SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
scholasticide
Teachers Are Risking Their Jobs to Tell the Truth About Palestine; They Need Our Support
Parents, community members, social justice organizations, and solidarity activists must demand a school curriculum that looks forthrightly at the history of Zionism and Palestinian struggles for justice.
Oct 09, 2024
Scholasticide.
It’s a term coined in 2009, but has taken on new power as the devastation of Gazan schools, universities, and libraries becomes almost total. As Rice University Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti of Scholars Against the War on Palestine said about the Israeli assault: “They’re demolishing universities and schools intentionally. They bombarded and destroyed every single university. They’re using schools as barracks and military stations.”
But another facet of scholasticide can be found in our own schools in the United States—erasing Palestinian lives and hiding the history of Palestine-Israel from young people.
Attempts to silence critical teaching around Palestine-Israel have at times been ferocious. And it requires courage for teachers to confront this repression.
In the forthcoming book from Rethinking Schools, Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices, Palestinian American educator Nina Shoman-Dajani writes: “Of the hundreds of assignments my children have brought home from school over the years, not one of them has referred to Palestine.”
In a review of children’s literature on Palestine, in the book, Nadine Foty, Palestinian-Egyptian-American early childhood educator, writes: “As a child, I remember feeling like I didn’t belong because I could never walk over to a map in my classrooms and see my father’s home, Palestine. When I asked, I was met by responses that Palestine didn’t exist.”
The curricular silence that turns Palestinians invisible impoverishes all young people. Instead of the knowledge they need to make sense of how Palestine became Israel and how Israel continues to wage war on Palestinians, they get nothing. Or worse.
Widely adopted corporate textbooks feed students pernicious myth after myth. Glencoe’s World History, for example, begins its section “The Question of Palestine” not with Palestinians, but with Jewish immigrants: “In the years between the two world wars, many Jews had immigrated to Palestine, believing this area to be their promised land.” The entire section simply tells Israel’s origin story as Israeli propagandists would tell it.
About Israel’s founding, Holt McDougal’s Modern World History lectures young people: “The new nation of Israel got a hostile greeting from its neighbors.” The first “Critical Thinking” question in the teacher’s edition asks: “What prevented the establishment of the Arab state in 1948?”
The sole possible answer the book offers: “Palestinian Arabs rejected the partition plan.” (That partition plan was seen by many as a temporary inconvenience, including Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who wrote partition was “not the end but the beginning.”)
The good news is that more and more teachers around the country are breaking through the mainstream curriculum’s silences and lies.
Pro-Israel efforts to repress critical teaching about the history of Zionism and Palestine echo the country’s ferocious right-wing attacks on anti-racist, social justice curricula.
Teaching Palestine collects stories of imaginative teaching from across the country: a simulation that introduces students to Israel’s apartheid system of fragmentation and domination; a critical thinking activity with students evaluating Palestinian narratives on the 1948 Nakba (the Catastrophe), alongside Zionist narratives that fill our textbooks; an historical dive into U.S. policy choices toward Israel from the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis through Hamas’ rise to elected power in Gaza in 2006; a role play activity on the ”seeds of violence” in Palestine-Israel that transports students to Palestine in the Ottoman era and the early years of Zionist immigration and ethnic nation-building alongside Palestinian dispossession; an elementary lesson that uses Malak Matar’s poignant children’s book Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story.
But attempts to silence critical teaching around Palestine-Israel have at times been ferocious. And it requires courage for teachers to confront this repression.
Some instances feel absurd. In Portland, Oregon, in response to student work on Palestine posted on the walls of a public school last spring, the school district recently instituted a new administrative directive. Now, teachers may display art or posters that might “stimulate and illustrate” an area of study, but if these are visible from a “common area” like the hallway, they must have prior approval from the building administrator. This fall, school officials tore down—literally—a teacher’s “Stop the Genocide” posters. In a meeting, administrators said that “Stop Genocide” would be permissible, but inserting “the” rendered this unacceptably partisan.
In an article included in Teaching Palestine, the young adult novelist Nora Lester Murad describes how the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) bullies teachers and students by pushing—and weaponizing—the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which conflates Palestinian perspectives with antisemitism.
In Philadelphia, students of the award-winning high school teacher Keziah Ridgeway made a podcast comparing the art of Palestinians with the art of enslaved people. In response, groups there including the School District of Philadelphia Jewish Family Association labeled Ridgeway’s work with students “antisemitic and dangerous.”
Amplifying the Jewish Family Association’s complaints against Ridgeway and other teachers, ADL later submitted a Title VI complaint against the school district. As Murad notes, in the complaint, “the ADL advocates for the ‘suspension and expulsion’ of students and the ‘suspension and termination’ of teachers, who under the IHRA definition… have engaged in ‘discriminatory conduct’ for being publicly critical of Zionism.”
As we reported in the spring 2024 Rethinking Schools magazine, four teachers in Montgomery County, Maryland were placed on administrative leave for public expressions of support for Palestinians. A charter school in Los Angeles fired two first-grade teachers and placed their principal on leave after one teacher posted on Instagram that they had taught a “lesson on the genocide in Palestine.” The Decatur, Georgia school district disciplined their equity coordinator for sharing “Resources for Learning & Actions to Support Gaza.”
A recent Jewish Federation of Greater Portland parent advocacy training I attended, told parents, “You are our eyes and ears”—“Record everything. Every single word.” One presenter told the story of a group of parents confronting a principal about a teacher who showed “one-sided” CNN videos. “We demanded that some action be taken. And this teacher—I can tell you, this year, that teacher does not teach at that school.”
Pro-Israel efforts to repress critical teaching about the history of Zionism and Palestine echo the country’s ferocious right-wing attacks on anti-racist, social justice curricula. As Jesse Hagopian points out in his forthcoming book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, almost half of public school children in the United States live in states that restrict teaching about race and racism.
Educators of conscience need allies who can support their efforts to build a curriculum that centers Palestinian perspectives. This is not the work of educators alone. They need parents, community members, social justice organizations, and solidarity activists to demand a school curriculum of fearless curiosity—one that looks forthrightly at the history of Zionism and Palestinian struggles for justice.
Palestine has been the site of invasion, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and war. But also of resilience, of hope. Let’s help teachers introduce young people to the critical stories they need to make sense of the world—and to change it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Bombs Another UN School as Gaza Assault Enters 10th Month
"Another day, another bombing of kids at a U.N. refugee school, another set of children mangled beyond recognition, livestreamed for all the world to see."
Jul 07, 2024
Israeli forces on Saturday killed more than a dozen displaced Palestinians in a targeted attack on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza, the latest bombing of an education facility as Israel's assault on the besieged enclave entered its 10th month.
Video footage from the scene of the attack on the al-Jaouni school in central Gaza's al-Nuseirat refugee camp shows puddles of blood on the ground amid the ruins of a building destroyed in the bombing, which reportedly killed at least 16 people and injured over 75 more, children among them.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out the attack, claiming without evidence that the school was used by Hamas operatives.
"Another day, another bombing of kids at a U.N. refugee school, another set of children mangled beyond recognition, livestreamed for all the world to see," said Vincent Wong, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, asked, "Why have we allowed this to become normal?"
Saturday's bombing of al-Jaouni was one of many attacks Israel's military has carried out against U.N.-run schools since its latest assault on Gaza began in October following a deadly Hamas-led attack. Last month, Israel used U.S.-made small-diameter bombs in an attack on a U.N. school that killed 14 children.
Israeli forces have damaged or destroyed 80% of Gaza's schools, including all of its universities—harm that will reverberate for generations. U.N. experts have said it is "reasonable to ask" if Israel is guilty of "scholasticide," defined as "the systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure."
Chandni Desai, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, noted in a Guardianop-ed last month that Israeli soldiers recently "set ablaze the remaining parts of the al-Aqsa University's library in Gaza City and photographed themselves sitting in front of the burning books."
"Similarly, an Israeli soldier recently filmed himself walking through the ruins of al-Azhar University, mocking scholasticide and rejoicing in the occupation's destruction of the university," Desai wrote. "'We're starting a new semester,' he said, adding: 'It'll start never.'"
Now in month 10, Israel's war on Gaza has killed more than 38,000 people and wounded nearly 90,000, with tens of thousands more believed to be trapped under the ruins of bombed-out buildings.
Citing unnamed medical sources, Al Jazeerareported Sunday that at least "15 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli bombing across the Gaza Strip since dawn."
