Rialto Unified School under fire over Holocaust assignment

[phdnm]

The school district says the purpose of the assignment is to help students develop critical thinking skills, and debate whether the Holocaust was a "propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain."

By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.

It is by doubting that we come to investigate, and by investigating that we recognize the truth.

Pierre Abélard

Rialto Unified School District under fire over Holocaust assignment

May 04, 2014

RIALTO, Calif. -- The Rialto Unified School District has come under fire after assigning eighth-grade students a controversial writing research project. In an essay, students were asked to research the Holocaust and argue whether or not they believe it was real or fictional.

The school district says the purpose of the assignment is to help students develop critical thinking skills, and debate whether the Holocaust was a "propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain."

"It's not a debate, you know, historians all agree the Holocaust is historical fact," said Matthew Friedman of the Anti-Defamation League.

The organization says the idea of Holocaust denial can be addressed in schools, but calls this assignment the wrong way to do it.

"To have students try and determine whether or not it happened, they're gonna go online and they're going to Google the Holocaust and come across sites that look very slick and very persuasive, but are really bad history and propaganda for anti-Semites, and that's not what we want them to be doing," said Friedman.

The Rialto Unified School District released the following statement: "Our Interim Superintendent will be talking with our Educational Services Department to assure that any references to the Holocaust 'not occurring' will be stricken on any current or future argumentative research assignments. The Holocaust should be taught in classrooms with sensitivity and profound consideration to the victims who endured the atrocities committed."

A spokeswoman says the district takes issues of intolerance very seriously. She also said the district made plans three months ago to have a group of students visit the Museum of Tolerance in June.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?secti ... id=9527060

[cold beer]

"It's not a debate, you know, historians all agree the Holocaust is historical fact," said Matthew Friedman of the Anti-Defamation League.

step 1: Make 'holocaust denial' in Europe and Canada punishable by imprisonment.
step 2: Proclaim that all historians agree that the holocaust is fact.

A spokeswoman says the district takes issues of intolerance very seriously. She also said the district made plans three months ago to have a group of students visit the Museum of Tolerance in June.

Intolerance?
What does 'intolerance' have to do with debating history?

You raised a question, you engaged in critical thinking?...well let's see if we can cure that character flaw and get you operating on pure indoctrination instead, we'll take you to the Zionist museums and hit you with a full dose of psychological therapy.
Look here, here's a film of children being herded into a gas van, case closed.

[Hannover]

The school district says the purpose of the assignment is to help students develop critical thinking skills, and debate whether the Holocaust was a "propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain."

"It's not a debate, you know, historians all agree the Holocaust is historical fact," said Matthew Friedman of the Anti-Defamation League.

The organization says the idea of Holocaust denial can be addressed in schools, but calls this assignment the wrong way to do it.

"To have students try and determine whether or not it happened, they're gonna go online and they're going to Google the Holocaust and come across sites that look very slick and very persuasive, but are really bad history and propaganda for anti-Semites, and that's not what we want them to be doing," said Friedman.

- ALL HISTORIANS ???? Laughable. Not even close. How about all Jewish supremacists? There you go.
- It IS being debated, like it or not. This guy doesn't get out much.
- So only Jews are allowed to decide how the absurd 'holocaust' can be addressed in schools. There's that Jewish supremacism thing again.
- Yes, by all means go online and see the laughable storyline demolished, piece by piece.
- "Slick and persuassive"? IOW, logical, rational, scientifically correct, and factually irrefutable.
- 'anti-semitic': any thought or person some Jew doesn't like

Will Matthew Friedman, a Zionist, apartheid supporting racist debate us? He won't, he knows he wouldn't have a chance.

The 'holocaust' storyline is one of the most easily debunked narratives ever contrived. That is why those who debunk it are arrested and persecuted. That is why violent racist Jewish supremacists demand that there be no open debate.

The tide is turning and the above story proves it.

- Hannover

[Inquisitor]

I can't help but wonder who it was that introduced the idea itself - the very notion of debating whether or not the "holocaust" could be considered a, "propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain" sounds like it came out of the mind of someone who knows more about the topic than any random public-school educator.

Seems unlikely that phraseology would be employed one way or the other, unless someone had some broader knowledge of the subject matter at hand(Revisionism) - or at least about Jewish-Supremacist shenanigans at the very least.

