From a U.K. Government Report:

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.

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