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(December 2019)
Executive Summary
This is the last in a series of four studies within an extensive research project that started in 2015 and aimed at checking the attitude of the Palestinian Authority (PA) curriculum to the Jewish-Israeli “other” within the ongoing conflict and to the possibility of solving that conflict peacefully. The three previous studies covered 364 schoolbooks of all grades in various subjects that were published between 2013 and 2018. The present study touches this subject from a different perspective – that of the Palestinian teachers. It is based on 109 teachers’ guides published in 2016-2018.
While students’ textbooks reveal the components of a certain world-view and the values a society would wish to instill in the minds of its younger generations, teachers’ guides usually give us a hint as to how that is practically done. Indeed, the current study has made it possible to trace the lines of what we would call “the indoctrination process” as it has been designed by the Palestinian Authority and followed in all school, including those of UNRWA, which uses in the West Bank and Gaza the educational material provided by the PA.
The initial outline of this indoctrination was already established in the framework of the former studies, as the schoolbooks’ attitude to the rival “other” and to peace proved to be based on three fundamentals, namely, delegitimization, demonization, and war indoctrination instead of peace education. Thus, the present study was organized according to this outline and it follows the same method of presentation used in the three former ones, that is, giving the source material as is, with minimum analysis, so that it would speak for itself. The analysis is done in the Conclusion chapter, which will be presented here in brief.
Most of the indoctrination material has been found in teachers’ guides of the subjects of Arabic language and social studies. Teachers’ guides of national and Islamic education, as well as geography, sciences and mathematics and, to a lesser extent – arts and crafts, contained fewer pieces of such material. Physical education teachers’ guides proved to be purely professional with no trace of political indoctrination. Most of the indoctrination was found in grades 7-10.
