A California school generated much controversy several months ago when students were assigned the task of writing a paper discussing whether the Holocaust even occurred. The district apologized profusely and of course everyone knows it happened. Right? Well, it looks like some students took the assignment seriously and now question whether the Holocaust even happened.
The L.A. Times reported back in May:
What started as an eighth-grade critical-thinking writing assignment has become a source of relentless controversy for Rialto school officials, who apologized profusely and publicly this week for asking that students consider whether the Holocaust was created for political gain or didn't happen at all...
The district said the assignment was meant to satisfy Common Core standards for critical thinking, but quickly pulled it and promised revisions. A spokeswoman called it a "bad mark" on the district's record.
"From the bottom of my heart, I feel sorry for this whole thing happening," said interim Supt. Mohammad Z. Islam (KF note: Shocker), adding that he accepted full responsibility for the incident.
Board President Joanne Gilbert said the project turned into a "horribly inappropriate assignment" due to a lack of internal checks and balances.
Students were asked in the 18-page assignment to research and write an argumentative essay about whether the Holocaust actually occurred or if it was "merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth."
The assignment asked students to interpret three sources, one of which describes the Holocaust and "The Diary of Anne Frank" as a hoax....
Students were not allowed to use the internet or the library for other sources. So there was a big fuss, they had a meeting, the district apologized, and lesson learned, right? Wrong. Apparently California has some really good public records laws (hint, hint) and one newspaper obtained a copy of the essays under a public records requests (oh, Nancy Loome, why don't you push for that change in the law?). The L.A. Daily News redacted the names but provided samples of some rather chilling responses. It reports:
Dozens of Rialto eighth-graders questioned whether the Holocaust occurred in essays written for an in-class assignment this spring.Now get ready for some quotes from the student essays:
Rialto Unified School District administrators, besieged by criticism after the assignment became public in May, claimed at the time that none of the students who completed the assignment questioned or denied the Holocaust, but a survey of the students’ work by this news organization found numerous examples of students expressing doubt or flatly denying that the Holocaust occurred.
“I believe the event was fake, according to source 2 the event was exhaggerated,” one student wrote. (Students’ and teachers’ original spelling and grammar are retained throughout this story.) “I felt that was strong enogh evidence to persuade me the event was a hoax.”
In some cases, students earned high marks and praise for arguing the Holocaust never occurred, with teachers praising their well-reasoned arguments:
“you did well using the evidence to support your claim,” the above student’s teacher wrote on his assignment.
The student received a grade of 23 points out of 30, with points marked off for not addressing counterclaims, capitalization and punctuation errors....
The complete archive of the essays was provided to the Los Angeles News Group in the form of 45 PDF files, some of which contain hundreds of pages of student assignments. An examination of the essays by newsroom staff found that at least 50 essays denied or doubted the Holocaust occurred. Even many students who agreed the Holocaust occurred said there were good reasons to believe it had not or that elements of the historical record were actually hoaxes.
The argument-style writing assignment was developed by district English Language Arts teachers and was coordinated by staff at the district headquarters level. It was linked to students reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” this spring....
To write the in-class essay, students were given printouts from About.com, History.com and Holocaust denial site BibleBelievers.org.au.
The claims made in the Holocaust denial handout were not specifically addressed by the other materials provided, apparently leading some students to conclude “The Diary of Anne Frank” was a hoax and that there is no evidence any Jewish people were gassed to death in German concentration camps. Article
They would have had to have killed 187 people an hour in order to kill 6 million people. Therefor it is impossible."Just a harmless little assignment. Read the actual essays below. They are rather enlightening.
If they would have even experimented these so-called gas chambers, the Nazis would have died also, so I do not believe in gas chambers. (They had ventilation systems.)
Based on the evidence from the source, it looks like the Holocaust was political propaganda.
As I read some articles, it seems more like a hoax.
There was no evidence or prove that there were gas chambers, and another reason that Anne Frank Diary was not real, it was a hoax.
This was fake because the Diary of Anne Frank was written with a ballpoint pen and those didn't exist.
Holocaust is a propaganda tool to Israel can make money for Jews.
A profitable hoax made by the Jews to obtain land, money, and power.
The Jews may have invented the story of the Holocaust for political or financial gain.
