort of behavior. Still, even one such incident is troubling, and merits closer looking into; I do hope the English education establishment is taking this seriously.
Here’s the BBC coverage of the report. Thanks to Clayton Cramer for the pointer.