"Don't be shtupid,
Be a schmarty,
Come and join
the Nazi Party!"
Posted on 12/28/2005 3:21:48 PM PST by presidio9
History lessons for British teenagers place too much focus on Adolf Hitler, according to a new report produced by the government’s curriculum watchdog.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority annual report found that as a result pupils aged 14 and over were not getting a proper overview of history.
The report stated: “There has been a gradual narrowing and ‘Hitlerisation’ of post-14 history. The option choices made by schools and colleges in GCSE and AS/A level mean that the content of post-14 history continues to be dominated by topics such as the Tudors and the 20th century dictatorships.”
QCA Chief Executive Ken Boston insisted more schools should spend time teaching topics from post-war Germany, such as the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, recognised the need for schools to focus on a range of historical subjects but said: “We must not underestimate the importance of teaching about the Holocaust and the Nazi era”.
She continued: “Of course there is a fascination with Hitler as the man behind the most horrific event in our living history but when teaching about the Holocaust, we must remember that Hitler was just one aspect of it.
“We need to remind people that all the perpetrators were human beings capable of making the choice between good and evil. Teaching about the Nazi era not only educates about the past but also acts as a warning for the future.”
I think the British schools are reluctant to teach about the failures of Neville Chamberlain.
There's only 2 degrees of separation between say, good hygiene and genocide... especially when dems have anything to say.
“We must not underestimate the importance of teaching about the Holocaust and the Nazi era”.
Agreed but when do we start teaching about the 100 million lost to Lenin, Stalin, Mao?
Leftists throw around the words "fascism" and "genocide" like they're going out of style. They need to watch it, lest they dilute the meanings of those words sufficiently to make them lose their (admittedly well-deserved) emotional punch.
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
And that is what is reflected in the teaching of British history.
And why shouldn't it be?
Let's give credit where it's due: Hitler was a racist political leftists. His national socialism was about big government and nanny-ism for a chosen nationality. Liberals just love to hang Hitler around our necks, but the only thing that he really had in common with us was a belief in a strong military.
Same for the History Channel.
"Don't be shtupid,
Be a schmarty,
Come and join
the Nazi Party!"
Formerly known as "The Hitler Channel?"
If you have digital cable, all your favorite shows are still available on "The Military channel," and "History International," both of which are owned by "Hist."
I'm still trying to figure out how "Modern Marvels" is such a staple of history. I enjoy the show, but they need more than that and a few "In Search Of" re-runs about Stonehenge if their mantra is "history."
So true.
American History in the leftist public school system (what little, if any, history is taught), is also relunctant to teach about Scumbag's pacifism.
pacifism n. Such opposition demonstrated by refusal to participate in military action.
Scumbag refused to engage al-Qaeda, even after multiple attacks and even a declaration of war on America by bin Laden. What public school system in America will teach this? Same goes for British schools. I would be interested in any British members to tell us what their history courses in their schools teach the students about Neveille Chamberlain.
History? You will never get an accurate teaching of history in the public school system nor in universities.
While Chamberlain took a weekend in the country, Hitler took a country in the weekend.
Let's see.. they are talking about reducing what is being taught about the man who bombed London and try to kill these kids grandparents 60 years ago...
Thereby forfeiting the debate on a technicality.
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." -Karl Marx
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Does this mean that NARAL is attempting genocide against the United States?
Karl Marx wins a Kewpie Doll for having a moment of clarity!
I thought this would refer to the Hildabeast's 2008 platform.
"It's our nature: Human beings like success but they hate successful people."
-Carrot Top
Remember history or repeat it...their choice.
The ironic thing is that they focus on world war 2 and the holocaust, but the average teenager in the UK still has no clue what happened.
“We must not underestimate the importance of teaching about the Holocaust and the Nazi era”.
Agreed but when do we start teaching about the 100 million lost to Lenin, Stalin, Mao?
AMEN BROTHER! Shouldn't the 100 + million victims of communism be collectively referred to as "the" holocaust?
There is a major problem that liberals have with Nazism.
It is an evil ideology, as are the adherents.
