E Wayne Ross – Critical Theories in Education

Research seminar at UWE Education and Childhood Research Group

I was delighted to have the opportunity to lead a research seminar with the Education and Childhood Research Group at the University of the West of England in Bristol this week.

The seminar was titled “Critical Social Education: Insurgent Pedagogies & Dangerous Citizenship” and explored how social studies education in the Americas is being used to contribute in significant ways to creating a society where individuals have the power and resources to realize their own potential and free themselves from the obstacles of classism, racism, sexism, and other inequalities often encouraged by schools, the state, and oppressive ideologies.

The seminar also framed the role and nature of social studies education in the Americas, with an emphasis on critical perspectives in the field, drawing on my recently published edited collection, The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities (5th Edition, SUNY Press) as well other critical scholars including contributors to the book Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality (2022, Myers Education Press), edited by Natasha Hakimali Merchant, Sarah B. Shear and Wayne Au.

I also touched on related research on social studies in the Latin American context based on the book Social Studies Education in Latin America: Critical Perspectives from the Global South, which I edited with Sebastián Plá.

The ECRG is led by Alpesh Maisuria, Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education at UWE Bristol, who I thank for the opportunity.

I also want to thank UWE Bristol education Professor Jane Andrews for the chance to participate in their monthly reading group which discussed a recent chapter of mine titled “Society, Democracy, and Economics: Challenges for Social Studies and Citizenship Education in a Neoliberal World”. I enjoyed the lively and diverse discussion.

Call for manuscript reviewers – Critical Education

Critical E ducation is a looking to expand its pool of manuscript reviewers.

If you are interested in contributing to the broad, multi-disciplinary field of critical education by participating in the peer review process, we encourage you to register with Critical Education as a reviewer.

We define critical education broadly as a field or approach that works theoretically and practically toward social change and addresses social injustices that result from various forms of oppression in globalized capitalist societies and under neoliberal governance.

We are looking for reviewers with expertise from across the broad range of education scholarship including but not limited to various: forms of research (e.g., empirical, theoretical, philosophical), contexts (e.g., early childhood, primary and secondary education, higher education, informal and popular education), conceptual orientations (e.g., critical pedagogy, anarchism, Marxism, critical postmodernism) and subfields (e.g., anti-racism, alternative education, critical and media literacy, disability studies, gender and sexuality, de/colonial and Indigenous education, leadership and policy studies, climate, outdoor, and place-based education, teacher education, solidarity and social movements, disciplinary subjects, etc.).

Critical Education uses a double-blind review process and follows the guidelines and practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

How do I sign up as a reviewer for Critical Education?

If you are already a registered user of the journal, sign in and from the drop-down menu below your username (top-right corner) choose View Profile > Role > check Reviewer box and list the key words that describe your areas of expertise. Before closing the profile window be sure to click the Save button on the bottom left of the page.

If you are not yet registered with Critical Education, use the Register link at the top of the journal home page and create an account. When creating your profile be sure to check the Reviewer role box and list the key words that describe your areas of expertise. Don’t forget to click the Save button.

Founded in 2010, Critical Education is an international, diamond open-access (no fees to read or publish), peer-reviewed journal, which publishes articles that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies and hosted by The University of British Columbia Library. Critical Education is indexed in a number of scholarly databases including Scopus, EBSCO, DOAJ, and ERIC and is a member of the Free Journal Network. For more about Critical Education see: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/about

Rouge Forum Archive

The Rouge Forum Archive is now available at RougeForum.com The RF Archive includes flyers, broadsides, conference programs, issues of our zine The Rouge Forum News, the Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lectures, and more. And also check out RougeForum.org for additional information about RF activities.

The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society.

We are concerned about questions like these:

How can we teach against racism, national chauvinism, and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society?
How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach—or learn?
Whose interests shall schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal?

We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy, and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what these are.

We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless.

Read about the origins and history of The Rouge Forum here.

Why do you call it The Rouge Forum?

The River Rouge runs throughout the Detroit area—where the Rouge Forum was founded in 1998. Once a beautiful river bounteous with fish and plant life, it supported wetlands throughout southeast Michigan. Before industrialization, it was one of three rivers running through what is now the metropolitan area. Today the Rouge meanders through some of the most industrially polluted areas in the United States, past some of the poorest and most segregated areas of North American, only to lead some tributaries to one of the richest cities in the U.S.: Birmingham. The Rouge cares nothing for boundaries. The other two Detroit rivers were paved, early in the life of the city, and now serve as enclosed running sewers. Of the three, the Rouge is the survivor.

