I have nothing to say on this topic, except that lionbridge.com uses it in their meta tags, and there are ZERO results for this in all engines.  I wanna see if I can be the first.  Oh, and by the way, what’s up with SEODisplayName?

                 

I received a forwarded email today, whose main purpose was to react to a new turn of events in Britain:

“This week in England every memorial of the holocaust has been removed from the schools study programs, arguing that it hurts the Muslim population that denies the holocaust. That is a sign of an upcoming worldwide disaster, terrifying evidence of how easily countries can give in to anti-Semitism.”

The rest of the email is about how we all must band together, forward this on to everyone else you know to stop this horrible turn of events.

Now, were this an entirely accurate statement, then I would be concerned about it. However, the email I received cited no official source or explanation of this new “sweeping change” so I did a bit of searching. First checked snopes, but nothing there (update 3/31/08: Snopes has since included details on this, as have many other sites). So I’ve turned up a few links Here’s one link, here’s a second link, and here’s a third.

To roughly summarize these articles (although I recommend reading them yourself) this change was not brought about specific to the holocaust, but as an overall change to the way Britain approaches its teaching of history.

Instead of teaching history by time periods, they will be teaching it through concepts. According to these articles, it is untrue that they will STOP teaching about the holocaust; what they WILL be doing is incorporating different beliefs about history, including people who deny the holocaust. Here is an explanation from the guardian:

“Historical controversies will be a key topic. For the first time, OCR, the exam board launching the A-level, will also study Holocaust denial, teaching pupils how to defend against the claims.” (source:the guardian)

Yes, while it is understandable to be concerned about this, especially for all of us who know all too well that the holocaust was very, very real, it is very important to not mischaracterize the change.

Anyway, if you’ve been a party to this particular email forward, I recommend you forward this new, more accurate data on to your lists, because no one is helped by getting overly upset and reactionary without having a clear picture of the truth. In fact, isn’t “an accurate view of the truth” the reason you forwarded this email on the first place?

Additionally, if you turn up any more data on this topic, I would appreciate it (as would the others who are reading this post) if you could post your findings in the “Comments” section of this post. The more data the better.