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Politicizing Palestinian education:
IPCRI reports and the lack of objectivity
an expert report by Nadia Naser-Najjab
Palestine Report
March 09, 2005 Volume 11 Number 36
http://www.palestinereport.org/article.php?article=694
THE ISSUE of “incitement” in
Palestinian textbooks is one that has been under focus for some time now,
to the extent that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set “reform” of
Palestinian school curricula as a precondition to any progress in talks
with the Palestinian Authority.
Several surveys have found that there is no incitement in Palestinian
textbooks, but other surveys have disagreed. The issue has raised another,
parallel issue, that of similar problems in the Israeli curricula. These
are not discrete problems, rather a comparative analysis goes to the root
of the problem of Palestinian-Israeli education, namely that the two
cannot be divorced either from the realities the peoples live under and
the history of the country they both claim as their own. The issue also
poses the question of what education should be about: teaching the truth
as it is best understood, or shaping attitudes to political circumstances.
The most recent investigation into the matter was undertaken by the
Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI)
and was funded by the US government. The last report of November 2004,
“Recommendations for Palestinian Text Book Reform”, was the third in a
series of three evaluations of the Palestinian curriculum presented to the
Public Affairs Office at the US Consulate General in Jerusalem (the other
two were “Analysis and Evaluation of the New Palestinian Curriculum:
Reviewing Palestinian Textbooks and Tolerance Education Program (Report
I)”, March, 2003, and “Analysis and Evaluation of the New Palestinian
Curriculum: Reviewing Palestinian Textbooks and Tolerance Education
Program Grade 4 & 9 (Report II)”, June 2004). IPCRI also carried out one
evaluation of Israeli textbooks, “Examination of Israeli Textbooks in
Elementary Schools of The State Educational System”, April 2004. It is not
clear whether the evaluation of the Israeli textbooks has been presented
to the US government.
In this article I will examine the latest report issued by IPCRI in
November 2004 and compare its findings with the April 2004 evaluation of
Israeli textbooks. The overall evaluation of the latter was positive, as
best summed up by this excerpt of the report’s closing paragraph:
“Our hope is that the balance will continue, that the injustices requiring
correction will be corrected as well as the contents of the books, and
that the factual aspects will be more emphasized than the mythological
aspects.”
While there is some criticism of Israeli textbooks for not teaching enough
about Arabs and Palestinians, there is no mention, however, in the IPCRI
report of an earlier study by Professor Daniel Bar Tal of Tel Aviv
University, which in 1998 found that Israeli textbooks described Arabs as
“hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt
Jews.” In other words, Israeli textbooks are criticized for what they
leave out, but not in any way accused of incitement.
The “velvet glove” treatment afforded Israeli textbooks can be seen in
other contexts as well. There is an inherent imbalance in the treatment
afforded Israeli and Palestinian curricula by IPCRI when on the one hand
Israeli students are implored to “be challenged to understand the period
of the Oslo peace process in all of its complexities” (this in the
November 2004 report), while Palestinian teachers should “place an
emphasis on positive Palestinian intentions and positive elements [that]
occurred during the Oslo process, such as the establishment of the
Palestinian Authority”.
Two examples are included in the IPCRI report on grade 2 Israeli history
curriculum intended to show that it promotes a balanced view. One concerns
a cautionary tale of how Jews should avoid buying land close to Arab
settlements. The intention, according to the IPCRI report, is that it
teaches students to maintain good relations with their Arab neighbors, but
with no mention of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza,
to ferret out such intention rather depends on classroom discussion
management by the teacher. Another, equally teacher-dependant example,
concerns the biblical story of the negative impact of Philistine rule.
That example, according to the IPCRI report, should show the negative
impact of one people ruling another, but it is for the teacher to bring
such a message out. Another message can easily be understood.
More importantly, for our purposes, is that while Israeli teachers are
afforded the benefit of the doubt by the IPCRI report writers that they
will indeed steer the classroom discussion in a “positive” direction, no
similar faith is placed in Palestinian teachers, and no leeway is given
equally ambivalent examples from Palestinian textbooks.
In another example, the IPCRI report criticizes the Palestinian curricula
for not explicitly recognizing the right of Israel to exist. While it does
include criticism of Israeli textbooks for not recognizing the 1967
borders, the writers behind the IPCRI report apparently feel this should
not be a justification for the Palestinian side to do the same. A recent
article on the issue by Akiva Eldar in the Israeli
Haaretz newspaper (“Learning all
the wrong facts”, December 9, 2004) finds that not only is the 1967 border
not recognized, the Green Line receives no mention at all and the West
Bank is referred to only as Judea and Samaria.
The lack of education in the Israeli textbooks surveyed for grade 2
schoolchildren about Palestinian identity is explained away as not
relevant to the period taught, while grade 4 Palestinian textbooks are
taken to task for not mentioning any historical Jewish presence in the
land. It seems odd to expect young Palestinian schoolchildren to learn
ancient Jewish history and not for Israeli schoolchildren to learn much
more recent history about Palestinians and Palestine, but it also raises
questions about the methodology of the IPCRI team. Why a whole series on
the Palestinian curricula and only one report on Israeli primary school
curricula? Indeed, why the IPCRI recommendation to have Israeli experts on
the committees to evaluate Palestinian textbooks, but no Palestinian
experts to review Israeli textbooks?
The Palestinian curriculum is generally criticized for teaching animosity
toward Israel. For example, the November 2004 report includes the
following quote from a Palestinian textbook:
““They (the Israelis) have taken our land, they destroy our homes, they
have determined our future, and the only thing we can hold onto as our own
is our identity and our past. Now they want to take that as well.”
Considering what is happening on the ground, it is very hard for me to see
what is wrong with the above quote. Indeed, while Palestinian teachers are
urged to teach the negative effects of suicide bombings on Israeli
civilians, in all four IPCRI reports not one mention is made the Israeli
occupation and Israeli aggression against Palestinian civilians. The IPCRI
reports seem to assume that peace has been struck, that people’s rights
have been met, that the occupation no longer exists. But children, as any
teacher knows, will always ask awkward questions, especially when those
questions are posed of them every day in the form of foreign soldiers and
bulldozers, checkpoints and curfews, death and destruction.
It is singularly dispiriting to find a non-governmental organization that,
by its own definition, is devoted to achieving a just peace between
Palestinians and Israeli, publishing an account so devoid of balance. It
is dispiriting to find this same organization in their November 2004
report urging the PA to recognize Israel as the “State for the Jewish
people” thus relegating Israel’s Palestinian population to second-class
status, not to mention the rights of Palestinians from pre-1948 Mandate
Palestine.
IPCRI challenges Palestinian educators to focus on the new period. What
new period this refers to, is not exactly clear. “Peace education”, as
some like to call it, can be very useful in fostering tolerance and
understanding, but cannot come at the expense of reality. No amount of
fine words will challenge the evidence of your own eyes. As settlements
continue to expand, and a wall is built up and down the West Bank (perhaps
equally confounding for Jewish children, up and down “Judea and Samaria”),
it is simply unrealistic for IPCRI to ignore these factors. If we are to
learn about the Oslo process “in all its complexity” perhaps we need to
learn why it hasn’t brought peace. – Published 9/3/05
Dr. Nadia Naser-Najjab is a part-time assistant professor at the
department of education and psychology at Birzeit University. -Published
March 09, 2005©Palestine Report
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