The Ford Rouge Plant was built before and during World Way I. By 1920, it was the world’s largest industrial complex. Everything that went into a Ford car was manufactured at the Rouge. It was one of the work’s largest iron foundries and one of the top steel producers. Early on, Henry Ford sought to control every aspect of a worker’s life, mind and body, in the plant and out. Using a goon squad recruited from Michigan prisons led by the infamous Harry Bennet, Ford instituted a code of silence. He systematically divided workers along lines of national origin, sex, race, and language groupings–and set up segregated housing for the work force. Ford owned Dearborn and its politicians. He designed a sociology department, a group of social workers who demanded entry into workers’ homes to discover “appropriate” family relations and to ensure the people ate Ford-approved food, like soybeans, voted right, and went to church.

While Ford did introduce the “Five Dollar Day,” in fact only a small segment of the employees ever got it, and those who did saw their wages cut quickly when economic downturns, and the depression, eroded Ford profits.

The Rouge is the site that defined “Fordism.” Ford ran the line mercilessly. Fordism which centered on conveyor production, single- purpose machines, mass consumption, and mass marketing, seeks to heighten productivity via technique. The processes are designed to strip workers of potentially valuable faculties, like their expertise, to speed production, expand markets, and ultimately to drive down wages. These processes seek to make workers into replaceable machines themselves, but machines also capable of consumption. Contrary to trendy analysis focused on globalization and the technique of production, Ford was carrying on just-in-time practices at the Rouge in the early 1930’s. Ford was and is an international carmaker, in the mid 1970’s one of Europe’s largest sellers. In 1970, Ford recognized the need to shift to smaller cars, and built them, outside the U.S., importing the parts for assembly—early globalism.

Ford was a fascist. He contributed intellectually and materially to fascism. His anti-Semitic works inspired Hitler. Ford accepted the German equivalent of the Medal of Honor from Hitler, and his factories continued to operate in Germany, untouched by allied bombs, throughout WWII.

At its height, more than 100,000 workers held jobs at the Rouge. Nineteen trains ran on 85 miles of track, mostly in huge caverns under the plant. It was the nation’s largest computer center, the third largest producer of glass. It was also the worst polluter. The Environmental Protection agency, in 1970, charged the Rouge with nearly 150 violations.

Today there are 9,000 workers, most of them working in the now Japanese-owned iron foundry. Ford ruthlessly battled worker organizing at the Rouge. His Dearborn cops and goon squad killed hunger marchers during the depression, leading to massive street demonstrations. In the Battle of Overpass Ford unleashed his armed goons on UAW leaders, a maneuver which led to the battle for collective bargaining at Ford, and was the founding monument to what was once the largest UAW local in the world, Local 600, led by radical organizers for years.

On 1 February 1999, the boilers at the aging Rouge plant blew up, killing six workers. The plant, according to workers, had repeatedly failed safety inspections. UAW local president made a statement saying how sorry he was for the families of the deceased–and for William Clay Ford, “who is having one of the worst days of his life.” Papers and the electronic press presented the workers’ deaths as a tough day for the young Ford who inherited the presidency of the company after a stint as the top Ford manager in Europe. The steam went out of Local 600 long ago. The leaders now refer to themselves as “UAW-FORD,” proof that they have inherited the fascist views of the company founder.

When environmentalist volunteers tried to clean the rouge in June 1999, they were ordered out of the water. It was too polluted to clean. So, why the Rouge Forum? The Rouge is both nature and work. The Rouge has never quit; it moves with the resilience of the necessity for labor to rise out of nature itself. The river and the plant followed the path of industrial life throughout the world. The technological advances created at the Rouge, in some ways, led to better lives. In other ways, technology was used to forge the privilege of the few, at the expense of most–and the ecosystems, which brought it to life, The Rouge is a good place to consider a conversation, education, and social action. That is why.

New issue of Critical Education (15.3) just published

New issue of Critical Education (Vol 15, No 3) just published.

