What would happen if people didn’t learn the holocaust in schools? Do you think kids would go out into the world and look for it? Do you think they could even imagine something like that? How could they understand the holocaust if they weren’t given direction? How can you look for something when you don’t even know what it is?!
In fact, how can you teach World War II without the holocaust? This is a serious question. I seriously cannot understand what you could possibly do - could you just gloss over it? But it plays such an integral part in World War II and the events leading up to it! Leaving that out would be like leaving a part of history out!
And why whould people choose what they learn? This is sounding a little bit totalitarian, but why shouldn’t they learn the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Simply because it offends them or troubles them? If that’s the case, I could take it to extremes and just not learn anything at all, because knowledge translates to stress!
On a personal note … I dropped history when I chose my exam options. Thus I didn’t study anything beyond the tudor/elizabethan period. I got all my information naturally about the two world wars and the holocaust.
Some members seem to think if you don’t learn something in school you will never know about it.
lol good point i dunno though, i mean if muslims don’t wanna learn about the holocaust because they deny it, then if muslims learn about it outside school, say from other muslims who deny the holocaust, then it would kind of be a lost cause.
someone mentioned something about muslim bashing. In case you’re wondering i don’t hate muslims, i have muslim friends and i don’t hate their religion. thats a little disclaimer there
I don’t really get why their so offended by the holocause?
What we learn in school reflects what the world “thinks about” and means is important. It’s the basic that the society means everyone should know. Thats why it is important.
But another thing to think about, what about the native americans? The slavery, how societies in america were litterally broken up and killed down?
When you look at (go read “the earth will weep”) Americas hostory, it makes Hitler look like a dads boy who got a little bad luck.
I mean it, the history of America is way worse than WW1 WW2 Vietnam and the black plague combined !
None of the first one managed to take out entire societes, and nearly killing a continents ways to think!
And how many sides does the colonization (robbery) of America have in our books? And how many about how the europeans did exactly what they wanted to the natives? how many diaries and stories from the native point of view?
Now look at the three first ones I mentioned and compare…,
Again, school shows what our society feels is important, essential.,.
Well, I’m glad my history teacher properly taught those sections of American history, and think everyone should learn about those as well.
Isn’t the entire point of history to learn from one’s own mistakes?
And just because you learn something from word of mouth doesn’t mean you’re learning it properly. Pocahontas’s story is definitely not like how Disney portrays it at all (for one, she was actually 13 years old-ish when she met John Smith!)!
But I don’t think that the American “removal” of Native Americans and slavery is worse than WWI, WWII, and Vietnam, and definitely not worse than them combined. But that is a different debate for a different topic.
What annoys me is that when it comes to religion, everyone gets special benefits just because people are too afraid of ‘offending’ them.
So what. I’m sick of everyone being ‘offended’ by everything.
Well how about I make up a god named bob. Bob says school is evil. Do I get out of going to school now, simply because it offends me?
That is just the last straw! I’m SO sick of all of the “political correctness”. The whole “You can’t say “Merry Christmas”” thing and the “Winter Holiday” ticks me off to no end, but this is FAR worse. You can’t leave out history because it’s “inconvient”. Yes, the Holocaust was horrible, yes, no one really likes to think about the unspeakable things those people involved went through, but it is a FACT! You can’t please everyone all of the time, it’s just not possible. Example; I don’t believe in Evolution, does that mean I shouldn’t ever have to take Science because it’s riddled with Evolutionary theories and it might “offend” me? Your answer would be; “Heck no!” In fact, now that I think of it, if you’re going to take away teaching about the Holcaust you might as well take away teaching about Evolution as well to be “fair”. Wouldn’t muslims and pretty much everyone else who believes in Creationism get “offended” by insinuating that God doesn’t exsist? What about them? Shouldn’t we cater to them as well? Why don’t we also get rid of math, I know lots of people, (including myself,) who are “offended” by math. How about English? What if there are some non-English speaking students who are “offended” that you aren’t speaking their language? You might say, “Well, those examples are ridiculous!” And you would be right, that’s the point. This whole thing is insane…
P.S, The Evolution thing was an example and not the main point, please don’t start debating about that because A,) My mind shall never be changed about that, and B,) I’m sure the mods don’t want a flame war. Just a precautionary disclaimer.
To teach a class without the holocaust, or other significant historical events is brainwashing(and yes moogle, you are correct in saying that we can learn outside the classroom, but let’s face it, youth today aren’t exacly clamouring to learn. they are robots. “we learned about history is school, what else is there to know?”). Imagine what your perception of the world would be like if you thought the holocaust never happened. It’d be different, right? And that is what is happening here. Students are being taught fallacies, as another step in the West’s buckling to the fundamentalist Muslim agenda. I don’t mean to sound bigoted, because I am not, but this will probably sound bigoted: Fundamentalist muslims(not everyone, i know there are expetions to the rule) are eroding our freedom of speech. They think they can run around chanting “death to America” and whatnot and that’s okay, and in actuality, it is ok, but then they tell us we can’t draw Mohammed or teach about one of the most significant events the world has ever seen. The Catholic church doesn’t go around making people stop teaching about the Inquisiton and protesting against such pieces of art asPiss Christ, so why do Muslims think that they can tell us what to teach and what to speak?
Does anyone think that there might be a case for not teaching the holocaust and other war related matters (before they become optional), not because of it offending people, but because of it upsetting people.
In a recent survey of the developed nations, Britain came worst for children’s happiness. British children are apparently the unhappiest in the developed world.
I think that the curriculum has changed since you were at school moogle, because I did a lot about both world wars when I was very young. We even watched a video about the horrors of the concentration camps. In English lessons we did war poetry.
