Yep, that's what Charles C.M. Cooke, National Review writer sez. Seems that somewhere in California, some dim bulb proposed the following as a critical thinking assignment:
The original assignment was to do some research, and citing sources, write an essay on whether the Holocaust actually occurred or not.
But apparently
the plan is off, due to the not unforeseeable objections that this was not a ying-yang tomayto-tomahto sort of event. Per the linked WaPo article:
An e-mail from the Anti-Defamation League’s associate regional director to the school district said, “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.”
But let's hear from Mr. Cooke:
Why should children believe that the prevailing account of Holocaust is true? Should they believe it because the dominant culture tells them that it is true, or should they believe it because the historical record in this area can speak for itself? Clearly, it is the latter. Why insulate the young from themselves?
I would ask the same question here as I used to ask at Oxford when an invitation to someone downright unpleasant provoked protests. What exactly do we think is going to happen if we invite into our classrooms people and ideas that we dislike?
Right. This is
just like debating short range NATO nukes in Germany or whatever other topic Mr. Cooke encountered at Oxford. Or not. Whatever Mr. Cooke learned at Oxford, he doesn't seem to have absorbed a damn thing about what holocaust denial really is (i.e. wishful thinking that the Nazis could not have finished the job). And this in the face of the clear findings, well known to the world, back inthe year 200, of the trial judge in the English case of
Irving v. Lipstadt, where holocaust denial was exposed, if it ever needed to be, as a fraud.
There's no two sides to the debate between reality and Holocaust denial, any more than there are two sides to the debate over whether the moon landing was a hoax. But at least in the moon landing hoax conspiracy theory, you do not have people like David Irving writing extensive justifications, excuses, or alibis (take your pick) for the mass killing of millions.
While it was boneheaded and dopey (at minimum) for the school district to come up with this assignment, Mr. Cooke and National Review have no justification for this sort of cold-blooded attack upon our educational system, using of all things, the failure to acknowledge the ridiculous (and anti-Semitic) claims to legitimacy of Holocaust denial.