This was in the Oz today: British teachers are allegedly avoiding teaching their students about the Holocaust and the Crusades because this might offend Muslim sensibilities:

These kids are told at home or by Muslim preachers that the Holocaust never happened. Teachers aren’t challenging that misinformation, they’re shutting up so as not to disturb a world view based on lies.

Startling, to say the least. However, as this blog suggests, the instant anti-Muslim spin put on the story by the piece in the Australian is quite misleading. As well as dramatically overstating the situation, it turns out that in fact it is a case of schools wishing to avoid conflict with religious students generally who reported they were altering their teaching, including altering teaching to avoid upsetting (drum roll please) yes, Christian kiddies too:

A third school found itself ’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’.

And what did the study actually say? Well, it was actually about strategies for teaching students about history in the face of misconceptions about historical events:

Addressing emotive and controversial history effectively requires an understanding of student misconceptions. Without this awareness of misconceptions about events such as the Holocaust, appropriate learning strategies are rendered impossible. Students often bring misconceptions and stereotypes with them.

In other words, unless you are aware of the bias students may bring with them into the classroom, you can’t teach them history properly. So really, this study is about helping to overcome the problem of students believing falsehoods or inaccurate versions of key events, and goes so far as to say that:

Teachers also need to be encouraged, rather than penalised, for encouraging debate and risk-taking in the classroom and schools given support when facing challenges from parents and communities.

So, to review: teachers are struggling when teaching history to students from religious (and it does seem to be only religious) backgrounds who are pre-conditioned to believe lies or half truths about significant historical events. This includes both Muslim and Christian students. There is an identified need for institutionalised support for teachers and schools to enable them to teach history accurately and properly in the face of pressure from religious communities or parents.

However, none of this suits The Australian’s preferred “history wars” world view (or that of other conservative media outlets around the world), which is that fundamentalist Muslims and left-wing teachers are secretly colluding to create some sort of post-modern version of history where the holocaust is denied and radical Muslims appeased.

Given the almost total lack of accuracy in the reporting, however, perhaps they should spend some time working on reporting the present accurately before they worry about the past.

UPDATE: The US seems to have its own approach to teaching kids about the Holocaust – divide them into ‘Germans’ and ‘Jews’ and let them oppress each other: link (thanks to KO).