Opposing Views

[Kooky]

Actions hurt others not opinions.

Do you think teaching is an action, or an opinion?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

My previous interactions with you indicate to me that trying to debate you would most likely be a fruitless endeavor. Instead, I'm opting to challenge your fundamentally flawed logic and arguments by underlining the issues with them without going in circles.

Have a good day.

Shrugs.

Don't let others define your character.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Do you think teaching is an action, or an opinion?

The opinion from students isn't an action. Teaching to have open opinions from students doesn't endorse anything.

This is for any horrific event in history. If a teacher suppressed students opinions it's not a productive classroom.

I wish people can think outside the box.

Holocaust is bad

and
it can be approached in a way that doesn't focus on that.

Put aside emotional biases. It has no place in (US) general public education.

 

[Kooky]

The opinion from students isn't an action. Teaching to have open opinions from students doesn't endorse anything.

So does a teacher act when

This is for any horrific event in history. If a teacher suppressed students opinions it's not a productive classroom.

I wish people can think outside the box.

Holocaust is bad

and
it can be approached in a way that doesn't focus on that.

Could you please answer my question?

Do you believe that teaching students is an action, or do you think it is expressing an opinion?

Put aside emotional biases. It has no place in (US) general public education.

I don't understand what you are referring to here. Where did you see indications of emotional biases in my posts and why do you think they have anything at all to do with general public education?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

So is teaching students an action, or an opinion?

You have to add some commentary and point so I can answer the question appropriate to my opinion.

 

[Kooky]

You have to add some commentary and point so I can answer the question appropriate to my opinion.

Can you explain why I would need to do so? Why can't you simply answer the question?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Could you please answer my question?

Do you believe that teaching students is an action, or do you think it is expressing an opinion?


I don't understand what you are referring to here. Where did you see indications of emotional biases in my posts and why do you think they have anything at all to do with general public education?

The opinion from students isn't an action. Teaching to have open opinions from students doesn't endorse anything.

Teaching is an action. The point is to have open discussion without suppressing opinions that in an educational setting would never promote illegal activity.

What is the point you're making?

-

Emotions from sensitive topics can influence people's decisions on topics like education. Unless it's a private school, in the US personal opinions has it's place in the classroom. But some topics teachers need to be careful about teaching.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Can you explain why I would need to do so? Why can't you simply answer the question?

Because in a discussion we need to know the points the other makes to properly answer said questions.

If I answered I dont know how you'd interpret it nor your intentions. It leads to arguments when the intentions were never set-reading into questions and answers instead of clarifying the intentions first.

 

[Laika]

In US schools they have it to where teachers can tell students if they want to excuse themselves when talking about sensitive topics like watching movies on abortion they can. It's usually under the teachers discretion.

I don't know of other topics that have similar reactions. Slavery is probably another since it involves many deaths and can bring up emotions.

Teachers balance feelings with brain without influencing students opinions by their own. For example, The schools have policies against talking of religion and politics outside the material given for teaching. Can you imagine how parents would react if teachers start telling a student trump is a bad guy when that student feels otherwise?

I'm not personally talking about genocide because I can't processes that topic. I'd opt out. But if the Holocaust topic were approached differently like this thread it's easier since my point isn't teaching about the good of genocide which is what people think first when they think of the Holocaust.

My guess is that as you are an anti-vaaxer who, shall we say, "rejects the consensus", your concern is about education being used to control people and make them believe things you disagree with. That's fair in a sense and I can see how you might reach that point of view. But whatever opinion I might have on vaccination, it remains fundamentally your choice on whether you get a vaccine because it's your body. If you didn't take the vaccination and got sick from Covid, I'd be upset but you made that decision yourself and I have no reason to doubt your sincerity on it.

But Holocaust denial has consequences that go beyond the person who immediately believes it. If we discuss it in schools, we are discussing whether all the jews who survived the death camps were liars. We are denying them their memory of those events and the right to record it. Instead, we give weight to the perpetrators, who insist it either didn't happen, it wasn't as bad as the Jews said it was, Hitler didn't know about it or wasn't responsible, etc. We treat Anne Frank not as a real person, but a fictional character invented by the allies to spread "atrocity" propaganda to discredit the Nazis, or that the Jews wanted sympathy from the international community so they could found the state of Israel.

