[N_Fiddledog]

sandorski sandorski:

You really should take your Meds and Read your links.

"A group of teachers and the district’s educational services division created the assignment, but Interim Rialto Unified Supt. Mohammad Z. Islam was not aware of its topic until school officials received an email about it, Jafri said."

And you should rely less on recycled snot-talk, and more on taking your own advice of reading.

I not only read that sentiment from the link, I quoted it and commented on it.

I called it apologism, and suggested it was influenced by ideology that ignored the larger question its own supposed discovery claimed.

It says "a group of teachers and the district's educational services division" was to blame.

Now break a habit, and stop and think for a moment. Why are we accepting the idea this is a superior excuse to the one that says "Mohammad did it"?

The crime remains. Now it's a group who are responsible for the racist curriculum, and the district was allowing it. The ADL investigated further and suggested Common Core was the originating perp. That would make sense. It would all add up.

This "group of teachers" (borrowing the lefty rag's terminology) were able to maneuver within the behemoth of a new federal progressive policy called Common Core, and manipulate the system where the weak spot of a new and possibly favorable bureaucrat was guarding the gates so to speak.

Go ahead call them "a group of teachers" if you like. It doesn't excuse what they did. They were racists who interjected racism into curriculum. Calling the perps "a group of teacher" and the suggestion it was an exploitation of Common Core only makes you wonder how wide spread this sort of thing has become now under this new federal, Progressive, education scheme.

[N_Fiddledog]

Oh also, I see we've now spun off to some sort insanity that says it's OK to teach holocaust denial to school kids if you do it right.

First of all, bullshit. Second of all, more bullshit, and third , "OK, what is Mohammad and the school district apologizing for now, then?"

[andyt]

fifeboy fifeboy:

andyt andyt:

People are hurt by teaching evolution as well. Or climate change.

They are?

You don't follow the news, how Christians are upset at the teaching of evolution? You don't read this forum about the fighting about climate change?

[andyt]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Oh also, I see we've now spun off to some sort insanity that says it's OK to teach holocaust denial to school kids if you do it right.

First of all, bullshit. Second of all, more bullshit, and third , "OK, what is Mohammad and the school district apologizing for now, then?"

Bullshit is right. Nobody's teaching holocaust denial, except in your own mind. I guess they are teaching that holocaust denial exists, to those students who don't know. But the students going thru this exercise will be in a much better position to argue against this pov than ones that have just been force fed.

They're apologizing because as so often happens, the people who complain win. We could ask the same question, with the same implication as you give it here, when people apologize to Muslims for some perceived slur. Get it?

[BRAH]

Newsbot Newsbot:

Title: School district asks students: Was the Holocaust real'
Category: Strange
Posted By: N_Fiddledog
Date: 2014-05-06 13:22:30

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

Same with global warming - just shove the "truth" down their throat or help them evaluate it critically.

Or that the Earth revolves around the Sun! Let them work that one out for themselves too, instead of relying on all those books and things.

[andyt]

You love to talk about false arguments, yet here you are. Read what Sandorski wrote. I believe books or at a\least articles were mentioned.

[fifeboy]

andyt andyt:

fifeboy fifeboy:

andyt andyt:

People are hurt by teaching evolution as well. Or climate change.

They are?

You don't follow the news, how Christians are upset at the teaching of evolution? You don't read this forum about the fighting about climate change?

Ok, there's hurt and then there is HURT.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

If they want to develop critical thinking skills for children using history, there are many other historical events where the details are actually questionable.
For example, Hannibal's rampage in Southern and Western Europe. Ramses "total victory" at the battle of Kadesh, or any other historical events where there's only a single source providing the details.

[N_Fiddledog]

Let's repost one of these articles Andy so you know what you're talking about, because frankly at this point, I don't think you do. This is the one from the local TV station.

$1:

The Rialto school district planned to revise an eighth-grade assignment that raised red flags by asking students to consider arguments about whether the Holocaust — the systematic killing by the Nazis of some 6 million Jews and millions of others — was not an “actual event” but instead a “propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain.”
rialtounified

File photo of a Rialto Unified School District building. (Credit: KTLA)

In a statement released Monday, a spokeswoman for the Rialto Unified School District said an academic team was meeting to revise the assignment.

Interim Superintendent Mohammad Z. Islam was set to talk with administrators to “assure that any references to the holocaust ‘not occurring’ will be stricken on any current or future Argumentative Research assignments,” a statement from district spokeswoman Syeda Jafri read.

“The holocaust should be taught in classrooms with sensitivity and profound consideration to the victims who endured the atrocities committed,” Jafri said.

The English/Language Arts assignment, first reported Sunday by the San Bernardino Sun and provided to KTLA by the newspaper, asked students to write an argumentative essay about the Holocaust describing “whether or not you believe this was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”
rialto

An eighth-grade assignment, shown, raised questions from a Jewish civil rights group. (Document and photo credit: San Bernardino Sun)

The 18-page assignment instructions included three sources that students were told to use, including one that stated gassings in concentration camps were a “hoax” and that no evidence has shown Jews died in gas chambers.

“With all this money at stake for Israel, it is easy to comprehend why this Holocaust hoax is so secretly guarded,” states the source, which is a attributed to a webpage on biblebelievers.org.au. “In whatever way you can, please help shatter this profitable myth. It is time we stop sacrificing America’s welfare for the sake of Israel and spend our hard-earned dollars on Americans.”

The other sources were from the websites history.com and about.com.

In an interview, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, noted a section in the assignment that stated Anne Frank was a fraud.

“Pedagogically, socially, morally — an F,” Cooper said of the assignment.

The Los Angeles-area chapter of the Anti-Defamation League contacted the school district last week, saying the assignment was dangerous “given the large volume of misinformation” on Holocaust-denial websites.

“It is ADL’s general position that an exercise asking students to question whether the Holocaust happened has no academic value; it only gives legitimacy to the hateful and anti-Semitic promoters of Holocaust Denial,” read an email to the school district from ADL Associate Regional Director Matthew Friedman.

The ADL posted a statement, including the quotes from Friedman, on its blog on Monday.

“ADL does not have any evidence that the assignment was given as part of a larger, insidious, agenda,” the blog post read. “Rather, the district seems to have given the assignment with an intent, although misguided, to meet Common Core standards relating to critical learning skills.”

Senator Norma J. Torres, who represents Rialto in the California State Legislature, issued the following statement.

“Giving school children an assignment that asks them to question whether the holocaust occurred is inappropriate. These actions are insensitive to the millions who lost loved ones and to the many people around the world who have no tolerance for discrimination and genocide. I urge the Rialto Unified School District to use better judgment in the future and to take immediate action to put an end to this controversy and the damage it is causing to the district’s reputation.”

Rialto Unified, which educates about 26,000 students in a San Bernardino County city about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, did not receive complaints about the assignment from parents, teachers or administrators, Jafri told the Sun.

Since media accounts of the assignment were published, school district officials received death threats during a phone call from a man who said he was nearby, Jafri said.

The school district initially defended the assignment, with Jafri saying it was meant to engage students in “critical thinking.”

The district’s “CORE team” planned meet to revise the assignment, Jafri said in her statement provided to KTLA on Monday.

“This was a mistake. It should be corrected. It will be corrected,” Jafri said in an interview. “We all know it was real. The Holocaust is not a hoax. … I believe our classroom teachers are teaching it with sensitivity and compassion.”

The Common Core State Standards, adopted by most U.S. states including California, include writing standards that seek to have students make arguments and defend their answers based on texts they have read, among other goals.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

You love to talk about false arguments, yet here you are. Read what Sandorski wrote. I believe books or at a\least articles were mentioned.

I read what he wrote. I read what you wrote.

He is discussing influencing people's ability to discern logical arguments through informed debate, you are assuming society promotes blind obedience. He has a point. You are wrong.

The Holocaust happened. To me, treating holocaust deniers as being credible only gives them some leverage that their claims have the possibility of truth. Teach kids about history, then show them the rants of the holocaust deniers. Then they can have the tools to see bullshit in it's many forms and detect it before they fall victim to it.

The whole point of where we have become as a society stems from our ability to write down things and pass that information off to future generations so that they don't have to rediscover things the way we did. We wrote down our observations and we teach them the findings of our ancestors that the world orbits the sun, so they don't have to go through the hundreds of years of ignorance it took for us to learn that.

Here are two films from the amazing BBC 1970's series "World at War" that used actual archive film to document the World Wars for future generations. Here are two parts that document the Holocaust.