In case you don't think it existed, here is a post with vintage footage from the discovery of the camps. Earlier post on Holocaust.
28 comments:
This is disgusting.
we deserve our fate
by the same token (who has one of these tokens), it's easy to find books and articles written by yanks (who came South for a week or two) which hold out the fact (?) that lynchings were an every-day occurance in Southern states. There is much hyperbole in 'journalism' and history.
the east wind cometh....
While the ^^^ poster bloweth.
Rialto has 22% poverty. Think of the 'quality' of education in a "D" district--should we be surprised that someone thought this would go unnoticed?
I don't need to read or research to know the holocaust was real. My Dad was a combat engineer in the ETO in WWII. They raced into Germany in the Spring of 1945 and overran a concentration camp, complete with a huge set of ovens used to burn the bodies. There were storage bins with thousands of shoes and other clothing from the victims.
After the war, it was years before he could stand to be around grilled or barbequed meat without getting nauseous.
The only, and I mean ONLY, positive thing about this story is that this did not occur in Mississippi.
I well remember an assembly for seniors in our high school every year where we were shown films of the liberations of concentration camps and of the mass graves found in WWII.
The films included testimonies.
We also were given Nuremberg trial transcripts to study. We were given German documents on " The Final Solution" and camp records to see.
The Germans documented their actions extremely well!
The failure isn't in the assignment but in these educators not recognizing that critical thinking begins with being given the best available and unbiased sources of information.
Ann Frank's diary is not enough without the evidence of her existence, location and fate. And, even then, should not stand alone as the reason to conclude the Holocaust happened. It doesn't have to stand alone.
Unfortunately, we live in a time where people don't engage in critical thinking. People believe what someone else spoon feeds them.
No offense, KF, but I'll be checking to see if these children were really given only a the sources mention for their assignment or lazily just picked a few and instead were graded on not the sources picked but on how they reasoned from the sources they used.
The Civil War wasn't about slavery either.
I agree, 6:11, disgusting. The Holocaust was one of the most horrific things to ever occur. There has been a huge push over the last several years to try and say this horrible thing did not happen. How sick do you have to be to push that agenda?
Also, there are some horrific things happening around the world right now to Jewish people. Its blood curdling. Hamas and ISIS are trying to eliminate all Jewish people. Rallies and protests are violent. Signs and banners about "returning them to the ovens". Some countries in Europe have come forward and stated no more protests will be allowed.
Hamas and ISIS are also slowly killing all of the Christians in the middle east.
I honestly didn't think I would see anything like this in my lifetime. The level of pure evil--its just beyond anything I've ever seen.
And to any who may have had family members touched personally by the Holocaust--please accept my most sincere apologies for the disrespect this school has shown.
"The only, and I mean ONLY, positive thing about this story is that this did not occur in Mississippi. "
Small consolation, but I agree. My nephew moved from Yazoo City to near Los Angeles. On a trip back here in 10th grade he argued with me that San Francisco was too far north to be in California, and had to be in Oregon or Washington. He had great grades in the California public school he attended (this was pre-Common Core).
On another note, is anyone surprised a school district headed by a Muslim, teaching a bunch of Mexican kids (undoubtedly with a large number whose parents are here illegally), don't know jack-s**t about the Holocaust and America's role in ending it. Between virulent antisemitism and blind ignorance California is totally lost.
Actually, 9:39, the notion that the Civil War was about slavery has just come about in the last 50 years or so. Please do your own research, preferably reading the writings of historians of the time. You shouldn't put so much faith in your government issue education.
10:57 - That's an interesting statement because this is Mississippi's secession declaration:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
"Actually, 9:39, the notion that the Civil War was about slavery has just come about in the last 50 years or so."
Lost Cause much?
I never said we didn't have slaves. I said the war wasn't fought over slavery. No northern man at the time would charge a hill to free the slaves. Just like no poor southern man would charge a hill just so his rich counterparts could free his slaves. Also, please note that Lincoln didn't necessarily free the slaves. He freed the slaves in the Southern States (as a war strategy only). Slaves in the North (including those owned by Lincoln) were not freed until 1865. New Jersey simply referred to them as 'apprentices for life' and kept them around even longer.
People should never forget that history is written by whoever wins the war.