Table of Contents:

The Logic of Ed-Tech: Three Critical Directions
Michael Mindzak, Rahul Kumar

“Relationship-building” and the Normalization of Police in Schools: The Emergence of School Resource Officer Programs in Canada
Alexandre Da Costa

Student Rent-Strikes: Hope Through Unplanned Critical Pedagogy
Lucy Wenham, Helen Young

“All of this is whitewashed, all of this is colonized: ”Exploring Impacts of Indigenous Young Adult Literature on Teacher Candidates Perceptions of Indigenous Peoples
Joaquin Muñoz

Visible and Invisible Difference: Negotiating Citizenship, Affect, and Resistance
Kerenina K. Dansholm, Joshua K. Dickstein, Heidi D. Stokmo

Review: Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change
Hossein Davari

Critical Education is a peer-reviewed, diamond open-access, international and multidisciplinary journal published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES). Critical Education is indexed in Scopus, ERIC, EBSCO, DOAJ, ASCI, and a member of the Free Journal Network.

https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/index

New online cohort M.Ed. in Social Studies Education at UBC: Curriculum, Historical inquiry, & Pedagogy (CHiP)

Master of Education: Curriculum, Historical inquiry, & Pedagogy (CHiP)

Issues of equity, diversity, and social justice serve as foundational lenses for interrogating social studies curriculum and pedagogy.

This graduate program delves into key aspects of social studies curricula with connections to historical thinking, historical consciousness, visual culture, anti-oppressive and anti-racism education, gender studies, moral education, and the history and politics of curriculum.

The cohort-based model invites you to work through the program in a collaborative community of practice. Students in this program will construct strong, foundational knowledge about teaching and learning in social studies. Building on that base, you will investigate the ways in which inquiry, inter-culturalism, and 21st century teaching and learning are central to social studies education.

By the end of the 26-month program, students will have a wealth of knowledge to share. During the first semester of the program, incoming students will have a chance to learn from graduating students though a mini conference where they will share what they have learned and consider how it can help other Social Studies teachers in their contexts.

This program is offered by the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia

Start Date: July 2025
Length: 2.5 years | Part-Time
Format: Online

Objectives

Through the program, students will consider theories, principles, and practices in social studies education related to:

Critical analysis of dominant and alternative theories of learning, teaching, and assessment in Social Studies,
Improvement of practice through the study of educational theory, philosophy, and practice in Social Studies,
Analysis of different approaches to curriculum development and implementation and their impact on social studies teaching and learning,
The place of curriculum and pedagogy for social studies education in historical context, understanding the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that direct past, present, and future decision making, and
Using an inquiry stance toward your professional practice as an educator in a variety of settings.

Additionally, students will continually reflect on what they are learning and consider how it can help them understand the aims and purposes underlying social studies curricula in their contexts. This knowledge can then be used to inform new practices in their educational contexts.

More information here.

Video Interview: “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for history education in a neoliberal world”

In November 2022, I had the honour giving the keynote address at the National Meeting of Researchers in History Teaching (XIII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores do Ensino de História – XIII-ENPEH) organized by the Brazilian Association of History Teaching (Associação de Ensino de História – ABEH).

Subsequently, the talk — “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for historical education in a neoliberal world” — was published as a chapter in the book Os presentes do Ensino de História: (re)construções em novas bases / The gifts of History Teaching: (re)constructions on new bases, edited by Luis Cerri (State University of Ponta Grossa) and Juliana Alves Andrade (Federal University of Pernambuco).

Below is a a link to a video interview that was conducted last month with my Brazilian colleagues including professors Cerri and Andrade and the president of ABEH, Prof. Maria Lima (Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul). The interview covers quite a bit of territory including the politics of history and social studies education and their role in construction of a more democratic society, critical teaching and the dangers it entails, plus organizing and action for educational and social change.

UBC Graduate Students for Palestine: UBC Senate sides with genocide

Below is a powerful statement from the UBC Graduate Students for Palestine in response to the University of British Columbia Senate rejection of a motion to suspend academic ties with Israeli governmental entities, including public universities, directly involved in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

UBC Graduate Students for Palestine is an anti-colonial, anti-racist, and feminist collective committed to the liberation of occupied Palestine.

This article was published June 27, 2024 in The Ubyssey, the UBC student newspaper.