And all of it upset me (and scared me) quite a lot. If we force children to go to school, shouldn’t we be teaching them happy things?
As Moogle says, you can learn about these things outside of school. I have only recently found out about the Dresden bombing for example. I had no idea that the British were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths near the end of the second world war (there’s an example of brainwashing Petter).
Yes, it’s important to learn from the mistakes of the past, (though knowledge of the Holocaust has not stopped other holocausts in the 20th century), but it’s also important to look to the future, and how things can be improved from here.
I did not appreciate being an 11 year old and being told of the agony of dying from mustard gas in the first world war, or being told of the death of millions of people, and seeing pictures of piles of dead bodies. I would have been quite happy not to learn about it.
But the world isn’t happy. It isn’t perfect.
Terrible things do happen, and to just pretend it didn’t, or to even be ignorant of it (for a stupid reason offending muslims) isn’t that just a bit disrespectful to those who DID go through all that suffering?
We shouldn’t hide from the truth just because it upsets us.
Or in this case ‘offends muslims’
Ok, I was leaving the offending bit aside and concentrating on the upsetting factor.
I can name many terrible atrocities that I didn’t learn about at school, and have only found out about afterwards.
The estimated 4 million Russians killed directly from repression by Stalin, and the 6 million Russians killed in the famines due to Stalin.
The bombing of Dresden where conservative estimates are that 50,000 people died in the firestorm.
The 1-2 million people killed by Pol pot
The 8-30 million people killed by King Leopold the second of Belgium.
If we must learn about the Holocaust so that we don’t disrespect the people who went through it, why shouldn’t we learn about these things? If 30 million people were killed by King Leopald, that is worse than the Holocaust. How come I didn’t hear of him until I looked up Pol pot on wikipedia? If it would be disrespectful to not learn about the Holocaust, why isn’t it disrespectful to not learn about these things?
All I’m saying is, the children of my generation in Britain learnt a huge amount about the world wars and the holocaust. The children of my generation in Britian were the most unhappy children in the developed world.
There may not be any connection, but I think that it’s more important to try to make these children happy, rather than teach them depressing things.
Btw, the war affected lots of British families a huge amount. In my family alone, my grandma lost her brother, and my mum’s cousin never knew her father.
There is no way that it will be forgotten here, whether it’s taught or not.
Because we can’t learn from our past mistakes if we don’t know about them in the first place.
And when I say ‘our’ I mean us as a race, not individuals.
And yes, I know that people will most likely learn about this out of school anyway.
I personally knew about the holocaust long long before I was even in highschool.
But my point in this is, what’s the point in hiding from the truth just because it might upset you.
I know it’s alot different, but it’s the same principle: in the movie The Matrix, they could’ve just lived within this fake world, where they were happy enough.
But, they’d rather live in a world of constant war, simply because it’s whats real.
I agree it’s important to learn from our mistakes. But I don’t see what specific thing can be learnt from doing a bit about it in school. Now, if you study history extensively, then you could probably learn things about how other countries could have acted better, and if a similar situation crops up in the future maybe it could be prevented.
But I can’t see how learning about the Holocaust in school has helped me or the world in any way. If I work for the government, say in the Foreign office, then would be the time to learn from it.
Why is the Holocaust singled out? Arguably there have been worse atrocities in modern history. Why don’t we learn about all the mistakes of the past, why just this one?
Whereas I think that the most important thing is to be happy, whether it’s the truth or not.
I was lucky to study in an independent, alternative school, in which this kind of thing is taught—the holocaust (about which not only did we have classes, but also watched videos, saw photos and read Maus), the independence of Algeria, the history of Congo, the apartheid, the atrocities committed by the Japanese during WWII, the independence of Panama (and all the other things the Yanks did during the 19th and 20th centuries to break as many moral rules as possible), the creation of Pakistan etc.
Sure, some people were traumatized. Some people had nervous breakdowns at some of the spicy periods. Many of my friends are cynic or nihilists, and I myself feel I’m often cynical and pragmatic because I kind of learnt in school that humankind is probably not worth any mercy, because I believe we’re the most unfortunate disaster that happened to ourselves.
But these things must be taught. The only way we’ll ever have a shot at eventually living in a good society is if we learn the errors from the past, so that we won’t repeat them.
i dunno though, i mean if muslims don’t wanna learn about the holocaust because they deny it, then if muslims learn about it outside school, say from other muslims who deny the holocaust, then it would kind of be a lost cause.
I’m SO sick of all of the “political correctness”. The whole “You can’t say “Merry Christmas”” thing and the “Winter Holiday” ticks me off to no end, but this is FAR worse. You can’t leave out history because it’s “inconvient”. 
Yes, the Holocaust was horrible, yes, no one really likes to think about the unspeakable things those people involved went through, but it is a FACT! You can’t please everyone all of the time, it’s just not possible. Example; I don’t believe in Evolution, does that mean I shouldn’t ever have to take Science because it’s riddled with Evolutionary theories and it might “offend” me? Your answer would be; “Heck no!” In fact, now that I think of it, if you’re going to take away teaching about the Holcaust you might as well take away teaching about Evolution as well to be “fair”. Wouldn’t muslims and pretty much everyone else who believes in Creationism get “offended” by insinuating that God doesn’t exsist? What about them? Shouldn’t we cater to them as well? Why don’t we also get rid of math, I know lots of people, (including myself,) who are “offended” by math. How about English? What if there are some non-English speaking students who are “offended” that you aren’t speaking their language? You might say, “Well, those examples are ridiculous!” And you would be right, that’s the point. This whole thing is insane… 