2:06pm - But you are wrong, because the war was fought over slavery, and that is why Mississippi seceded from the union.
Go away Donna. Nobody likes you.
All right. This post is about the Holocaust. I let all of you have your fun, now go refight the Civil War somewhere else.
To give you an idea of the level of anti-Semitism happening right now:
“France’s politicians and community leaders have criticised the “intolerable” violence against Paris’ Jewish community, after a pro-Palestinian rally led to the vandalizing and looting of Jewish businesses and the burning of cars. It is the third time in a week where pro-Palestinian activists have clashed with the city’s Jewish residents. On Sunday, locals reported chats of “Gas the Jews” and “Kill the Jews”, as rioters attacked businesses in the Sarcelles district, known as “little Jerusalem”. Manuel Valls, France’s prime minister said: “What happened in Sarcelles is intolerable. An attack on a synagogue and on a kosher shop is simply anti-Semitism. Nothing in France can justify this violence.”
The Times [of London] Europe Edition reports, Jewish shops set ablaze in Paris’s Little Jerusalem: He watched in horror as several hundred youths marched towards his synagogue chanting slogans that he had never thought would again be uttered in France. “They were shouting: ‘Death to Jews,’ and ‘Slit Jews’ throats’,” said David, a Jewish sound engineer who has lived in the multicultural Parisian suburb of Sarcelles for 49 years. “It took us back to 1938.”
At a Paris synagogue, the mob tried to break through the protective ring of Jewish supporters. Congregants watched in horror as protestors – many armed with knives, axes and broken bottles – stormed the building. The synagogue’s security guards rushed to keep out the intruders. For a few long moments, they fought alone; five sustained light injuries. Then they were relieved by police. The battle outside raged for hours. Another nearby synagogue was pelted with stones. “So we closed the synagogue and we asked everybody to stay inside until everything would be okay,” Monsieur Benhaim said. He heard the mob outside “all the time singing ‘Allah Akbar’ and ‘Kill the Jews’ Congregants were particularly concerned that police secure a nearby metro station, to stop them being attacked as they and their families made their way home at night.
Boston, MA
For the third time in eight days, Boston police were forced to intervene when a small group of student Israel supporters was swarmed by demonstrators screaming anti-Semitic epithets and initiating physical contact, said students involved in the incident…A handful of Jewish students with Israeli flags was surrounded by demonstrators shouting anti-Semitic epithets and – according to two of the students – a tense minute of “pushing and shoving.” Among other things, the shouts included “Jews back to Birkenau” and “Drop dead, you Zionazi whores.” During a gathering outside the Boston Public Library on Thursday evening, police had to protect some from what one called “hundreds of people shouting ‘Allah is great.’”
KF - why did you spike my comment about a Muslim superintendent teaching a bunch of Mexicans History and getting this part wrong?
Was it because I included an off-topic anecdote showing how much worse California public schools are in general compared to Mississippi?
I don't believe everything that is put out about the extermination of Jews. I believe a huge number of them were killed but so were gypsies, mentally ill and physically disabled people. I think the number killed is probably greatly exaggerated for political gain. I'm not anti-Semitic in fact I hope Israel turns Gaza into a parking lot.
9:39, the guy who quips about slavery and Lincoln's War, is the perfect example of a mush mind who has no ability for critical thinking. It's so easy to buy into an errant theory if it helps validate your personal prejudices and beliefs.
Islam is a religion of peace. Muslims want to peacefully slit jewish throats and peacefully gas jews.
7:50 is correct. And we also must get over ourselves and sit down in peace with radical islamists and gain visceral understanding of their plight and goals for their families. The have the same hopes and desires for their children as we do for ours.
The only difference is they want to slit the throats of all who disagree with their extremism whilst dancing in the streets as the blood flows to its lowest level at a point of coagulation somewhere in a gutter south of town. Then it can be scooped up after six days and fed to their goats and dogs.
I see I am a bit late commenting but I used to be engaged to a Jewish guy whose parents spent several years in concentration camps. Obviously they survived, but they stories they told were horrendous. An yes, they have their camp tattoos also. Very sad to see this sort of stuff happening.....
Check out the Crittenten-Johnson ruling of 1861. 2:25 is the definition of niave.
A child's school work is a public record?
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