The center-right government came under fire Wednesday after it scrapped plans to bring out a sixth-grade textbook that would have toned down nationalistic rhetoric by offering a staid account of Greek suffering at the hands of the Ottomans and Turks.

Clerics and rightist critics had demanded that the revision be abandoned, but once it was, on Tuesday, some politicians, academics and parents protested.

"We decided to withdraw the book because of serious reservations," Education Minister Evripidis Stylianidis said after a six-hour meeting Tuesday with the leaders of the state organization responsible for the content of Greek school books.

"Children cannot be turned into guinea pigs," he said, by offering them a new version of the history that has been taught to generations of Greeks.