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TORONTO: Board removes book on genocide

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  • TORONTO: Board removes book on genocide

    The Toronto Star
    May 17, 2008 Saturday



    Board removes book on genocide

    by Brett Popplewell, Toronto Star


    The Toronto District School Board has removed a recent book about
    human atrocities from the curriculum of a new high school course after
    a committee was asked to look into public concerns over the book's
    treatment of the Armenian genocide.

    Barbara Coloroso's Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide had
    been selected as a resource for a new Grade 11 history course about
    genocide and crimes against humanity, but the book and the course came
    under review after they were challenged by members of the Canadian
    Turkish community.

    While the board's review committee decided to remove Coloroso's book
    from the curriculum, deeming it "far from a scrupulous text," the
    Armenian genocide will still be taught in the course.

    Coloroso, the bestselling author of parenting books, draws
    similarities between behaviour exhibited in childhood bullying and
    that exhibited in a genocide.

    In addition to dealing with the mass murder of more than a million
    Armenians, the book also examines the Holocaust that killed six
    million Jews during World War II and the Rwanda genocide of almost a
    million Tutsis in 1994.

    The course's inclusion of the Armenian genocide has been controversial
    since its initial announcement and was met by a petition with more
    than 1,200 signatures opposed to the book and the course.

    "To pick Armenia as a genocide when it is so controversial -
    especially when there are atrocities by other countries that could
    have been chosen - is just wrong," Lale Eskicioglu, executive director
    of the Council of Turkish Canadians, said prior to delivering the
    petition.

    Officially, the Turkish government views the slaughter of the
    Armenians as wartime casualties of World War I, with both sides guilty
    of some provocation.

    Board representatives declined to comment on the matter last night
    because members of the community can still appeal the decision.

    With files from Louise Brown
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