[Scotsman]

Wow, very daring. Whoever who wrote that assignment is on the right track.

I've said from the start of my interest in Holocaust Revisionism, that I would be happy for the issue to be taken away from 'us' (since most of us are rightists in some fashion) and for this to become something debated in schools, journals, etc like any other historical topic. So when I see things like this happening, it is a good sign.

[PotPie]

Finally something in public education I can support!!!

[Inquisitor]

And, as we all likely anticipated, that's the end that:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/05/ca ... st-denial/

Make special note at the end of the piece of the ever-more-popular, and totally made-up "11-million" figure now routinely trotted out alongside the sacrosanct 6!

[phdnm]

Death threats ...

U.S. school officials receive death threats over assignment asking students to decide if Holocaust was a ‘hoax’

May 5, 2014 | Last Updated: May 6 4:20 AM ET

A California school district is under fire for giving Grade 8 students a homework assignment that questions whether or not the Holocaust was real.

Officials at Rialto Unified School District have reportedly received death threats since the San Bernadino Sun newspaper exposed the assignment this past weekend.

Last week, the Los Angeles Chapter of the national Anti-Defamation League was made aware of the 18-page critical thinking essay assignment, which asked English/language arts students to consider the arguments about whether the systematic killing of more than six million Jews was an “actual event” or a “propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain,” KTLA Channel 5 reports.

The district initially defended the assignment designed to help students “evaluate the quality of evidence made by advocates or opponents of an issue,” saying parents had not complained about it to date.

“Within five minutes, any intelligent, open-minded person can be convinced that the Holocaust gassings of World War II are a profitable hoax,” page five of the assignment states under the heading, “Is the Holocaust a hoax?”

The document also suggests that “even the Diary of Anne Frank is a hoax.”

The Anti-Defamation League was assured last week that the school was revising the assignment “with sensitivity and deep consideration to those who fell victim to the Holocaust,” according to an Anti-Defamation League blog post. “They assured us that they are ‘taking every step to assure that [the district] will revise its prompt and the words/implications of the Holocaust not existing be stricken.’ ”

The organization said it has “no evidence” the school board’s assignment was part of a “larger, insidious, agenda,” but was merely a “misguided” attempt to meet the educational criteria for critical thinking.

“We are striking the sentence that claims, ‘Did the Holocaust occur?’ Absolutely the Holocaust occurred,” said Rialto District spokesperson Syeda Jafri. “It was an error and we have to correct it.”

Meantime, police are investigating death threats against interim superintendent Mohammad Z. Islam.

“We do not know who the suspect is at this time,” Rialto Police Captain Randy De Anda told KCAL Channel 9. “However we do have some leads to follow up on.”


Rialto Unified Holocaust Essay Assignment:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/05 ... as-a-hoax/

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/05 ... as-a-hoax/

[phdnm]

Apology ... what next ... reparations

Los Angeles City Council members demand apology from Rialto over Holocaust assignment

Los Angeles city officials demanded an apology today from a Rialto school district that triggered a national debate after it assigned middle school students work asking them to debate the existence of the Holocaust.

Los Angeles officials issued a news release today announcing a resolution demanding a public apology from all instructors and administrators at Rialto Unified School District involved in the assignment and asked that they participate in Holocaust sensitivity training.

The release quoted Councilman Bob Blumenfield as saying, “Holocaust denial is a pernicious falsehood that has no place in our schools.... The most shocking part of this story is that no teachers, parents or students complained about the assignment.”

Councilman Paul Koretz said in the release that the horrors of the Holocaust are not to be “trivialized into a fictive parlor game” and said the assignment mocked the truth and failed to honor the millions of Holocaust victims.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_25711303/los-angeles-city-council-members-demand-apology-from

[Inquisitor]

Death threats ...

Proving again what Revisionist have said for years - that some will obviously stop at NOTHING to thwart any and all scrutiny of the official "holocaust" narrative, clearly suggesting someone has something to hide! A reasonable, sober-minded populous would read this and be shocked as well as mystified as to why on earth something so apparently benign as an allegedly "insensitive" or "ill-advised" school assignment could possibly elicit death-threats. Any genuine journalists covering the story would certainly question why that would occur.

Yet they do not! The "journalists" remain silent, and the Herd remains dutifully oblivious to how uniquely bizarre and dangerous it is to even hypothetically question to holy "H."

[borjastick]

It is not a surprise that these death threats in such circumstances are issued.

