UK teachers urged to promote Palestinian history

(IRNA)-Britain's biggest teachers' union is being urged to promote a Palestinian view of the "unresolved injustice" of the Middle East conflict.

At its annual Easter conference on March 25, delegates from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) are being asked in a resolution to take a pro-Palestinian stance against Israel's 60-year occupation.

"This unresolved injustice entrenches many opponents of the world's most militarized states in a conviction that real peace, democracy and equality are not what those powers aspire to in these more recent conflicts," the resolution says.

It congratulates NUT members who have already established twinning arrangements with schools in Palestine and encourage more to do like wise.

Delegates are urged to also agree "to purchase and circulate the most recent education pack produced by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which promotes an understanding of the history of this most protracted dispute in the Middle East."

The motion comes after Britain's largest lecturers' union, the Universities and Colleges Union, voting last May to introduce an academic boycott of Israeli regime, but which was later overturn after intervention from the British government.

The teachers' resolution also goes on to urge members to stop promoting in schools career opportunities in the armed forces and to support any teachers who face "victimization or other professional difficulties" in implementing the policy.

"Military intervention in schools customarily presents a partisan view of war, largely by ignoring its fatal realities in favour of promises of travel, skill training and further or higher education course sponsorship otherwise often unavailable," it said.

The motion suggested that schools were being exploited for recruitment by the armed forces because "unpopular recent wars have contributed to a decline in volunteers." (IRNA)

From Engage online

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign isn't famous for pedagogic flair. The educationally important practice of reflection is not in evidence. Its good/bad binary world view is counter to critical thinking. In fact, it's known for being extremely didactic.

The PSC is an organisation whose logo represents a map of Israel and Palestine as if they were both Palestine, on whose web site you can find propaganda along the lines of 68 references to "apartheid", pictures of jaffa oranges dripping with blood and highly rhetorical unreferenced educational material. This is an organisation which is enthustiastically behind the boycott campaign against Israel, ruled unlawful in the higher education union UCU by the architect of the Race Relations Act. And this organisation is currently occupied by an appalling faction fight between those of its anti-zionist members who are attempting to be anti-racist, and those who reject their motions against antisemitism.

As an authoritative source on the conflict, the PSC is compromised by bias. So why have members of the NUT from Croydon submitted this smorgersbord of a Motion 55, titled simply 'War', to the forthcoming NUT Conference which, at the same time as objecting to "playing a partisan role in the war", proposes to reject neutrality and:

"Co-sponsor with the Stop the War Coalition and its other affiliated trade unions, mindful of existing legal guidelines, curriculum learning materials on peace and militarisation. In addition, the Union agrees to purchase and circulate the most recent education pack produced by the Palestine Solidarity campaign, which promotes an understanding of the history of this most protracted dispute in the Middle East."

I am trying and failing to understand why a motion mostly given over to protesting the war in Iraq and the intrusion of the British military into the classroom should end with the above instruction that British school children should be exposed to the PSC's Israel-cancelling doctrines.

The Guardian reports this as "backing Palestinians" but as far as I can see it doesn't go further than backing the PSC and Stop the War (another educational flop).

Update: it's not clear whether the PSC-authored education pack is for use in schools or for distribution within the NUT. The Guardian piece says that the motion "calls on its union to buy educational material produced by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for use by students in schools". The motion itself calls for co-sponsorship curriculum materials on peace and militarisation with the Stop the War Coalition and says "the Union agrees to purchase and circulate the most recent education pack produced by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign".