April Fool’s day has come and gone, but at least one crazy story remains real: schools are dropping History lessons on the Holocaust and the Crusades for fear of offending Muslim pupils. A Department for Skills and Education report revealed that a school in northern England avoided the Holocaust for fear of confronting ‘anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial’ among some pupils, while another avoided the Crusades because ‘their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was being taught in some local mosques’.
This is the politics of multiculturalism taken to its most relativistic and dangerous limits. The pernicious notion that all cultures and beliefs are equal and should be elevated above criticism in order to promote social harmony naturally translates into a degraded relativism where there is no one truth whose foundations cannot be assailed on cultural grounds. Because some -in practice, probably very few indeed- Muslim pupils are peddled propaganda at home or at the mosque, everyone learning history at these schools is denied the opportunity to learn about these important historical events is not only reprehensible, but also potentially dangerous, as those children who are fed lies will never see them challenged in an open environment.
The stupidity of such practices, particularly at a time when bleating about ‘Holocaust denial’ has reached epic proportions, is astounding. Here we have schools practically guaranteeing ignorance about the Holocaust, and thereby creating fertile ground for denial to take root, simply because of their own cowardice in trying to avoid a clash of cultures in the classroom. Education should be challenging. It should open up new worlds for students and, yes, shock them out of narrow-minded prejudices and encourage them to engage critically with what they encounter. Otherwise, what is the point? We might as well leave kids at home and let them simply parrot whatever they overhear. Or invite religious organisations to take over education wholesale. Ah, but I forget: that policy is already being implemented.
Lee Jones
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I admit to a certain bias; being a woman I cannot extend my respect or appreciation to any opinion or culture, no matter how sublime, which involves in my marginalization. The strongest advocates of multi-culturalism are usually people not directly affected by the practices that some of us are illiberal enough to object to. It is easy for a white Western male, for instance, to condone in the name of multiculturalism, the genital mutilation of black women. People can believe and even advocate anything they want, but some practices cannot be tolerated. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the practice of "suttee" were to be revived in the UK. Or, perhaps, ritual cannibalism . . .?
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