This comes via Joanne Jacobs, though it’s being reported elsewhere, too: 8th graders in the Rialto Unified School District were assigned to “take sides” on a “debate” about whether the Holocaust was a hoax, based on several materials, including handouts taken from Holocaust deniers.
The school district initially defended its writing assignment by claiming that none of the students took the Holocaust-denying side; now it turns out that 50 out of 2,000 did so.
When this first made news some conservative bloggers noticed the Muslim name of the staff member responsible; but whether he had an antisemitic motive is unknown.
In any event, it demonstrates the poverty of the notion that students won’t be taught content but will be taught “critical thinking” in a fuzzy sort of way, and that’s an adequate replacement. Perhaps Holocaust deniers could have been examined, as a class, in order to teach how they play their tricks, but to ask 13 and 14 year olds to figure this out for themselves imagines a skill set that few 8th graders possess.
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