We read Rethinking School's "Teaching Palestine" book so you don't have to
NAVI has read and reviewed Rethinking School’s Teaching Palestine. You can find our breakdown of the book here.
And it’s important to know what’s inside - because school associations across the country are partnering with Rethinking Schools to hold Teaching Palestine professional development sessions.
Oregon Educators for Palestine and Rethinking Schools are teaming up to host an 'all-ages' "Teaching Palestine" 'community teach-in'
On May 10th, Oregon Educators for Palestine will team up with “Rethinking Schools” and the Portland Association of Teachers’ Social Justice and Community Outreach Committee to hold a “community teach-in” on “Teaching Palestine.”
Beaverton Education Association holding "Teach Palestine" Workshop for its members
On April 28th, at the Beaverton Education Association office, Oregon Education Association members are invited to take part in a “Teach Palestine” workshop.
The K-12 Tracker obtained a recording of the BEA workshop - you can listen below:
Rethinking Schools is also partnering with community activist groups, like the Racial Justice Organizing Committee in Philadelphia, to hold Teaching Palestine book clubs open to students.
Teaching Palestine is billed as a resource for educators to ‘uncover the history and current context of Palestine-Israel in the classroom.’
In reality, Rethinking Schools’ Teaching Palestine is a deeply biased curriculum that presents an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and often antisemitic perspective under the guise of education. It offers no balanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, downplays the Holocaust, erases the events of October 7th, and portrays the United States as complicit in genocide.
Teaching Palestine is a handbook for indoctrinating children into the creators’ radical anti-Israel worldview. The curriculum delivers relentless propaganda targeting children from kindergarten through high school. The material disregards the events of October 7th, ignores Hamas’s strategy of embedding within civilian populations, and erases the Jewish people’s historic claim and need for a homeland. Instead of offering a balanced historical perspective or opportunities for critical inquiry, the curriculum relies on maudlin poetry and repeated stories of victimhood in order to shape student views. This is not an education; it is anti-Zionist propaganda that crosses the line into antisemitism.
And you got a taste of that by listening to the book launch - also covered in this substack:
From that book launch, Bill Bigelow, editor at Rethinking Schools who runs some of the professional development seminars for teachers associations and contributed to the book had this to say about a lesson, in the book, that he taught at a Portland high school last year:
“The first through-line is the Zionist movement’s contempt for Palestinian life…Herzl refers to Palestinians as non-Jewish communities. And that erasure of Palestinians is consistent.”
“Another through-line is Zionism’s partnership with Empire…and now of course with the US Empire…the genocide in Gaza is just impossible to imagine without the US military support.”
“The cooperation between Jews and Christians and Muslims..Zionism is an attack on that cooperation…Zionism is a movement of segregation and domination.”
If you can’t stomach reading the book for yourself, NAVI has done the work for you - reviewing the book as well as the handy free discussion guide for educators that comes with the book.
Read it. And be on the lookout for any content or material from this book turning up in your kid’s class.