British schoolteachers have become the latest Holocaust deniers by dropping the subject from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim students according to a newly released government backed study.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills is entitled “Teaching Emotive and Controversial History” focuses on as the name implies, history teaching in British primary and secondary schools.

Some of the findings from the study:

? Teachers that are reluctant to cover the Holocaust for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

? Holocaust courses being dropped over fears that Muslim students might express anti-Semitic or anti-Israel sentiments in class.

? Resistance to teaching about the Crusades of the 11th century ?where Christians fought Muslim armies for the control of Jerusalem- because the lessons often contradicted what local   mosques were teaching.

So now history as we know it has been labeled controversial if it deals with anything that may offend someone, particularly Muslims.  If this is their attitude why bother teaching history at all since just about anything in history could be construed as controversial and is likely to offend some individual or group, not just Muslims.

This is yet another example of political correctness rearing its ugly head by creating a controversy where none existed before.  The news reports on this study didn’t cite a single example of any complaints from the Muslim community, and is just based on the teacher’s own fear of offending a group that represents less than 3 percent of the British population. 

Instead what they have done is anger the Christian majority (72 percent) that have no problem with the Crusades and Holocaust being taught because it is history.

As Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government told the Evening Sun “History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable.”

History isn’t always pretty, but it is history nonetheless

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