Pro-Palestine in the Classroom

In December 2023, Teachers in Oakland, California, organized a pro-Palestine teach-in for their students—with the support of the Oakland Education Association, the local teachers union. More than 100 teachers signed up to participate, but it’s unclear how many actually did.

Teach-in materials included an animated introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict produced by Jewish Voice for Peace, which criticizes Israel’s actions against Palestinians, and then a YouTube video that labels Israel as an apartheid state due to its systemic oppression. “Curricular resources” from the teach-in advocated using the term “genocide” for the situation in Gaza and teaching students from kindergarten to high school that teaching them that imperialism and capitalism influence global leaders’ decisions, creating oppressive conditions.

Teachers took time away from regular instruction to complete this “teach-in.” This is the same school district where only 36 percent of students can read at grade level and only 25 percent of the black and Latino students can read at grade level. What is happening in the current state of American public education when students can’t read but they know how to color a Palestinian flag?

Further up the Pacific coast, after criticism from the community, a teachers union in Portland, Oregon, removed a pro-Palestine teaching guide and toolkit from the website. The backlash was sparked by a coloring book that referred to Zionists as “bullies’’ and workbooks that encouraged prayers for Palestine. But just because the lessons were removed from the site does not mean teachers in the union are not still using them. As someone with years of experience in public classrooms, I can tell you that leftist teachers often use this tactic, telling outraged parents they are doing one thing but then, continuing with their radical indoctrination behind closed doors.

Radical Role-Play

I took a deep dive into one of the lessons taught by teachers in Portland, Oregon. At Grant High School, in a 9th grade class, students were asked to participate in a role-play mixer, in which they were assigned to play various historical figures in the Zionist movement along with roles as Palestinian peasants. And we thought kids dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians for Thanksgiving was culturally insensitive!

These students were asked to play 17 different roles that included Theodor Herzl, the Viennese “father of Zionism”; British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour; Joseph Baratz, an idealistic young Zionist; Elias Sursuq, who “owned” and sold vast tracts of Palestinian peasants’ land to Zionist settlers; and Mahmoud Khatib and Ahmed Sharabi, who were Palestinian peasants. Students were asked “to internalize the information in their roles so that they could become this person in the mixer activity.” They also had the students speak only in an “I” voice while demanding that they not try to use accents for their role-play, noting that using an accent would be stereotypical and culturally insensitive. Still, I think this lesson has already gone far past that point.

Of course, the teacher opted to participate with the students in the role play “to make it more fun” and played the role of Elias Sursuq, the Beirut landlord whose family owned enormous parcels of what the teacher called “Palestinian land” that was acquired by “taking advantage of Ottoman laws that discriminated against poor and illiterate peasants.”

After the mixer, the students were asked to debrief, including asking the students who or what in Palestine’s early history was “guilty” of laying the groundwork or somehow contributing to today’s violence. All I can say after reviewing this shocking and offensive lesson is thank God Grant High School is primarily white students. Imagine assigning a Palestinian student to play the father of Zionism or having a Jewish student play a Palestinian peasant!

Teachers Unions as Political Machines

And it is not just fringe local unions and small groups of blue state teachers waving their Palestinian flags in the classroom. State and national teachers unions with millions of members have gone full-steam ahead on political propaganda in lieu of academics and skills-based education. Teachers unions have become political machines, reflecting the biased agendas they push on our nation’s children.

For example, Maine’s teachers union is calling on the state pension system to withdraw investments from companies they consider “complicit” with Israel. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Chicago Teachers Union, Massachusetts Teachers Union, and the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers have all passed official cease-fire resolutions. What does this have to do with the three Rs?

America’s second-largest teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, voted on a series of resolutions at its national convention in July. These resolutions included demanding the cessation of U.S. military aid to Israel and supporting the anti-Israel protests that have erupted on college campuses nationwide. While these two resolutions did not pass, the convention passed similar resolutions pushing the same ideas. I’m sure these resolutions will raise the literacy rate in our schools.

Not to be outdone by the AFT, at their annual meeting in 2021, the National Education Association (NEA) planned to debate two items concerning Israel and the Palestinians—the items aimed to have the union express support for Palestinians and oppose the Israeli government’s actions. And more recently, the NEA has a new sub-group within its ranks titled Educators for Palestine, who proposed a list of 10 demands, including making sure that all of America’s teachers are schooled on “the history of Nabka” an Arabic term used by Palestinians to describe the events that accrued in the lead-up to and during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948—probably not the kind of vocabulary lesson most parents are hoping for.

Taxpayer-Funded Indoctrination

I will not pretend that I understand the complexities of this decades-long conflict, but I will say that this conflict and so rabidly taking one side is inappropriate in our public schools. Just like the Black Lives Matter Movement did not belong in our schools. Teachers using their captive classroom audience to convince their students to support a movement like BLM or “free Palestine” is not in their job description. And in a taxpayer-funded public school with compulsory education laws, it’s unethical, regardless of your views on the conflict. These teachers have Jewish students, and they have Palestinian students. And they have students whose parents want teachers to not drag the students into this conflict, keep their divisive and political opinions to themselves, and just do their jobs.

Whether you think that our government should be heavily involved in this never-ending conflict or not, can we all at least agree that our children in public schools are not there to learn the political messaging of one side, especially while schools fail to raise the literacy rates and facilitate basic skills acquisition of students across the nation.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/pro-palestine-in-the-classroom/