Bullying An Historical Perspecitve Is History Repeating Itself?

A Government backed study funded by the Department for Education and Skills located in the United Kingdom has revealed that schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils. The study found that some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

Can schools be that ignorant? The horrific events that occurred during World War II that involved the extermination of more than six million Jews cannot be denied. An entire race of people was bullied by an absolute megalomaniac, Adolph Hitler, who attempted to wipe out the entire Jewish race/religion. The events started with the denial of Jews' basic rights, led to segregated housing in ghettos, destruction of their businesses, and ultimately being sent to concentration camps where they were starved, tortured, used as guinea pigs in cruel medical experiments, worked to death, and gassed to death. Based on this recent study, the Jewish population is in imminent danger of being bullied again, first through the denial that the Holocaust never happened, and then by allowing Muslims to bully school systems into submission and remove these historical events from their curriculum.

The bullying of a system is not uncommon, and school systems fall prey to this type of tyranny all the time. When I was a school administrator, I remember one parent complaining that her son could not wear a hat in school. The school district actually gave in and changed written school policy. The new policy allowed the students to wear hats in school, but not in classrooms. This was an instance where bullying changed an entire district policy that had worked for everyone else, but not for them.

In this instance Muslim students/parents are "offended" by teachings about the Holocaust. They are bullying school systems, and often individual teachers into not including the Holocaust in their curriculum. A fifth grade teacher in New Jersey recently told me about an account of just this. When she was beginning her unit on the Holocaust last year she was shocked when one of her students, who was Islamic and from Pakistan said, "Why are we learning about the Holocaust? My mom told me it's a big lie, and it never happened." What's actually happening here is that we are being bullied into submission by a group of people, and that bullying is causing us to rearrange an entire history curriculum because of the fear of fallout.

Parents concerned about their own agenda and special interest groups use bullying as a means of instilling fear and intimidation to coerce school superintendents and board members to meet their unreasonable demands. The result: schools and teachers, in particular are buckling even though this is not good for the population at large.

In many instances the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I worked as administrator in one school district that provided a room to all Muslim students so that they could pray everyday for 30 days during the Muslim holiday Ramadan. In the same district teachers of the Jewish faith requested time off to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Their request was denied and they were docked pay when they decided to take the day off. In the very same district a Christian teacher was given a written reprimand for reading his bible during his lunch hour. He was told he violated separation of church and state. But, provision of a room to pray during school hours is also a violation of the same constitutional amendment. The district chose to take the path of least resistance for fear of the bullying that might occur had they stood up and enforced the first amendment.

What group has the power to decide if certain events in history ever occurred? No group should. But, in this instance Muslims are using bullying tactics to instill fear and intimidation into schools and society in order to eliminate facts that they don't like. History happened; you can't change it because you're offended by it.

Hitler used his power in his almost successful attempt to wipe the race of the Jewish people off the face of the earth. The world pretty much stood by during the Holocaust and watched while this was happening. It is inevitable that history will repeat itself if we allow ourselves to be bullied into submission by Muslims into not teaching a vital part of history, the Holocaust. This bullying must stop. We cannot change history because a group of people is offended by it.

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