Liberals operate on the concept that there is no such thing as evil, everything is relative. What is "evil" is usually not really so, it only SEEMS that way to someone looking at it from a different viewpoint. To liberals, everything "evil" is a result of some kind of "root cause" or the result of some defect in social engineering.
If we all talk it out and sing "Kumbaya" with a little human kindness, all evil will disappear and we can live in peace.
They simply refuse to believe that some of the human blanks that are stamped from the mold could be defective and can be fixed by an application of human love.
They will believe it up to the day they are subjected to real evil, like that unfortunate liberal guy who was kidnapped over in Iraq by evil people. He is saying to his kidnappers "But...but...but...I'm on YOUR side...I believe in the same things YOU do...I LOVE you guys..."
"Does this mean that NARAL is attempting genocide against the United States?"
Yes!
Yeah. Funny how all those people killed in the name of Communism somehow have escaped having a voice?
How does that work? Hmmm....couldn't be because many of the same people who say they have the task of GIVING those people a voice are actually sympathetic to the Communists who took their lives, could it?
"I think the British schools are reluctant to teach about the failures of Neville Chamberlain."
They should to teach about the failures of Chamberlian and the sucesses if Churchill.
Well, at least these teenagers aren't trying to ERASE or REVISE history...
unlike the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc....
"Just don't mention the war!"
What do you expect?
He was a typical liberal who personified liberalism, and then failed miserably.
Churchill was conservatism personified.
That makes it easier to indoctrinate kids into liberalism if you ignore its biggest failure, I had teachers in college who actually admire Chamberlain, and think his timing was bad and proceed to defend his failings.
The people who fly airplanes into our buildings: Why do they hate us?
Gaah. No kidding. Thomas Friedman should be drawn and quartered/
Ummm? I have to take issue with that. Churchill was a far more idiosyncratic figure then you seem to give him credit for, and certainly was not conservatism personified in any practical, policy sense that people here would agree with. A couple of quotes;
"I am on the side of those who think that a greater collective sentiment should be introduced into the State and the municipalities. I should like to see the State undertaking new functions." (Dundee, 1908)
"the cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the left-out millions"
(On the Tories) "the Party of the rich against the poor, the classes and their dependents against the masses, of the lucky, the wealthy, the happy, and the strong, against the left-out and the shut-out millions of the weak and poor."
Indeed, as President of the Board of Trade in the 1900's Churchill was responsible alongside Lloyd-George for the creation of the first British welfare system- not the most classically conservative achievement to have to one's name. Then there's the fact that it was his government in 1940-1945 that laid the foundations of the welfare state- a point that often is easily forgotten.
There are other aspects of Churchill's political thought that show his idiosyncracies- His support for a "United Sates of Europe" for one, and his belief that the best way to combat the menace of Communism was a massive expansion of governmental intervention on the 'Bismarckian' model.
All of which is not to deny his great talents, and so on. But it is rather frustrating to see a fascinatingly unique political stance be glossed over in favour of blanket statements.
FWIW I'm of the opinion that Chamberlain isn't one of history's greatest monsters or some byword for cowardice- when it comes down to it he was a mediocrity who did enough to save Britain from disaster but not enough to remove the problem entirely. I think Churchill's comment on him "seeing Europe as a kind of greater Birmingham" is pretty spot on really.
Churchill and Chamberlain are not two archetypes, tempting though that reading of history is- they were complex characters who, incidentally as Conservative MPs both signed up to the same election manifesto in 1936. The shades of grey are what make history interesting, it's silly in my view to try and impose a sort of dualistic narrative on things.
On the issue of changing the cirriculum- quite right too. As somebody who relatively recently had to endure History GCSE and A-Level, Hitler and the 2nd world war is utterly ubiquitous- and if it's not that it's America between the wars. Schools these days only seem to teach two periods from the age of 13, the Inter-war period and for some reason the Tudors.
A bit of variety would be nice... Rome perhaps? Georgian Britain is entertaining as well. Even better is the Empire- swashbuckling, interesting and entertaining stuff that gives a real sense of how Modern Britain was formed.
I'd have given my eye-teeth to do something fun like the White Rajah of Borneo or the Indian Mutiny instead of repeated discussions on the Volstead act...
Right on!
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