Teachers’ union in Portland pushes pro-Palestinian propaganda on pupils

June 6, 2024 • 11:10 am

 

Here’s another instance of a teachers’ union imposing its political values on students.  And course it comes from Portland, Oregon. You have to remember that teachers’ unions don’t exist for the benefit of the students, but for the teachers themselves. As the Daily Signal reported in 2011:

As former American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker infamously quipped: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”

And here we have a paradigmatic case of where interests of teachers and students don’t coincide, or rather, when teachers appear so “progressive” that their unions urge teachers to propagandize students in favor of Palestine.  The two articles below documenting this are both conservative—the National Review and The City Journal—but just check the sources and judge for yourself. Christopher Rufo, for example, is widely demonized, but mainly because he’s a Republican who advised Ron DeSantis. In fact, I think his exposing DEI stuff and showing its weaknesses have been salubrious. And so is this exposé. But again, read and judge.

I have to emphasize that these are lesson plans made by the Portland Association of Teachers, and it’s not clear whether any of this material has yet been foisted on students.

Click on the two headlines below to read, or check out this series of tweets by Rufo documenting the teaching material.

From the National Review, by Ryan Mills:

And the City Journal piece by Rufo:

From the National Review Piece:

Jewish leaders and concerned parents in Portland, Oregon are accusing the local teachers’ union of indoctrinating students with anti-Israel messages and engaging in one-sided, pro-Palestinian activism as the war in Gaza continues to rage.

The 32-page guide, “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” was published last month by the Oregon Educators for Palestine in collaboration with the teachers’ union. It offers legal advice to educators “teaching about the genocide in Palestine,” and advice on how to teach about the ongoing conflict.

The fact that parents and Jewish leaders say that the teachers’ union is actually “indoctrinating students” implies that this material is being taught, but it’s not clear. However, the guide seems to have disappeared, as the link above goes nowhere. Never mind; you can find the link below.

There’s more:

The teaching guide does not mention that Gaza is governed by Hamas, which the U.S. designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. And critics note that while it focuses on the plight of Palestinians, it makes no mention of Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7, which killed about 1,200 innocent people, mostly Israeli civilians, and led to the war.

The guide accuses Israel of engaging in “settler colonialism” and says that the “Zionist settler colonization of Palestine has been widely compared to settler colonialism in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.”

. . .For younger students, the guide recommends lessons, books, and videos from various far-left education outfits, including Woke Kindergarten, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Social Justice Books. It includes a visual guide titled “So You Made it to a Protest!” and “Lil Comrade Convos,” which urges young kids to discuss “power.”

Older students are directed to lessons on “Renewable Energy in occupied Palestine,” “Unions,” “Genocide of Palestinians,” “Queer Voices From the Fight For Palestine Liberation,” and “No Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom for Palestinian Women.”

What can you say except “Oy vey!” (if you’re a Zionist). But Rufo has more evidence in a working link and some tweets, so I’ll quote the second article as well. And the link in the first sentence, to the “Teach Palestine” resources, is working, though I don’t see how to download it.

I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents produced by the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union that encourages its more than 4,500 members to “Teach Palestine!” (The union did not respond to a request for comment.)

The lesson plans are steeped in radicalism, and they begin teaching the principles of “decolonization” to students as young as four and five years old. For prekindergarten kids, the union promotes a workbook from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, which tells the story of a fictional Palestinian boy named Handala. “When I was only ten years old, I had to flee my home in Palestine,” the boy tells readers. “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.” Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can “get back home to Palestine”—represented as a map of Israel.

Other pre-K resources include a video that repeats left-wing mantras, including “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a slideshow that glorifies the Palestinian intifada, or violent resistance against Israel. The recommended resource list also includes a “sensory guide for kids” on attending protests. It teaches children what they might see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at protests, and promotes photographs of slogans such as “Abolish Prisons” and “From the River to the Sea.”

In kindergarten through second grade, the ideologies intensify. The teachers’ union recommends a lesson, “Art and Action for Palestine,” that teaches students that Israel, like America, is an oppressor. The objective is to “connect histories of settler colonialism from Palestine to the United States” and to “celebrate Palestinian culture and resistance throughout history and in the present, with a focus on Palestinian children’s resistance.”

The lesson suggests that teachers should gather the kindergarteners into a circle and teach them a history of Palestine: “75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin,” the lesson reads. “There’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism.”

Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as “FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.” The intention, according to the lesson, is to move students toward “taking collective action in support of Palestinian liberation.”

I can’t stop quoting!

. . . .The recommended curriculum also includes a pamphlet titled “All Out for Palestine.” The pamphlet is explicitly political, with a sub-headline blaring in all capital letters: “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO IRSAEL! [sic] FREE PALESTINE!” The authors denounce “Zionism’s long genocidal war on Palestinian life” and encourage students to support “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” policies against Israel.

You can peruse the teaching guide, and I’ll put up a few tweets by Rufo demonstrating what’s in it. It starts with lessons from kindergarten through grade 2 (roughly ages 5-7).

Here’s one I found from high school plans; click to read the whole lesson plan:

What the hell is going on here? This is blatant political propagandizing of the type that UNRWA foists on kids in Gaza, but it’s in AMERICA. Of course whether you consider Portland “America” is a matter of taste these days, but I don’t think any parent save someone blatantly pro-Hamas would want their kids fed one-sided propaganda these days. Particularly Jewish parents!

All I can say is that the parents of Portland should nip this nonsense in the bud, pronto.

Teachers’ unions of course have often taken stands inimical to the well-being of their charges: they are notoriously loath to fire teachers who are incompetent or even drunk, they are often pro-DEI, and they pushed schools to close down during the pandemic, a move that now, I think, is seen as deeply unwise, having set children’s education back by a long spell without really conferring much benefit to health.  And this post is one more example of how a teachers’ union, apparently besotted by Palestine and rife with anti-Zionism, is not teaching but propagandizing.

 

h/t: Luana, Rosemary

36 thoughts on “Teachers’ union in Portland pushes pro-Palestinian propaganda on pupils”

  1. Here is exactly what was going through my mind, and then PCC(E) said it:

    What the hell is going on here? This is blatant political propagandizing of the type that UNRWA foists on kids in Gaza, but it’s in AMERICA.

    I can’t think of a worse example of teaching kids what to think, rather than how to think. I just hope the coverage (only in conservative outlets, sadly) will bring enough negative attention to the teachers’ union that they are force to backtrack.

    1. Teachers’ unions never backtrack. They may be defeated occasionally and temporarily by superior force wielded by school boards and state/provincial education departments. But the defeat becomes just another grievance that goes into the hopper to harden the union’s position at contract and strike time. Working mothers need the schools for daycare. Governments know never to cross the teachers’ unions.

  2. The video by Lyell Asher on why colleges are becoming cults seems to be prescient. Teachers are inculcated with this shite in what Asher calls ‘ed schools’ and use their positions as teachers to inculcate their students. Up here in British Columbia it’s exactly the same, just add in the issues of SOGI, indigenous victimhood, “anti-racism” which is just another word for “bad white people” and “you should be ashamed to be a settler” and most particularly a “white settler,” and much more. My children are grown but I have grandchildren who will be of school age soon. I worry about them and have cautioned my daughters to pay attention to what their children bring home from school, and to foster in their children a strong sense of self that withstands these ideological attacks from what are essentially allies to victim groups (they call themselves oppressed but that isn’t the truth).

    1. That’s discouraging but sounds about right. I don’t remember school in BC being so political in my day (many, many years ago). I too have grandkids but they’re in high school now.

  3. Unfortunately it isn’t just the U.S. The Surrey Teacher’s Association (near Vancouver, B.C.) has a public statement on their website: https://www.surreyteachers.org/general/public-statement-condemnation-of-israels-historical-and-ongoing-genocide-of-palestinian-people/
    Funnily enough, the link to add a comment doesn’t work. I suspect that they put the statement on the site because a large proportion of the Surrey population is Muslim, and that they didn’t activate the link because they don’t want a debate – although why they put it on at all is strange.

  4. There is no documentation here regarding whether any of the discussed material is actually being used in the classroom. As a public school teaching veteran I can attest that suggested lesson plans come from various groups rather frequently. I used to get lesson plans offered by the John Birch Society. They “encouraged”me to use them. Additionally, your quotations from 2011 hardly represent the thoughts and actions of the educational organizations that I am very familiar with. I also wonder why you get so much information from a publication that is well know for anti union right wing views. for someone who seems to claim to be a Democrat and at least somewhat progressive, you spend a great deal of time dealing reactionary positions. I do think your positions regarding maintaining integrity in science are laudatory.

    1. Randy, sometimes I wish I’d reread my messages before posting them. My attempts at humor or honesty can come across as the grousing of a cantankerous old lady. Because, in my case, that’s exactly what they are. Hate that!

  5. The union did not create the materials. They were prepared by the Oregon Educators for Palestine in “collaboration” with the union, whatever that means. The OEP site makes it very clear that they are extremely biased (see link below) and have produced multiple materials damning Israel and its supporters (USA) and various other themes (e.g., they want ROTC programs banned from schools). Like the student protests, I suspect we need to look closely behind the scenes to see what forces are really operating.

    https://www.instagram.com/oregon_educators_for_palestine/?hl=en

    It seems excessive to me to claim that teacher unions don’t care about students, no matter some idiotic quote, especially since actions like this do not serve the material interests of teachers (probably the opposite) and I suspect the misguided individuals involved believe that they are in fact doing what is in the best interest of students on some deluded moral grounds, albeit unwittingly (??) serving anti-Jewish actors in the Middle East and the west.

    1. I think it’s closer to say the teachers’ unions, and teachers generally, don’t care what parents think. They may care about having unfettered freedom to teach the students as they see fit but parents are, at best, mostly in the way in that worldview. It also rankles teachers that when they go on strike or intimidate the government into closing schools for two years the working public responds with, “What are we going to do about childcare, you bastards?!” They resent being seen as tax-funded daycare workers even though this and nothing else is the source of their bargaining power, just like public transit workers. They don’t need to care that parents hate them, only that they fear them. Consequently their reflex is to sneer at parents who object to anything in the curriculum: “You don’t own your children. We do.” My sister, a retired public-school teacher who wasn’t even a particularly militant unionist, talked like that.

    2. Yes. Albert Shanker has been dead for 27 years and hasn’t led the AFT since 1985, almost 40 years. Seems to me the author of this page is desperate to make the point that even teachers are out to get Jews.

  6. The Portland Association of Teachers must recruit from UNRWA via the UN.

    it is (now) widely recognized that teachers’ colleges (much like academia in general) are hotbeds of activism.

    Dangerous lunatics seeking salvation and righteousness in all the wrong places. Better if they *just* went to church. Less harmful.

    1. “… seeking salvation and righteousness in all the wrong places.”

      ^^^

      1. Difference of degree, not kind, though many may disagree. I would.

        A teachers’ college (today) is far more harmful than church.

        “Love thy neighbor” seems downright positive compared to “kill all zionists”. No? 😊

  7. Seen from here in the UK, this is utterly bizarre. I’m the Chair of Governors for a primary school (ages 4-11), and we are responsible, among other things, for scrutinising the School Development Plan and monitoring its implementation. There is (rightly) a good deal of flexibility within the national curriculum for schools to decide how they teach specific subjects, but the sort of stuff portrayed in these articles would not be regarded as acceptable for students of any age. Apart from anything else, the various teachers’ unions don’t have any input at all into school curriculum policy or practice. Nor do outside pressure groups (although we have to stay vigilant).

    Sadly, we still have schools with a religious foundation in the UK, including some with an Islamic background. They are all subject to inspection by Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education), which is prepared to be highly critical of poor practice. Ofsted doesn’t have the powers to stop schools preaching bigotry, but repeated judgments that a school is ‘Inadequate’ can in time lead to it being closed down and reopened under new management (usually as part of an academy trust). Could this happen in the US or Canada?

    1. Public schools in the US generally have local authority when it comes to curriculum. There are some state and national guidelines as well as testing requirements, but local school curriculum is led by a curriculum director charged with creating and implementing education programs. It’s been my experience that these are administrators who are not in the union, but at the same time they do generally listen to union wishes since they want to keep the teachers happy, and plus many (most?) are former teachers themselves. The education community is definitely on the left, and Portland is on the far left, so while this program likely won’t be adopted on a complete, all-encompassing basis, many parts of it will find it into the classrooms whether officially endorsed or pulled in by teachers whose personal views align with the views espoused in this material.
      Regarding the comment that “These materials were published “in collaboration with” “the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union” and “…blaming the teachers’ union is right-wingnut spin”, please note that the material on the OEfP website carries the PAT logo which is indeed an endorsement regardless of who actually wrote it. The PAT represents the 4500 members of the Portland School System. The AFT-Oregon also put out a statement of solidarity with pro-Palestine protesters: https://or.aft.org/news/aft-oregon-statement-student-led-pro-palestine-movement , which is referenced on the PAT site. The PSU protest led to significant damage, causing the library to remain closed until the start of the 24-25 school year. This is what the union is in support of, so is it not reasonable to say that they were also part of the creation of the learning material in support of people who want to see Israelis eliminated?

      1. Thanks for that explanation: the answer to your last question is clearly ‘yes’. The UK equivalent to the US teachers’ union is probably the National Education Union, which is pretty left-wing (its current leader is a far-left activist). But the union itself, despite its leader’s posturing about ‘taking control’ of education, has no leverage on the curriculum at all, and in practice devotes itself to issues of teachers’ pay and conditions.

  8. Real hasty :

    This appears to be an example of largely what to think, vs. how to think about a complex issue.

