Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Here's an interesting article on the teaching of the Armenian Genocide in Massachusetts schools. Should alternative views be allowed into the curriculum, and who should decide, students, teachers or courts?
Those who rank knowledge of the Holocaust as important should pay attention to this issue. As we know, Holocaust denial is a growth industry even in the West, and as more and more people immigrate from the Middle East, it will continue to grow and live as a phenomena. Now it is considered settled history in the United States. Will it remain that way?
Some of the issues the Armenians are facing today are the same issues we could be facing tomorrow.
Boston Globe: Suit opens old wounds - Teacher, student seek all views in 1915 deaths of 1m Armenians
But to the Armenians caught up in those horrific events and their descendants, the lawsuit dishonors the people who died in massacres and forced deportations committed by the Turks. They say presenting opposing views of those events is like denying the Holocaust or saying the earth is flat. And they say the case has reopened a battle many Armenians in Massachusetts thought they had already won...
I can see Bernard Lewish is among those who claim that Armenian genocide can't be defined as genocide, and that makes me very very sad...