By entertaining something like holocaust denial we become complicit in the effort to cover up the crimes the Nazis committed. It isn't simply an intellectual exercise, or a debate. We are siding with the murderers and saying their crimes didn't happen, their victims weren't real, that they were liars and that their friends, family and love ones who died in gas chambers never really existed. Nazis get to not only enact the "final solution" but then proceed to degrade the value of human life to such an extent that they can pretend the Jews didn't exist to suffer or to be exterminated in the first place. Think about that: That their lives had so little value, we don't have an obligation to admit they existed.

Now, if you wanted to hold a public debate between a historian and a holocaust denier on a University campus, I wouldn't stop you. I wouldn't oppose it. I've read my share of denialist literature (for Soviet crimes) and I've tried to read pro-slavery works from the Confederacy as well, so I'm not going to censor those authors either. There is a historical value if only for curiosities sake. We all have the right to think for ourselves, to dispute authority and equally the right to be wrong. Maybe there is a limit on how far that can go and holocaust denial becomes so mainstream it legitimises fascism and nazism along with it. But that's the risk we take letting adults be free.

However, the idea that we should do this in schools to children who remain innocent of just how ruthlessly unfair and cruel human beings can be, is something I can't support. It's the moral equivalent of letting the SS in to schools to deny that they did anything wrong and that all Jews are liars who can't be trusted.

Adults have the right to reach their own opinion, (though I won't pretend I really do hope they pick one over the other.) But with children we have a responsibility to make sure that they remember what happened because it's the one bit of control we have over the next generation to ensure that the perpetrators don't get away with the crime, we don't abuse the victims by compounding their suffering and we never let this happen again because young people know to be vigilant in protecting their rights and the rights of others. This is not a decision we can make as individuals, because it is something that affects us all.

Whatever your opinion on how education may control people in one way, it's worth treating this as a special case because teaching kids that the holocaust didn't happen the way the Jews said it did is how we let the Nazis win. If we don't treat this as history, we give them a chance to do it again. And if you want a second opinion, ask the Jews on this forum how they would feel having the deaths of their parents and grandparents debated in schools. I expect they will have an opinion on it and they would share it if you ask them in the right way.

If you want to defend free thought and critical thinking, that's fine. But this is one that is worth really thinking about because it comes down to how far you are prepared to let that go.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

My guess is that as you are an anti-vaaxer who, shall we say, "rejects the consensus", your concern is about education being used to control people and make them believe things you disagree with. That's fair in a sense and I can see how you might reach that point of view. But whatever opinion I might have on vaccination, it remains fundamentally your choice on whether you get a vaccine because it's your body. If you didn't take the vaccination and got sick from Covid, I'd be upset but you made that decision yourself and I have no reason to doubt your sincerity on it.

But Holocaust denial has consequences that go beyond the person who immediately believes it. If we discuss it in schools, we are discussing whether all the jews who survived the death camps were liars. We are denying them their memory of those events and the right to record it. Instead, we give weight to the perpetrators, who insist it either didn't happen, it wasn't as bad as the Jews said it was, Hitler didn't know about it or wasn't responsible, etc. We treat Anne Frank not as a real person, but a fictional character invented by the allies to spread "atrocity" propaganda to discredit the Nazis, or that the Jews wanted sympathy from the international community so they could found the state of Israel.

By entertaining something like holocaust denial we become complicit in the effort to cover up the crimes the Nazis committed. It isn't simply an intellectual exercise, or a debate. We are siding with the murderers and saying their crimes didn't happen, their victims weren't real, that they were liars and that their friends, family and love ones who died in gas chambers never really existed. Nazis get to not only enact the "final solution" but then proceed to degrade the value of human life to such an extent that they can pretend the Jews didn't exist to suffer or to be exterminated in the first place. Think about that: That their lives had so little value, we don't have an obligation to admit they existed.

