Holocaust Denial Avoidance Denial

From the UK's Daily Mail newspaper:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

The UK's Daily Telegraph elaborates:

Some teachers dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons because of fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-semitic reactions. One school avoided teaching the Crusades because its "balanced" handling of the topic would directly contradict what was taught in local mosques.

Education from local mosques being what it is.

The BBC digs deeper into the Historical Association report to find this logical reasoning:

The Historical Association report claimed: "Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned.

"Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes.

"In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

Which is worse:

• the revisionism by a minority community (read 'Islamist anti-Semitism'),
  
• the response - or more accurately, the lack of one, or
  
• the apology for the (lack of) response?

The UK is not having a great time of it at the moment.

I wonder what Winston Churchill would have thought.

(Hat tip: Dean)

UPDATE: Now that is more like it.

UPDATE 2: Via Melanie Phillips, the UK's Holocaust Education Trust has released a long statement highlighting among other things about the incident:

This is an anecdotal response from one teacher in one school out of four thousand five hundred secondary schools in the UK. While we cannot say what happens in every single school, our understanding is that this is highly unusual and not general practise of teachers around the country.

Non-existent is preferable to highly unusual.