Palestine, Pedagogy and Protesting Kevin Donnelly
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2023/12/palestine-pedagogy-and-protesting/
The plea published in The Age and the SMH by Melbourne-based teacher Farah Khairat arguing teachers have every right to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians in the Gaza war illustrates how teachers, instead of being balanced and impartial, are intent on indoctrinating students with radical, cultural-left ideology.
Khairat argues she is entitled to present a one-sided, highly emotional account of the war in Gaza to her students — an account where the Palestinians are the victims and Israelis the criminals and there is no mention of Hamas’s evil and barbaric attack killing Jewish women and children. Ignored are the Israeli women raped and abducted, the babies killed and mutilated. Instead, Khairat writes of “one Palestinian child killed every 10 minutes”, “dozens of teachers and school staff killed” and “children’s bodies covered in dirt, rubble and blood”. She also argues teachers should be allowed to politicise the classroom by “expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause” and students allowed to wear a Palestinian scarf (keffiyeh) while at school.
In response to departmental directives not to discuss the Gaza war in the classroom, Khairat argues “As an educator, I question the appropriateness of feigning ignorance on such critical matters. How could I pretend not to be knowledgeable on this topic”. Confusing her personal opinion of Israel and her primary duty to educate students in a balanced and objective way, she writes “I refuse to stay silent because trying to sweep this under the rug is just another form of oppression. To be silent is to be complicit”.
Given Khairat is a member of the Teachers and School Staff for Palestine Victoria group, it’s understandable she has such a jaundiced and one-sided view of the Gaza war. What is inexcusable is that like-minded teachers have abrogated their responsibility as their students’ guardians. Rather than indoctrinating students with their personal political views and enforcing cultural-left mind control and groupthink, the role of the teacher is to educate students to be knowledgeable and able to evaluate arguments is a rational and balanced way.
Critical, in this regard, is for the teacher to ensure when it comes to controversial and heated issues, all sides of the debate are aired and students are given the privilege to formulate their own beliefs free of coercion.
That pro-Palestinian teachers are so prejudiced should not surprise. At least since Joan Kirner, a former Victorian premier, argued at a 1983 Fabian Society meeting schools must be part of the socialist struggle to overthrow capitalism, the classroom has been captured by neo-Marxist inspired ideologues. As argued by a book set for teacher training, “the process of education and the process of liberation are the same” and in a society “disfigured by class exploitation, sexual and racial oppression and in chronic danger of war and environmental destruction”, teachers must decide whose side they are on.
The peak body representing 185,000 teachers, the Australian Education Union (AEU), has long since given up any pretence of being a professional organisation focused on improving teachers’ pay and conditions. The AEU, after Australia committed troops to the war in Iraq, argued students and teachers should strike against the invasion and that students have every right to wag school and join the protest organised by the School Strike 4 Climate group. Whether the rights of LGBTIQA+ students, the Yes campaign for the Indigenous Voice, or opposition to governments funding Catholic and Independent schools, the AEU is guaranteed to advocate an extreme left agenda.
Proven by the Victorian branch of the Australian Association for the Teachers of English telling teachers to advocate Yes for the Voice referendum and its promotion of critical literacy, where students are made to deconstruct literature in terms of capitalist hegemony, the barbarians are no longer at the gates.
How history is taught in schools has especially been captured by the cultural-left. The First Fleet is described as an invasion leading to genocide and Western civilisation characterised as oppressive and guilty of white supremacism. Instead of nation building and promoting patriotism, students are presented with what Geoffrey Blaney terms a black armband view, where there is little, if any, chance of students learning the significance of Judeo-Christianity or the nation’s Westminster-inspired parliamentary and common law systems.
It should not surprise parents across Australia are either starting or have already established their own community schools committed to a classical, liberal/arts education — schools were teachers, instead of being cultural-left propagandists, are impartial and balanced. An education, instead of mind control and groupthink, that initiates students into the West’s best validated knowledge and artistic achievements and where students are taught to think rationally and logically, free of emotion and cant.
Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior fellow at the ACU’s PM Glynn Institute and editor of Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March
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