——————–

Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Yara Ahmed, a PhD candidate in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, on behalf of Graduate Students for Palestine.

On Monday, June 3, the UBC Vancouver Senate rejected a motion to suspend academic ties with Israeli governmental entities, including public universities, directly involved in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

While senators debated the motion over Zoom, Israeli forces bombarded homes in al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, slaughtering at least 11 Palestinians, including Rewan Ghanem, her husband and their baby daughter.

The motion itself was modelled on two former academic suspension motions passed by the Senate. The latest, which ended six UBC partnerships with Russian public universities, was swiftly and almost unanimously approved within two months of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That motion specifically condemned the targeting of civilians and “civilian facilities, including hospitals and universities.”

Yet eight months into the livestreamed extermination of Palestinians in the Gaza concentration camp, and with the full knowledge that Israeli Occupation Forces* (IOF) have murdered more than 36,000 Palestinians, most senators could not bring themselves to defend Palestinians’ lives, human rights and academic freedom. Out of step with over a decade of UBC organizing for Palestinian liberation as well as months of global student protests, our senators’ dismal failure to hold UBC’s Israeli partner entities equally accountable to international law reflects both their own moral and intellectual inconsistencies as well as the depth of institutional anti-Palestinian racism at UBC.

Indeed, the motion cited the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s January 26 ruling that the Israeli settler-colony is plausibly violating Article III of the Genocide Convention of which Canada is a signatory. It referenced the ICJ’s May 24 order that the Israeli government immediately halt its military offensive and other attacks on Palestinians in Rafah. It included the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’s application to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, notably the use of starvation as a weapon of war. It reported the United Nations Human Rights Council’s findings that the IOF is committing crimes against humanity by systematically and intentionally destroying housing, services, and civilian infrastructures, including every single university in Gaza.

In short, the motion came with rigorously researched receipts that made clear that anyone serious about UBC’s self-professed commitments to human rights and equality would support it. By instead breaking with the precedent set in previous academic suspension motions, and making an exception for Israeli institutions participating in the genocide of Palestinians, senators proved that human rights only apply to those regarded as human. Palestinians do not meet their mark.

Statements submitted by Israeli university presidents and others against the proposed motion repeatedly raised ‘academic freedom’ as a justification for maintaining UBC’s ties to Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which all partner directly with the IOF and global arms manufacturers to design and produce weapons used in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Specifically, they claimed that suspending UBC’s partnerships with these institutions would ‘limit’ academic freedom. However, the motion itself did not even prevent individual faculty members from participating in independent research or funding agreements with Israeli academics and universities. What the motion actually called for is the severing of academic ties on an institutional level, which was widely supported in the case of Russia as “the only non-violent way we have to respond to these egregious actions [in Ukraine].” Why, then, did senators invoke academic freedom against the motion to suspend agreements with three Israeli entities complicit in settler-colonialism, occupation and the global military-industrial complex?

As one student senator speaking in favour of the motion astutely asked, “Whose academic freedom is at stake? Who benefits from these exchanges and at what cost? And what efforts has UBC made to defend Palestinians’ right to exercise academic freedom given that all of Gaza’s universities lie in ruins?” What is clear from their questions is that a narrow vision of academic freedom has been used by those opposing the motion to distract from its real purpose: doing what we can from our position at UBC to stand against genocide. Those against the motion wield academic freedom as an individualistic and restrictive neoliberal principle which sanctifies Canadian and Israeli settlers’ ‘choice’ to participate in courses and exchanges, irrespective of their social, political and environmental harms.

This appeal to academic freedom dismisses the brutal crushing of Palestinians’ right to education while wailing at the mere suggestion that UBC students could choose a summer abroad program at a university that isn’t directly involved in an ongoing genocide; such a position is deeply intellectually disingenuous, cynical and exemplary of the kind of racism Palestinian students and faculty endure on university campuses. For instance, the statement submitted by the HU President, waxing lyrical about the institution’s “extensive protection of academic freedom and freedom of speech,” conveniently omitted the university suspension of Palestinian feminist scholar Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian this March after she publicly condemned the genocide. Hebrew University, which hosts an Israeli army base on campus, has a long track record of attacks on Palestinians’ academic freedoms, from threatening expulsions for anyone expressing solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike to suspending students for singing about the olive harvest.

Moreover, it is telling that some of the same UBC senators clutching their pearls at the mere thought of suspending three exchanges with Israeli institutions never raised the same concerns for academic freedom during the Senate discussion on the motion to suspend six academic partnerships with Russian entities. Notably, when severing partnerships with public institutions that were deemed complicit in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this motion was seen as necessary to uphold UBC’s social responsibilities to the global community; taking such an action was also seen as commensurate with their institutional expectations of neutrality. That asking the same commitment of the Senate now is presented as an affront to academic neutrality betrays the racist weaponization of neutrality against Palestinians.

The fact that UBC has multiple Israeli partnerships and no partnerships whatsoever with Palestinian universities is proof that it has never been ‘neutral’ when it comes to the settler-colonial occupation of Palestine. By actively maintaining ties with institutions that have directly participated in land-theft, the racist Israeli apartheid system and the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians for decades, UBC administrators have chosen to side with those responsible for the ongoing genocide. It is soul-crushing to see most senators remain so staunchly committed to the pretence that renewing these ties with Israeli universities is a ‘neutral’ stance amid the genocide. Doing so requires a wilful dismissal of the well-documented evidence of their central role in settler-colonial violence against Palestinians, an erasure of Palestinians’ vital contributions to knowledge production, and a reinforcement of a system of anti-Palestinian racism at UBC.

Perhaps most galling were the statements submitted by people opposing the motion which claimed that they “supported” Palestinian rights, but not this specific motion on the spurious basis that they thought it was an “ineffective” way to advance those rights. Implicit in this dismissal of the motion’s “effectiveness” is the demand that a solution to Israeli settler-colonial violence which does not hold any Israeli institutions accountable be presented. This excuse for inaction on the part of UBC is fundamentally colonial when such partnerships give academic cover to institutions participating in the ongoing genocide of indigenous Palestinians.

To those who question the “effectiveness” of suspending academic ties with Israeli institutions, we pose a question that Dr. Maya Wind asks in her book: “Is there any Palestinian resistance movement that you might ever—or that you have ever—recognized as legitimate?” If senators cannot do the bare minimum to hold Israeli universities accountable to international law, then clearly their actions are not supportive of Palestinian human rights and anti-colonial resistance.

The Senate vote will forever stand as a disturbing and defining moment in UBC’s history — one that shows that this institution is not, as it likes to boast, among the world’s leading centres of education. When administrators are determined to embrace genocidaires and frame those partnerships as a meaningful contribution to the academy regardless of the violence they perpetuate, how are we to take their professed ‘commitments’ to human rights and equality seriously? The real academic stewards today are the growing number of universities which have already suspended ties with Israeli entities in the name of Palestinian human rights a more liberatory, responsible and just conception of academic freedom and a consistent application of international law. From Spain to South Africa, Belgium, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Mexico, Basque Country and Slovenia, these universities are modelling what UBC has failed to realize: our intellectual responsibility toward a more just world with a Free Palestine.

*Author’s note: While the Israeli army has branded itself as the “Israeli Defence Forces,” we insist on the use of the term Israeli Occupation Forces here to, we believe, more accurately reflect their role as a settler-colonial army.

This is an opinion article. It reflects the author’s views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visitingubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.

The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems and Possibilities (5th Edition) — discount code

The fifth edition of The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities will be published later this year by State University of New York Press.

The Social Studies Curriculum, Fifth Edition updates the definitive overview of the issues teachers face when creating learning experiences for students in social studies. The book connects diverse elements of the social studies curriculum – social issues, history, cultural studies – offering a unique and critical perspective that separates it from other texts. The social studies curriculum is contested terrain both epistemologically and politically and this completely updated book includes new chapters on politics of social studies curriculum, historical perspective, critical historical inquiry, Black education and critical race theory, whiteness and anti-racism, decolonial literacy and decolonizing the curriculum, gender and sexuality, Islamophobia, critical media literacy, evil in social studies, economics education, anarchism, children’s rights and Earth democracy, and citizenship education. Readers are encouraged to reconsider their assumptions and understandings of purposes, nature, and possibilities of the social studies curriculum.

