The anti-Israel fanaticism that has for years been gaining strength on American college campuses is now making its way into elementary and secondary schools, writes Irit Tratt:
Last year, California became the first state to pass a law mandating that public-school students must complete an ethnic-studies course before receiving a high-school diploma. A small group of self-identified “ethnic-studies experts” were tasked with drafting an ethnic-studies model curriculum. The draft authored by those “experts” was thrown out by California’s governor after thousands of alarmed Jewish Californians and others pointed out its virulently anti-Semitic content. The initial drafters then formed the Liberated Ethnic-Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, with which many union members are affiliated, and are actively promoting all the bad portions that were banned by the California government.
A Wall Street Journal op-ed revealed that embedded in the Consortium’s materials are references to Israel as a “colonial settler state” founded “through genocide.” The authors of that op-ed brought a lawsuit on behalf of concerned Jewish parents and teachers against the Liberated Consortium, the LA teachers union, and others for inserting—admittedly, where necessary by stealth—into public schools the very discriminatory content banned by the state.
But prominent teachers’ unions have overridden parental opposition. These organizations include and the National Education Association (NEA), of which the California teachers’ unions are a part, and the American Federation of Teachers.
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/teachers-unions-are-helping-anti-semitism-gain-a-foothold-in-k-12-public-schools/