School Can Exclude Materials Disputing Armenian GenocideBy ANNIE YOUDERIAN
Courthouse News Service
(CN) - Massachusetts public schools can exclude material disputing the Armenian genocide in guidelines for teaching human rights, the 1st Circuit ruled in a closely watched case.
A Turkish cultural group had objected to a draft of the guidelines, which referred to "the Armenian genocide" and stated that the "Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire destroyed large portions of its Christian Armenian minority population" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Turkish government has denied that the mass killings in 1915 constituted genocide, instead linking the tragedy to deportations during a brutal civil war. Most Armenians insist that the killings were part of a planned, systematic extinction of between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenian Christians. Read more...
New standards for Holocaust, genocide studies in TX high schools
By LESLIE CONTRERAS SCHWARTZ
Jewish Herald Voice
The Texas Education Agency has set new state standards for Texas social studies and history classes that include the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills criterion.
The new standards, which are now mandatory for the first time, were proposed and created by the effort of the recently formed Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission, with help from Holocaust Museum Houston and the Houston Independent School District. The standards went into effect in June. Read more...
The Holocaust Center for Humanity's mission is to inspire teaching and learning for humanity in the schools and communities of the Northwest through study of the Holocaust.