    1. No sh*t, Sherlock.
      You know I say this in a good humored way, right? At least, I think it’s “good” and “humorous”. Point being, please, educators, teach kids HOW to think rather than WHAT to think.
      As to did the teachers’ union really intend this, I don’t have enough information to venture an opinion.

      1. It seems many so-called educators are not able to teach much of anything well, particularly “higher order” skills such as how to think. Consider that just teaching children to be competent at reading and arithmetic appears beyond the reach of many teachers and schools. I know from personal experience that actual teaching can be very hard; custodial child care disguised as teaching is so much easier.
        /rant

  9. These materials were published “in collaboration with” “the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union”. That’s pretty weak sauce right there.
    Looks to me like blaming the teachers’ union is right-wingnut spin.
    The materials are, of course, beyond the pale, but they are not the work of a teachers’ union.

  10. FFS. That’s peak bonkers.
    I won’t comment further so the editor doesn’t have to delete my thoughts but it is hard for me to express civilly my reaction and shock to this.

    To take the moral claims of these people seriously – the Pal movement and its useful idiot – demeans us.

    D.A.
    NYC

  11. No aim to educate, for growth and understanding, for these children, ideology is the lesson. If only they knew the difference.

  12. I’d like to survey the union members and the OfFP team Andrew Pessin’s simple question as was described in a previous post: (Q) “Is it acceptable to slit babies’ throats, rape little girls, chop off of the hands and feet of teenagers, gouge out eyes, murder children in front of their parents, murder parents in front of their children then kidnap the children, bind entire families together then burn them alive, and livestream all the above—and worse—on a mass scale—in the pursuit of some political aim?”

  13. Last post:

    Some of the comments in the notes remind me of this progression:
    Step 1: It’s not really happening (the union has nothing to do with this, and it’s not actually in the classroom)
    Step 2: Yeah, it’s happening, but it’s not a big deal (teachers get all kinds of lesson plans, but they don’t have to use it)
    Step 3: It’s a good thing, actually (haven’t seen this here for this topic yet, but I could see someone making a free speech argument)
    Step 4: People freaking out about it are the real problem (Rufo and National Review are reporting it)

    Honestly though, I do respect others’ views, and the civility in the comments on this site is quite nice even when there is disagreement. Thank you all.

    1. You are being too kind, Darryl. The last step is invariably a version of: Yes, it’s happening, and it’s a damned good thing that it is, you bigot (racist, sexist, transphobe, xenophobe, hater, right-wing nutjob). Pick your ad hominem; the formula is always the same, at least in places that lack the civility of WEIT.

      I still stand amused at those who are not activists who, still trusting their formerly-trustworthy information sources, parrot the activist lines. How many times must one see the illiberal activists co-opt organization after organization, publication after publication, before one starts to read and listen critically rather than reacting reflexively? It is precisely the tendency to circle the wagons around one’s presumed tribe that helped the illiberal zealots to gain such power on the left. (Same dynamic playing out among the most Trumpy on the right.) Precious few insurgencies succeed without either the active or tacit support of the non-combatant population.

      1. Agree! I considered myself a liberal on the left for years but about 15-20 years ago the left started going crazy. I didn’t leave them, they left me.

        I don’t where I am politically anymore. I have to take things one issue at a time.

        1. I always take things one issue at a time but–to your point–these days it’s harder to anticipate who will be there with me. I still consider myself a “traditional liberal” but now I find that I have to make the immediate disclaimer that I am not a “progressive”, a distinction written about by Pamela Paul, Susan Neiman, and others. Progressives are the ones who have abandoned traditional liberal values, and regardless of what they claim they have largely adopted right wing methods. They did indeed leave you.

        2. When did liberals in the United States (and the Liberal Party in Canada and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom) ever not advocate for redistribution, welfare as an alternative to work, and the growth of the administrative state as the preferred provider of All Good Things? Liberal political parties have been progressive on the long Marxist march since the 1960s. Their methods have become more totalitarian since the fall of the Soviet Union allowed them to become safely more openly anti-capitalist about it, the Red Menace having ebbed away, but Leftists still want the same things George Orwell did in the 1930s-40s before he got disillusioned and wrote 1984.

          It might also be that the Left has become mostly non-white and therefore anti-white and anti-Semitic, thus alienating the traditional white leftists who are aging out anyway, a form of revealed preferences aka white flight. The chief exception is the rump of white feminist college women who find even themselves beleaguered by their brown and black sisters of both sexes who are getting the good jobs in HR-DEI now. For their survival they have to choke down common cause with the racists, gender-fuckies — yes, that’s a thing — and property-smashers for the time they have left before they too are purged of their white privilege.

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