The wave of Israeli attacks came amid reports of progress toward a possible cease-fire and hostage-release agreement. The U.S., which has supported Israel's assault with weaponry and diplomatic cover, described Hamas' latest cease-fire proposal as a "breakthrough," but it's far from clear Israel will accept the terms even in the face of massive domestic protests demanding a deal.
According toThe New York Times, Hamas is pushing for "international assurances that, once an initial truce kicks in, both sides will keep negotiating until they reach a final deal to end the war and free all of the hostages remaining in Gaza."
"In effect, Hamas wants to ensure that it does not turn over many of the hostages only for Israel to restart the war," the Times reported, citing unnamed officials. "Israeli negotiators immediately rejected that demand... Israel wants the option to resume fighting if it deems it necessary."
Egypt is expected to host U.S. and Israeli delegations for a fresh round of cease-fire talks, which could drag on for weeks as Israel's military continues to bomb Gaza and starve its population.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Research Shows 10,000+ Killed or Harmed in Growing Global Attacks on Education
"In places like Gaza, in addition to the horrific loss of life, education itself is under attack," said the executive director of the Global Coalition to Protect Education From Attack.
Jun 20, 2024
More than 10,000 students, teachers, and academics were killed or harmed in thousands of attacks on education in 2022 and 2023, according to research published Thursday amid Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, which has seen its schools and universities decimated by the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing campaign.
The Global Coalition to Protect Education From Attack (GCPEA) identified roughly 6,000 attacks on education in 2022 and 2023, a 10% increase compared to the two preceding years. The highest number of attacks took place in occupied Palestine, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar, and explosive weapons—including rockets and landmines—were involved in about a third of the attacks.
"In places like Gaza, in addition to the horrific loss of life, education itself is under attack," Lisa Chung Bender, GCPEA's executive director, said in a statement. "School and university systems have been shut down, and in some cases completely destroyed. This will have long-term consequences on social and economic recovery, as the very infrastructure needed for peace and stability have been targeted."
GCPEA researchers estimate that more than 475 attacks on schools took place in Palestine last year, surging after Israel launched its large-scale assault on Gaza following the deadly Hamas-led attack on October 7. Israeli forces have damaged or destroyed every university in the Gaza Strip as part of what United Nations experts have described as a "systemic obliteration of education."
"On average, eight attacks on education were recorded daily over the past two years, meaning a startling number of students were unable to follow their dreams."
In addition to attacks on education infrastructure, the new report shows that targeted attacks on students, teachers, and prominent academics have become more frequent worldwide in recent years.
"More than 10,000 students and educators were reportedly killed, injured, abducted, arrested, or otherwise harmed by attacks on education in 2022 and 2023," GCPEA's new report notes. "The number of students, teachers, professors, and education staff killed or injured increased by over 10% compared to 2020 and 2021, the period covered in the last Education Under Attack report."
Jerome Marston, a senior researcher at GCPEA, said that "on average, eight attacks on education were recorded daily over the past two years, meaning a startling number of students were unable to follow their dreams of learning, or develop the skills that an education promises."
"Schools should be safe havens, not targets," said Marston.
The new report stresses that growing attacks on education have taken place "against a backdrop of increasing conflict" and a worsening climate emergency, which GCPEA said "may be linked to attacks on education" such as the "lootings of school canteens" in areas impacted by severe hunger.
"In late March 2022, a suspected armed group allegedly looted a school canteen in Komangou village, Gourma province, Est Region, Burkina Faso, on two consecutive days, as reported by a local media outlet," the report observes. "On November 16, 2022, a suspected armed group allegedly attacked a school and looted its canteen in Fatakara village, Timbuktu region, Mali."
Additionally, the report makes a preliminary connection between climate-fueled extreme weather events and attacks on education.
"For instance, in the Philippines, climate change has contributed to more intense typhoons, affecting in particular the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that has faced decades of protracted armed conflict," the report notes. "The U.N. reported that an armed group in the region attacked a school being used as shelter by people displaced by emergencies while state security forces were nearby for disaster-relief efforts."
GCPEA calls on all parties to armed conflicts across the globe to "immediately cease attacks on education" and urges governments to endorse the Safe Schools Declaration, an international effort to protect education during war.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel have backed the declaration.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular