Common Core: Students in California School District Asked to Write Essay Offering Their Opinion as to Whether the Holocaust Really Happened, or If It Was "Merely a Political Scheme Created to Influence Public Emotion and Amass Wealth"

No really.

The Rialto school district planned to revise an eighth-grade assignment that raised red flags by asking students to consider arguments about whether the Holocaust — the systematic killing by the Nazis of some 6 million Jews and millions of others — was not an “actual event” but instead a “propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain.”

In a statement released Monday, a spokeswoman for the Rialto Unified School District said an academic team was meeting to revise the assignment.

Interim Superintendent Mohammad Z. Islam was set to talk with administrators to “assure that any references to the holocaust ‘not occurring’ will be stricken on any current or future Argumentative Research assignments,” a statement from district spokeswoman Syeda Jafri read.

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The 18-page assignment instructions included three sources that students were instructed to use, including one that stated gassings in concentration camps were a “hoax” and that no evidence has shown Jews died in gas chambers.

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“ADL does not have any evidence that the assignment was given as part of a larger, insidious, agenda,” the blog post read. “Rather, the district seems to have given the assignment with an intent, although misguided, to meet Common Core standards relating to critical learning skills.”

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In her statement provided to KTLA, Jafri said the district’s “CORE team” would meet to revise the prompt.

I've hinted at this before, but let be explicit:

I do not support the lofty and ambitious goal of having teachers teach children "how to think" because I do not believe that low-ranking civil servants, as a group, are particularly good at it themselves.

Let this be my Exhibits A through Z.

They are failing at teaching the most basic stuff, so our response is to let them Explore the Studio Space?

And now to calm you down:

posted by Ace at 08:04 PM

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