At least in Canada, teachers can be prosecuted for teaching their students that the holocaust didn't happen... isn't choosing not to teach it sending the same implicit message? This is the problem with the way history is taught in schools--they pick a handful of events to focus on, and omit the big picture. So if a teacher chooses to leave something out, how are the children to know?
I can remember the first time I read about the firebombing of Dresden, in my early teens. It was something that had never come up in the cirriculum we had on the war... so I was convinced that it must have been made up, as it was well beyond what I was told that our side was willing to do. This initial suspicion was reinforced that the adults I asked (teachers, parents) were reluctant to talk about it. In the mind of a youth, omission and denial are very closely related.
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