Here’s a preview of the Table of Contents as as well as a a PDF of the book’s preface and introduction:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Curriculum Ideologies, Social Studies Traditions, and the Teacher-Curriculum Encounter
E. Wayne Ross

Part 1: Purposes of the Social Studies Curriculum

1. It is All Indoctrination: Power and the Impossibility of Apolitical Social Studies Curriculum
Wayne Au

2. A Curricular Reading of Historical Perspective, Agency, and Viral Futures in Social Education
Kent den Heyer

3. A Critical Media Literacy Analysis of Social Studies Education
Emil Marmol

Part II: Social Issues and the Social Studies Curriculum

4. Beyond the Nation-State: A Foundational and Black Diasporic Examination of the Politics of Black Educational Curriculum
Christopher Busey & Tianna Dowie-Chin

5. The Politics of Black History in the United States: Black History Mandates and Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws
LaGarrett J. King, Brianne Pitts & Daniel Tulino

6. Does Social Studies Want to be Anti-Racist? Thoughts on Decentering Whiteness in Curriculum
Andrea M. Hawkman

7. Social Studies as a site for Building Decolonial Literacy
Shannon Leddy

8.Settler Social Studies: On Disappointment and Hope for the Future
Sarah Shear & Leilani Sabzalian

9. A Queer Agenda for Gender<>Sexuality and Social Education
Sandra J. Schmidt

10. Responding to Islamophobia in the Classroom
Özlem Sensoy

Part III: The Social Studies Curriculum in Practice

11. Critical Historical Inquiry: Disrupting the Dominant Narrative
Cinthia Salinas & Brooke Blevins

12.Studying Evil in Social Studies
Cathryn van Kessel

13. Does She Even Go Here? Economics and its Place in Social Studies Education
Erin C. Adams

14.An Eco-Anarchic Social Studies: Teaching for Children’s Rights and Earth Democracy
Brandon Edwards-Schuth & John Lupinacci

15.Teaching for Critically Engaged Denizenship: Lessons from Morocco on Teaching for an Empowered Other Civic Status
Jennice McCafferty Wright

16.Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross

Part IV: Afterword

17. What is the Future of Social Studies Curriculum?
E. Wayne Ross

Keep the Israeli Government out of BC schools!

Via Teachers for Palestine BC:

BC parents and allies are coming together to demand that the BC Ministry of Education and the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) take action to protect BC’s education system from encroachment by the the Israeli government and their lobby groups in Canada.

Join the action by sending a letter through this campaign and sharing it in your networks!

For context:

In the past few weeks BC teachers, schools, and the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) have been unjustly smeared in the Globe & Mail and Vancouver Sun. The contents of these articles are mostly taken from a press release from CIJA (the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), a lobby group with goals to ‘increase support for Israel’ and to ‘strengthen the Canada-Israel friendship’. They contend that:

1. That the BC Curriculum does NOT cover the Holocaust.

2. That unionized BC Teachers as part of the BCTF are refusing to teach about the Holocaust.

3. That the Ministry of Education should sideline existing working groups developing the next BC Curriculum – and let CIJA affiliated groups help develop curriculum for children in BC public schools instead.

While Holocaust education is important and new resources, which are in the process of being developed through the ministry, are always welcome, this is already a longstanding part of the BC curriculum and that BC teachers have been teaching about it across grade levels. The raising of this issue by CIJA in this specific moment largely plays the role of redirecting the conversation away from Israeli war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. They are also about trying to push the controversial IHRA definition of anti-semitism, which is contested in Jewish communities for being vague and silencing of criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian people.

To date, the BCTF and the Ministry of Education have done nothing to defend BC teachers, the system of education, or the BCTF’s internal democratic processes from CIJA’s smears and interference. Our students deserve better from our education leaders! Be part of demanding that they take appropriate action by:

1. Calling out allegations made by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) against BC public schools as false.

2. Sending a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail demanding the retraction of an inflammatory and egregiously false article about the BC curriculum.

3. Affirming that no prejudice, including Anti-Palestinian Racism has any place in BC Schools, public media, or our society.

4. Commiting to the public that no more private meetings and negotiations between the Ministry of Education or BCTF and CIJA will take place without the presence of Canadian groups that represent other Jewish voices, such as Independent Jewish Voices or the Jewish Faculty Network.

Thank you for demanding better from our education leaders by sending a letter through this campaign or sending your own personalized message!