They are long, and hard to watch, but I suggest that anyone willing to give Holocaust deniers the time of day should watch them. The final minutes I will always remember. The fields where the ashes were dumped filled a swamp to 10 feet thick of human ash.





There a number of other parts of the documentary that didn't make the final cut. Lots out there.

[N_Fiddledog]

So Andy, you would like this, 'gassings in concentration camps were a “hoax” and no evidence has shown Jews died in gas chambers.

“With all this money at stake for Israel, it is easy to comprehend why this Holocaust hoax is so secretly guarded,” introduced into an argument for 8th graders led by who knows who, but the fact that it seemed like a good idea to somebody in charge offers eventual probabilities. The fact that those in charge are now furiously backpedalling doesn't influence your opinion it was a great idea. And you would like to be taken seriously?

Like I said...you're talking crap. There's no other explanation.

[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

Same with global warming - just shove the "truth" down their throat or help them evaluate it critically.

Or that the Earth revolves around the Sun! Let them work that one out for themselves too, instead of relying on all those books and things.

You know what, I was taught that at one time people believed the earth revolves around the sun and why people might think that, alongside with proofs that it's the other way around. Nobody died of shock that the former was mentioned. Same with flat earth ideas, nobody demanded they not be mentioned.


The closest analogy is evolution. It's good to hear the arguments that anti-evolutionists make so you can examine the evidence for evolution instead of just swallowing it as truth. Same applies to the holocaust. There should not be topics that are off limits for critical discussion.

[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

You love to talk about false arguments, yet here you are. Read what Sandorski wrote. I believe books or at a\least articles were mentioned.

I read what he wrote. I read what you wrote.

He is discussing influencing people's ability to discern logical arguments through informed debate, you are assuming society promotes blind obedience. He has a point. You are wrong.

The Holocaust happened. To me, treating holocaust deniers as being credible only gives them some leverage that their claims have the possibility of truth. Teach kids about history, then show them the rants of the holocaust deniers. Then they can have the tools to see bullshit in it's many forms and detect it before they fall victim to it.

Nice two faced argument. Sandorski is right you say, yet he's saying that this project should have gone ahead, you want to censor it. Exactly what you say he's saying it the point - informed debate. With students supplied materials to do so. Nobody, anywhere, not the school, not Sandorski, not me said the deniers are credible. Better tho to to expose the kids to what the deniers say, and show them the material that refutes them, than making it taboo and just preaching holocaust denial wrong, just accept our word on it. It's you that seems to be promoting blind obedience here.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

andyt andyt:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

You love to talk about false arguments, yet here you are. Read what Sandorski wrote. I believe books or at a\least articles were mentioned.

I read what he wrote. I read what you wrote.

He is discussing influencing people's ability to discern logical arguments through informed debate, you are assuming society promotes blind obedience. He has a point. You are wrong.

The Holocaust happened. To me, treating holocaust deniers as being credible only gives them some leverage that their claims have the possibility of truth. Teach kids about history, then show them the rants of the holocaust deniers. Then they can have the tools to see bullshit in it's many forms and detect it before they fall victim to it.

Nice two faced argument. Sandorski is right you say, yet he's saying that this project should have gone ahead, you want to censor it. Exactly what you say he's saying it the point - informed debate. With students supplied materials to do so. Nobody, anywhere, not the school, not Sandorski, not me said the deniers are credible. Better tho to to expose the kids to what the deniers say, and show them the material that refutes them, than making it taboo and just preaching holocaust denial wrong, just accept our word on it. It's you that seems to be promoting blind obedience here.

Wrong. Your previous examples using science are exactly what critical thinking skills are good for(among other things obviously). Proving a concept is one thing, like gravity for instance. Long before Newton, several others had surmised the existence of some force that held everything together. What Newton did was mathematically prove it's existence by using math to show how it worked.

With the Holocaust, we don't have a "concept". We have an actual event witnessed by thousands of non-Jewish people and well documented not just with the Teutonic thoroughness of the Nazis, but by the US, British, Canadian and Russian militaries.
Even suggesting the Holocaust may not have happened would be akin to suggesting that the Sun may indeed revolve around the Earth. I have serious doubts you'll ever see a "Common Core" project asking kids to debate that.