Now, if you wanted to hold a public debate between a historian and a holocaust denier on a University campus, I wouldn't stop you. I wouldn't oppose it. I've read my share of denialist literature (for Soviet crimes) and I've tried to read pro-slavery works from the Confederacy as well, so I'm not going to censor those authors either. There is a historical value if only for curiosities sake. We all have the right to think for ourselves, to dispute authority and equally the right to be wrong. Maybe there is a limit on how far that can go and holocaust denial becomes so mainstream it legitimises fascism and nazism along with it. But that's the risk we take letting adults be free.

However, the idea that we should do this in schools to children who remain innocent of just how ruthlessly unfair and cruel human beings can be, is something I can't support. It's the moral equivalent of letting the SS in to schools to deny that they did anything wrong and that all Jews are liars who can't be trusted.

Adults have the right to reach their own opinion, (though I won't pretend I really do hope they pick one over the other.) But with children we have a responsibility to make sure that they remember what happened because it's the one bit of control we have over the next generation to ensure that the perpetrators don't get away with the crime, we don't abuse the victims by compounding their suffering and we never let this happen again because young people know to be vigilant in protecting their rights and the rights of others. This is not a decision we can make as individuals, because it is something that affects us all.

Whatever your opinion on how education may control people in one way, it's worth treating this as a special case because teaching kids that the holocaust didn't happen the way the Jews said it did is how we let the Nazis win. If we don't treat this as history, we give them a chance to do it again. And if you want a second opinion, ask the Jews on this forum how they would feel having the deaths of their parents and grandparents debated in schools. I expect they will have an opinion on it and they would share it if you ask them in the right way.

If you want to defend free thought and critical thinking, that's fine. But this is one that is worth really thinking about because it comes down to how far you are prepared to let that go.

I skimmed but have to come back. What's this have to do with antivaxxers?

Talking about opposing view to Some parts of Holocaust history isnt engaging in holocaust denial.

To be honest I'm surprised there are people who deny the Holocaust happening.

Offering opposing views isn't about denial. I'm not at all sure how the two relate.

 

[Laika]

I skimmed but have to come back. What's this have to do with antivaxxers?

Talking about opposing view to Some parts of Holocaust history isnt engaging in holocaust denial.

To be honest I'm surprised there are people who deny the Holocaust happening.

Offering opposing views isn't about denial. I'm not at all sure how the two relate.

I'm trying put myself in your shoes and why you might hold the views you do, then trying to show why that might not apply in this case.

 

[Kooky]

Because in a discussion we need to know the points the other makes to properly answer said questions.

Are you saying that it is important to you who it is who poses a question?
Would you have answered the same question if posed by a different person?

If I answered I dont know how you'd interpret it nor your intentions. It leads to arguments when the intentions were never set-reading into questions and answers instead of clarifying the intentions first.

Do you expect other people to engage with your points in this discussion? If yes, then you are expecting them to respond without knowing your intentions or how you'd interpret their arguments.

Personally, I do not think it's fair to expect other people to engage your questions and arguments in a manner that you are clearly very reluctant to do yourself with other people's questions and arguments. It is fine to not want to engage with arguments, but I think it is your personal bias talking when you are expecting others to involve themselves in a discussion on a level you are unwilling to do so yourself.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

My guess is that as you are an anti-vaaxer who, shall we say, "rejects the consensus", your concern is about education being used to control people and make them believe things you disagree with.

That's fair in a sense and I can see how you might reach that point of view. But whatever opinion I might have on vaccination, it remains fundamentally your choice on whether you get a vaccine because it's your body. If you didn't take the vaccination and got sick from Covid, I'd be upset but you made that decision yourself and I have no reason to doubt your sincerity on it.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer but I can't help other people' opinions about me.

I appreciate it. Healthcare decisions is pretty personal when deciding on things like taking meds, vaccines, or treating illnesses and so forth. It should be met with skepticism and discussed with one's doctor (if appropriate) and I do put some importance to gut feelings. I can't speak for others who are actually against vaccines. I don't know any in person unless choosing not to take the flu vaccine means you have some sort of anti-science conspiracy in mind.

I was saying having open discussion about opposing views of horrific events (among others) in history promotes students to express opinions without mixing that with intentions to hurt anyone because of the subject discussed. If related to the pandemic argument, I don't agree with suppressing having opposing views to subjects like health and education, but that's just my opinion.

But Holocaust denial has consequences that go beyond the person who immediately believes it. If we discuss it in schools, we are discussing whether all the jews who survived the death camps were liars. We are denying them their memory of those events and the right to record it. Instead, we give weight to the perpetrators, who insist it either didn't happen, it wasn't as bad as the Jews said it was, Hitler didn't know about it or wasn't responsible, etc. We treat Anne Frank not as a real person, but a fictional character invented by the allies to spread "atrocity" propaganda to discredit the Nazis, or that the Jews wanted sympathy from the international community so they could found the state of Israel.

Expressing opposing views when approached correctly isn't holocaust denial. I don't know if any educational system would teach students that the holocaust never happened.

By entertaining something like holocaust denial we become complicit in the effort to cover up the crimes the Nazis committed. It isn't simply an intellectual exercise, or a debate. We are siding with the murderers and saying their crimes didn't happen, their victims weren't real, that they were liars and that their friends, family and love ones who died in gas chambers never really existed. Nazis get to not only enact the "final solution" but then proceed to degrade the value of human life to such an extent that they can pretend the Jews didn't exist to suffer or to be exterminated in the first place. Think about that: That their lives had so little value, we don't have an obligation to admit they existed.

I don't see open discussing about opposing views to horrific historical events in an education setting as denial.

Now, if you wanted to hold a public debate between a historian and a holocaust denier on a University campus, I wouldn't stop you. I wouldn't oppose it. I've read my share of denialist literature (for Soviet crimes) and I've tried to read pro-slavery works from the Confederacy as well, so I'm not going to censor those authors either. There is a historical value if only for curiosities sake. We all have the right to think for ourselves, to dispute authority and equally the right to be wrong. Maybe there is a limit on how far that can go and holocaust denial becomes so mainstream it legitimises fascism and nazism along with it. But that's the risk we take letting adults be free.

Its not about denial.

However, the idea that we should do this in schools to children who remain innocent of just how ruthlessly unfair and cruel human beings can be, is something I can't support. It's the moral equivalent of letting the SS in to schools to deny that they did anything wrong and that all Jews are liars who can't be trusted.

I have an example of how you can teach opposing views about the Holocaust. For example, the Nazi were very efficient in how they set up their criminal procedure (for lack of better words). Discussing the effectiveness of how that was played out without endorsing it (somewhat like talking about suicide and homicide without endorsing the action)-maybe give a pro/cons of what went wrong and what was right-would be an idea of promoting critical thinking.

Adults have the right to reach their own opinion, (though I won't pretend I really do hope they pick one over the other.) But with children we have a responsibility to make sure that they remember what happened because it's the one bit of control we have over the next generation to ensure that the perpetrators don't get away with the crime, we don't abuse the victims by compounding their suffering and we never let this happen again because young people know to be vigilant in protecting their rights and the rights of others. This is not a decision we can make as individuals, because it is something that affects us all.

I think age of the children does matter.

I wouldn't teach the holocaust to young children.

Older children that's a hit and miss. I'd definitely have it to where if it were a subject of discussion students can opt out without penalty. They do that for topics like abortion and sex education.

Whatever your opinion on how education may control people in one way, it's worth treating this as a special case because teaching kids that the holocaust didn't happen the way the Jews said it did is how we let the Nazis win. If we don't treat this as history, we give them a chance to do it again. And if you want a second opinion, ask the Jews on this forum how they would feel having the deaths of their parents and grandparents debated in schools. I expect they will have an opinion on it and they would share it if you ask them in the right way.

I don't remember saying people are controlling others in an education setting.

If you noticed I haven't talked about genocide, mentioned Jews, or anything like that. I don't discuss the Holocaust personally. In an education setting, open discussion is appropriate. It just depends on how its approached.

If you want to defend free thought and critical thinking, that's fine. But this is one that is worth really thinking about because it comes down to how far you are prepared to let that go.

It depends on how its approached.

I'm trying put myself in your shoes and why you might hold the views you do, then trying to show why that might not apply in this case.

I notice you didn't do this in a mean way, but I do think you put a lot of intentions in "my mouth." Holocaust is a sensitive topic but in regards to the OP I believe free thought without promoting illegal activity is fine in an education setting. The only reason I can think of that it wouldn't be appropriate is private schools-say christian-to where talking about opposing sides of believing in god may ruffle some feathers. Though the point is the same.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Are you saying that it is important to you who it is who poses a question?

Would you have answered the same question if posed by a different person?

1. I'm saying it's important to post your point(s) and/or give commentary to those points. When it's just a question you can interpret the answer in the way you see fit and argue against your interpretation rather than what's actually meant.

2. I didn't mention about who said what. I would tell any person the same thing-add commentary. It's the same with religious discussions. Christians give a lot of scripture but then don't add commentary thinking that readers will just understand what they meant cause "god" said it.

Do you expect other people to engage with your points in this discussion? If yes, then you are expecting them to respond without knowing your intentions or how you'd interpret their arguments.

3. No. If they wish to engage, they need to express their points not post questions in a vacuum. There's no tone of voice online and I can't read people's thoughts. If they want me to clarify, they can ask.

If they think that my approach to discussions is awful they need not reply.

Personally, I do not think it's fair to expect other people to engage your questions and arguments in a manner that you are clearly very reluctant to do yourself with other people's questions and arguments. It is fine to not want to engage with arguments, but I think it is your personal bias talking when you are expecting others to involve themselves in a discussion on a level you are unwilling to do so yourself.

Kooky, you weren't engaged in the conversation. I didn't ask anyone to engage. That's all you.

People have a choice to engage in conversations with me and others. That's the beauty of the internet.

 

[Laika]

I notice you didn't do this in a mean way, but I do think you put a lot of intentions in "my mouth."

Yeah. In wanting to believe they weren't wrong, I have been been involved in a form of denial (of communist atrocities). I read some denialist literature, was aware of certain authors and societies who promoted those kind of views and spent times on online communities with hefty amounts of gulag and famine jokes "normalised" it in a way.

I've never been a Nazi but I can understand how someone would want to believe the holocaust didn't happen to emotionally validate themselves and why it's so terrifying. I have previously had a discussion on it with a holocaust denier on reddit and it actually worked out ok because I tried to see it from their point of view rather than just condemning it out right.

So I was trying to use my own experience to find a "nice way" to show how morally difficult and dangerous that is. It's pretty ugly, but you obviously you understand and appreciate that as well.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

The idea that a discussion is only valid if both 'sides' are treated as equally valid is a nonsense when taken to extremes.

Yeah -- imagine if the subject under discussion was child molestation. "Teach both sides, now!"

Hardly!

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Yeah -- imagine if the subject under discussion was child molestation. "Teach both sides, now!"

Hardly!

If you don't approach it from the molestation standpoint just as you wouldn't genocide there wouldn't be a problem.

Take suicide. There's a lot of education discussion on suicide but its not approached in a way it endorses it. There are whole degrees and classes dedicated to talking about crimes, criminal activities, and probably bouncing back and forth the effectiveness of how people think in relation to their crimes without endorsing it.

 

[We Never Know]

Sure it could. It's just a pretty ignorant statement.

Its no more ignorant than someone talking about geneocide on anti-vaxers

 

[Kooky]

@Unveiled Artist
If you don't want to answer my questions or engage with me in conversation, then please be honest about it and say so directly, instead of dancing around the point and wasting my time in the process, thank you very much.

 

[Kooky]

If you don't approach it from the molestation standpoint just as you wouldn't genocide there wouldn't be a problem.

Take suicide. There's a lot of education discussion on suicide but its not approached in a way it endorses it. There are whole degrees and classes dedicated to talking about crimes, criminal activities, and probably bouncing back and forth the effectiveness of how people think in relation to their crimes without endorsing it.

Are you of the mistaken assumption that people don't talk about the Holocaust or that it's somehow a taboo subject among historians? Because I can tell you straight away that that's not, and never has been, the case.