DESPITE SAUDI PROMISES, TEXTBOOKS FILLED WITH HATE

Two years after protracted American-Saudi negotiations persuaded the State Department that the Saudis would remove religious intolerance from their national textbooks, a new study finds the books still portray non-Sunni Muslims as the enemies of true believers.

The report from the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute finds that the Saudi textbooks are filled with the austere supremacism of the Wahhabi sect of Islam, despite promises from the Kingdom in 2006 to alter them. For example, a textbook for 10th graders on Islamic jurisprudence not only says it is permissible in Islam to murder a homosexual, but recommends the methods for doing so: burning alive, stoning, or throwing oneoff a high building.

Jews, Christians, and non-Wahhabi Sunni Muslims are described in many of the textbooks as enemies of the true faith and infidels. What's more, examples from Muhammad's teachings that focus on tolerance of other faiths are often ignored.

The report coincides with a conference the Saudi monarch is sponsoring in Madrid, at which he appeared to want reconciliation between the clerics of the Muslim world and their counterparts among Christians and Jews.

Saudi textbooks are not only a human rights issue, but also increasingly a national security matter, as the House of Saud underwrites Islamic education across the world, including a school in northern Virginia that has come under scrutiny for using the Saudi official textbooks.

The director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, Nina Shea, said yesterday that the State Department should consider sanctions against Saudi Arabia. "The government of Saudi Arabia may have told the State Department it would thoroughly revise its textbooks in order to diffuse criticism two years ago. But it's two years later and now is the time for reckoning. The State Department must now demonstrate it was not an unwitting accomplice to a public relations ploy. They must intensely scrutinize these textbooks and work with them to remove it, or impose sanctions," she said.

Nearly two years ago, the State Department waived a series of sanctions suggested under the International Religious Freedom Act after America and Saudi Arabia came to an arrangement whereby Riyadh promised to excise the intolerance of their textbooks by the start of the fall 2008 school year.

The report says: "This analysis documents that thorough textbook reform has not yet occurred. It is in American interests that the U.S. Government, in this administration and the next, hold Saudi Arabia to its obligations."

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British kids can get a GCSE (Middle school) mathematics pass by reading a thermometer

Teenagers were required to read a simple thermometer and measure a straight line with a ruler to pass a GCSE maths exam, The Daily Telegraph has learned. Just days before results for 600,000 pupils will be released, it emerged 16-year-olds could gain a C grade in the test - officially a good pass - by answering two-thirds of the "simple" questions correctly. The disclosure prompted fresh claims that tests were being "dumbed down", with the Conservatives insisting they were "suitable for an eight-year-old".

It comes as results published next week are expected to show fewer than half of pupils leave school with five good GCSEs including English and maths - the standard expected of all 16-year-olds. Just over 55 per cent of pupils gained at least a C grade in maths last year. It follows fears that many young people are being turned off the subject because of a lack of rigour in the curriculum.

A report by the think-tank Reform said GCSEs were "considerably" easier than 50 years ago as questions had been simplified to make them more relevant to modern teenagers. The Telegraph obtained a foundation tier GCSE paper set by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, Britain's biggest exam board. In one question, pupils are asked to read a diagram of a thermometer. One arrow points to 13C and another to -4C, with students required write down the temperatures for two marks. Another question presents pupils with seven numbers - 24, 26, 29, 34, 40, 47 and 55 - and asks to write down the multiples of five and eight.

Pupils are also shown a short line and asked to measure it - giving their answer in millimetres. They are then required to measure 4cm along the line and mark it on the exam script.

In another question pupils are asked to write down the most suitable metric unit to measure the distance from London to Edinburgh. And one more asks students, who cannot use a calculator, to multiply 350 by two.

Pupils sitting the foundation tier test can score C to G grades. They need to get around two-thirds of questions correct to gain a C in the exam element of the GCSE.

Last night, AQA said questions were easier at the beginning of the exam but became more challenging, including those testing circle area, formulation and solution of equations, algebraic simplification and angle geometry. The exam was just one element of the GCSE, the board said, and pupils must also complete two pieces of coursework, a statistics module, a number module and a second test paper - some four hours and 40 minutes worth of assessment.

"The skills tested by the questions in the paper referred to are all part of the specified content for GCSE which has been unchanged for five years so such questions will have appeared on foundation papers in the past," said a spokesman. "AQA is confident that sufficient evidence is therefore present to ensure that candidates awarded a grade C on this tier will have shown comparable performance to candidates awarded grade C on the higher tier this year."

Nick Gibb, the Conservative shadow schools minister, said: "This is primary level maths suitable for an eight or nine-year-old. It is clear evidence that GCSEs have been dumbed down."

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Australian kid, 10, banned from school for bikini pic

A happy snap of a bikini-clad woman taken on a family day out has landed a Grade 4 Cairns schoolboy a seven-day suspension from class. The 10-year-old boy's father, who asked not to be named fearing reprisal for his children, yesterday told The Weekend Post he was ropeable about the way Bentley Park College had disciplined his son, saying pictures in store catalogues were more risque.

"I remember the picture being taken and there was nothing rude about it," the father said. "It was taken from a moving car." The dad said he had to visit the school before the principal admitted that no teachers had seen the picture and it could not be found on the boy's laptop computer. His son had shown the picture to his classmates, he said.

"Because they (five kids) said it was rude, (the teachers) believed them even though they hadn't seen it," he said. "They have punished him for a crime when they haven't even seen the evidence. "I am all for punishing him if he's done something wrong or taken something rude to school, but this was taken on a family day out," the dad said. The boy's parents were told about the suspension in a phone call from the school.

The photograph was taken from the window of a rental car, during a family trip to the northern beaches to celebrate the parents' wedding anniversary. The photo showed the back of a woman who was wearing a Brazilian-style swimming costume.

Opposition education spokesman John-Paul Langbroek called on the Government to investigate why a boy so young would cop a suspension over what appeared to be a "minor infraction". An Education Queensland spokesman confirmed the Year 4 student had been suspended for taking an inappropriate photograph to school and using it to harass ["Harass?? Entertain, more likely] other kids. "The student was suspended under the college's Responsible Behaviour Plan for breaching guidelines covering safety and respect for others," the spokesman said. [What sickening cant!]

Mulgrave MP Warren Pitt told The Weekend Post he was stunned about the suspension, but wanted to find out the full circumstances before criticising the decision. He urged the boy's father to contact him so he could investigate the claim. Late on Friday after The Weekend Post contacted the Education Department, the boy's father said he was phoned by the school principal to arrange a meeting on Monday to discuss his son immediately returning to school.

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