Xanthippa's Chamberpot

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, but… somebody on the internet is wrong!!!

There is a particularly nasty rumour going about, that the UK has removed the teaching of Holocaust from its curriculum, ‘in order not to offend Muslim students, because they don’t believe in it’.  Please, pass it on:  THAT RUMOUR IS NOT TRUE!!!

Not having had enough time to think through the implications of the rumour itself (I am a very slow thinker), I will not comment on it for now.  Instead, I would like to share with you the questions that occurred to me as I ‘Googled about’ for articles on it.

1. How can people pass on any ‘tidbit’, but especially one that has such an emotionally charged content, without checking it out???  Form 5 or 6 sources, at least???  Are we (collectively) really that stupid?
2. How did this rumour even get started?  Now, I do have some suspicions on this one… I lay the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of some journalists (and their appallingly low standards in quality of writing and actually transmitting information) AND those readers who skim, rather read, news articles.  Poor writing and ‘skimming’ instead of reading are a bad combination indeed.
3. Why would so many people be so ready to believe this rumour?  And though there is an ‘edge’ to this rumour, making it most tantalizing to pass on, the level of hysterics in some of these emails spreading the rumour spoke of genuine worry, so I do think the rumour was believed.

While the first two questions deserve a good hard thinking about, it is the third question that we all need to examine…