The zionists have all the attributes of inbreeding and a history of fishing in the same gene pool. They absolutely hate any criticism of them, their background or status as God's chosen ones, which surely is total bollocks and would mean nothing to anyone who worships a different God. If you want to understand the lunacy of Zionists and those from the smallest gene pool in the world just do a youtube search on Israel and jews, you will perhaps be shocked at the single brain cell activities, arrogance and yobbishness demonstrated.

There is one good thing about the lies and expulsions attributed to the holocaust, and that is a loony bin called Israel where most of the idiots reside.

[phdnm]

Holocaust Museum visit would be better for kids

And why not a trip to Auschwitz ...

They will discover it so many things .... as the swimming pool

Holocaust Museum visit would be better for kids: Letters

05/06/14, 2:10 PM PDT

Holocaust Museum visit would be better for kids

Re “Rialto Unified defends writing assignment on confirming or denying Holocaust” (May 4):

I’m stunned that the Rialto Unified School District would have eighth-grade students write an essay on whether the Holocaust actually happened. We have enough white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers running around espousing their narrow, hate-filled, anti-Semitic beliefs. Why give them more of a forum for that?

Take the students to one of the Holocaust museums, including the Museum of Tolerance, to see close up what really happened when six million Jews and others were annihilated by the Nazi regime. Then let them think critically about that.

— Agnes Payton, Long Beach

http://www.presstelegram.com/opinion/20 ... ds-letters

[Moderator]

[The following post has been moved from a duplicate thread which has been deleted. M1]

Here's an interesting bit of current events news: A middle school in the Rialto district in San Bernadino California assigned a paper asking students to evaluate arguments critical of the holocaust. Here's a link to the story with the text below:

http://ktla.com/2014/05/05/rialto-assignment-asking-to-students-to-question-holocaust-to-be-revised/#axzz30zWp3XWp

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.”

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.”

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.

Adopted since 2009, when the initiative was created by National Governors Association, the standards have been in the spotlight in recent months as parents and educators react to their implementation.

As expected, the usual keepers of the faith pounced on the school and quickly squashed the project. It makes me wonder about the intent of the assignment's author(s). Were they simply naively unaware of the likely consequences or was someone trying to make a difference?

[Moderator]

[The following post has been moved from a duplicate thread which has been deleted. M1]

It makes me wonder about the intent of the assignment's author(s). Were they simply naively unaware of the likely consequences or was someone trying to make a difference?

Both, I think. Both persons mentioned have Islamic names, but they surely didn't anticipate death threats. They have succeeded in raising the profile of the issue.

[phdnm]

She declined to comment on whether the teachers faced disciplinary actions, saying it was a confidential personnel matter.

Disciplinary actions ... of course !

And a visit to the USHMM

Unclear if teachers face discipline in Holocaust writing assignment

May 06, 2014

A spokeswoman for the Rialto school district, which reversed course on a controversial eighth-grade writing assignment challenging the Holocaust's historical record, said she cannot discuss whether the instructors involved will face any disciplinary action..

The assignment, created by a group of teachers and the district’s educational services division, asked students 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."

It garnered swift and widespread criticism, including from the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which called it "grotesque."

School officials say the assignment has since been pulled and will be revised.

Rialto Unified spokeswoman Syeda Jafri told the Los Angeles Times that the assignment was a "bad mark" on the district's record "and we will fix it and move forward."

Interim Rialto Unified Supt. Mohammad Z. Islam was not aware of its topic until school officials received an email about it, Jafri said.

Islam was “deeply disturbed” by the assignment and acted swiftly, she added.

“Once in a while things fall through the cracks,” Jafri said.

She declined to comment on whether the teachers faced disciplinary actions, saying it was a confidential personnel matter.

Still, Jafri said the district “deeply regrets” the incident, adding that there was “no excuse.”

The district had already planned to take 24 students in June to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Jafri said.

She noted that the school district has always used sensitivity and compassion to teach students about the Holocaust and will continue to do so.

The Anti-Defamation League says it has no evidence that the writing assignment was part of a "larger, insidious agenda" and is treating it as a "misguided" attempt to meet critical thinking standards.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement that if the district had wanted to help students understand the nature of hate propaganda, "they should have assigned them to research the sources of the bigotry — totalitarian governments like Iran, neo-Nazi groups and bigoted pseudo-intellectuals."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html