Policing Politics in School Curriculum
By Raphael Kohan
The Jewish Advocate
Dealing with controversial topics in the classroom
When the Palestinian advocacy group Wheels of Justice spoke in Andover on Jan. 5, a pro-Israel faction in the audience reacted strongly, charging the group with one-sided distortions and, in some instances, outright fabrications of reality. The incident begged the question of how educators deal with controversial topics - like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - in public schools.
While most schools don't require specific units on the conflict, they often deal with it through current events and as a supplement to world history and religion courses. And despite the emotional flashflood incited by Wheels of Justice, teachers and administrators maintain that it is necessary to engage hot-button issues in the classroom.
"I'm concerned about a process where we teach kids to be thoughtful and respect the other side," said Susan Duncan, social studies director for Needham High School. "We work from the ground point that we're all biased, so how do we recognize bias? I want students hearing points of view not their own, and get them thinking and analyzing the data that they see."
Seth Brysk, director of the Israel Action Center of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, has seen scholastic interest in the Middle East intensify as America has become more entwined in regional politics after 9/11 and with the ongoing war in Iraq.
"I think it's an important issue," he said of the conflict. "There's nothing wrong with parties that disagree when it's civil and informed and meant to build understanding."
Controversial topics become intensely personal, however, and disagreements quickly lose civility when both sides of a debate believe they are in the moral right. Conversations often erupt into yelling matches, and people stop listening to voices besides their own.
"Whenever you have an extremist group, you have to present the other side," said Duncan. "I'm strongly in favor of controversial issues, but how do you do it respectfully? Where the debate gets too heated for us personally is hard, but because we have a forum for discussion, people can come back. We need to build relationships rather than put ourselves in holes, and sometimes that can be hard."
Reading Middle School teacher Becky Mandell understands the difficulty and the importance of introducing clashing perspectives. As part of an optional section on the current conflict, Mandell has her class read stories by Israeli and Palestinian children. In the stories, the children discuss their contrasting feelings towards Israeli soldiers. The Israeli - a girl - sees the soldiers as a symbol of safety. The Palestinian boys, however, see the soldiers not as figures of protection but of degradation, and describe how Israeli soldiers make them feel like goats.
"As a Jew, I care a lot about Israel," Mandell said. "But as a teacher, it's important to teach both sides. I provide them with the facts and I respect the kids' opinions."
Recognizing biases helps a teacher from turning a classroom into a personal soapbox. Many people complained about the Wheels of Justice program because they believed that some Andover teachers were pushing personal agendas.
"Teachers that impose their views are corrupting the educational process," said Brysk. "With academic freedom comes academic responsibility."
And Duncan agrees: "Never is a classroom a place for a teacher to cram a view down someone's throat. A teacher has no right to proselytize. School should be a battle for thinking, not a battle to be on my side."
At the Israel Action Center, Brysk has been working with various schools in the Greater Boston area to help construct curriculum from a pro-Israel perspective.
"We think strategically and pro-actively for Israel, not reactively," said Brysk. "We coordinate the best practices of the pro-Israel community. And whether these incidents [Wheels of Justice] take place or not, we would still be making these efforts. Along the way you are bound to find circumstances where Israel is portrayed unfairly and attacked, and find an outright bias, and in those cases there needs to be a response."
While organizations like the IAC openly admit their desire to design pro-Israel curriculum, they stick to the facts of the situation, they say, unlike the Wheels of Justice.
Yet educators believe that even groups like Wheels of Justice, regardless of whether they are in fact educational or are simply pushing propaganda, do not discredit the need for two-sided discussions. If anything, they say that it furthers the academic process within a critically-thinking environment that is both willing to dissect arguments for bias and to hold them up to intellectual scrutiny.
"Our job is not to politicize students," said Newton Superintendent Jeffrey Young. "It is to inform them on different sides of an issue and equip them with critical thinking skills to form their own judgments. The goal is to help students understand there is never one side to a story."
