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