Religion Doesn't Excuse Ignorance
Steve Shives
April 25, 2007
It’s not often that I agree with Newt Gingrich on something, so this past Tuesday afternoon was a rare occasion. I was driving back to my girlfriend’s after a class when I heard one of Gingrich’s “Winning the Future” segments on the radio. He reported that teachers in the U.K. had begun to drop the Holocaust from history lessons for fear of offending Muslim students, some of whom hold religious beliefs that include holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.
I had to research the story for myself, since I wouldn’t put it past Newt to just make the whole thing up to give him a reason to pontificate. (Doesn’t he write those alternative history novels where the Confederacy wins the American Civil War? Talk about wish fulfillment.) Sure enough, Newt was right. The Daily Mail of London is one of several websites and publications to report the story: “[A Department of Education and Skills study] found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.”
The story goes on to say that the 11th century Crusades—where Christian and Muslim armies fought repeatedly over control of Jerusalem and other sites held sacred by both faiths—is also a difficult topic, since Muslim students may hear very different things in the classroom and the mosque. The study is quoted as citing one school that taught the holocaust despite opposition from Muslim students, but avoided teaching the Crusades to 11-14-year-olds “because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”[1]
Newt described this pejoratively as “unbelievable,” and he was right. Any teacher who edits a syllabus—especially for a history course—based on what might offend some students is not doing his or her job. Certainly no service is done to the students by allowing them to remain ignorant of the facts.
Religious diversity is a good thing, and the beliefs of individual students should be respected whenever possible, but the occurrence of the Holocaust is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of history. If you believe the Holocaust never took place, you are wrong. It doesn’t matter if you learned it from an imam—you’re still wrong. You’re not wrong because Allah is a false god or because the Koran isn’t as inerrant as you’ve been told (though there are extremely convincing cases for both); you’re wrong because the historical record says you are. The Holocaust happened. It was real. The concentration camps really existed, the gas chambers and the ovens really worked, all those people really died, and your anti-Semitic faith has nothing to say about it. You’re wrong. Whoever taught you is wrong.
History courses should be about education, not reinforcing the beliefs of the students. If a student’s religious instructors have given him or her the wrong idea about an event in history, the misconception should be corrected by the history teacher, not ignored for fear of offending the student. False beliefs, whether or not they originate from religion, warrant no respect in the classroom. Teaching the truth is the highest and most important duty of any educator. Falsehoods, myths, misconceptions are the enemies and should be corrected, debunked, and destroyed. Otherwise, there is no point to sending the kids to school in the first place.
Why require that children be educated at all if their minds aren’t going to be engaged, their preconceived notions of the world challenged, their base of knowledge expanded? If a Muslim student is exposed to the evidence for the Holocaust for the first time and is convinced, good! If it also leads him or her to question some of the other things being taught in the mosque, so much the better! Discrediting religion is not and should not be the primary goal of a history class, but it can be the unavoidable result of a well-conducted course.
What goes for history goes as well for science. The attempts in the U.S. by fundamentalist Christians to force creationism into science classrooms are bad enough—imagine if science teachers suddenly decided to avoid mentioning evolution, the age of the Earth, or the origin of the universe altogether for fear of upsetting some Christian students who had been taught in Sunday School that Earth was created 6,000 years ago by the hand of God himself. Like Holocaust denial, young Earth creationism is wrong—not because it emerged from religious doctrine, but because it is demonstrably false. Science classes must not merely avoid teaching the wrong thing; they must confidently and courageously teach the right thing.
Freedom of religion is a vital and basic human right, and it should be respected. That doesn’t mean schools should allow students to remain ignorant when the tenets of their faith contradict reality. If your religion tells you the Holocaust never happened, it’s your right to believe that. It’s your right to be ignorant. It’s your right to be wrong. But that’s a decision you need to make for yourself, not one the schools should make for you.
I had to research the story for myself, since I wouldn’t put it past Newt to just make the whole thing up to give him a reason to pontificate. (Doesn’t he write those alternative history novels where the Confederacy wins the American Civil War? Talk about wish fulfillment.) Sure enough, Newt was right. The Daily Mail of London is one of several websites and publications to report the story: “[A Department of Education and Skills study] found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.”
The story goes on to say that the 11th century Crusades—where Christian and Muslim armies fought repeatedly over control of Jerusalem and other sites held sacred by both faiths—is also a difficult topic, since Muslim students may hear very different things in the classroom and the mosque. The study is quoted as citing one school that taught the holocaust despite opposition from Muslim students, but avoided teaching the Crusades to 11-14-year-olds “because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”[1]
Newt described this pejoratively as “unbelievable,” and he was right. Any teacher who edits a syllabus—especially for a history course—based on what might offend some students is not doing his or her job. Certainly no service is done to the students by allowing them to remain ignorant of the facts.
Religious diversity is a good thing, and the beliefs of individual students should be respected whenever possible, but the occurrence of the Holocaust is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of history. If you believe the Holocaust never took place, you are wrong. It doesn’t matter if you learned it from an imam—you’re still wrong. You’re not wrong because Allah is a false god or because the Koran isn’t as inerrant as you’ve been told (though there are extremely convincing cases for both); you’re wrong because the historical record says you are. The Holocaust happened. It was real. The concentration camps really existed, the gas chambers and the ovens really worked, all those people really died, and your anti-Semitic faith has nothing to say about it. You’re wrong. Whoever taught you is wrong.
History courses should be about education, not reinforcing the beliefs of the students. If a student’s religious instructors have given him or her the wrong idea about an event in history, the misconception should be corrected by the history teacher, not ignored for fear of offending the student. False beliefs, whether or not they originate from religion, warrant no respect in the classroom. Teaching the truth is the highest and most important duty of any educator. Falsehoods, myths, misconceptions are the enemies and should be corrected, debunked, and destroyed. Otherwise, there is no point to sending the kids to school in the first place.
Why require that children be educated at all if their minds aren’t going to be engaged, their preconceived notions of the world challenged, their base of knowledge expanded? If a Muslim student is exposed to the evidence for the Holocaust for the first time and is convinced, good! If it also leads him or her to question some of the other things being taught in the mosque, so much the better! Discrediting religion is not and should not be the primary goal of a history class, but it can be the unavoidable result of a well-conducted course.
What goes for history goes as well for science. The attempts in the U.S. by fundamentalist Christians to force creationism into science classrooms are bad enough—imagine if science teachers suddenly decided to avoid mentioning evolution, the age of the Earth, or the origin of the universe altogether for fear of upsetting some Christian students who had been taught in Sunday School that Earth was created 6,000 years ago by the hand of God himself. Like Holocaust denial, young Earth creationism is wrong—not because it emerged from religious doctrine, but because it is demonstrably false. Science classes must not merely avoid teaching the wrong thing; they must confidently and courageously teach the right thing.
Freedom of religion is a vital and basic human right, and it should be respected. That doesn’t mean schools should allow students to remain ignorant when the tenets of their faith contradict reality. If your religion tells you the Holocaust never happened, it’s your right to believe that. It’s your right to be ignorant. It’s your right to be wrong. But that’s a decision you need to make for yourself, not one the schools should make for you.
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