Report documents anti-Israel texts; schools mum

After a contentious multi-year-long debate on the presence of anti-Israel texts in the public school curriculum of Newton, Mass., a Boston-area suburban city, an independent third party has issued a comprehensive 152-page report to try to bring clarity to the situation. The local school district, however, refused to engage with the report’s findings and remains silent on the matter.

The Verity Educate, which was approached by concerned parents and community members about Mideast-related educational materials distributed to students in Newton North and Newton South high schools, this month released “Middle East Curricula in Newton Public Schools,” a report addressing more than 300 specific points of inaccuracy and inconsistency in the school district’s curricula. Verity Educate analyzed 26 individual pieces of educational material used in Newton schools, including handouts, assignments, readings, and one video.

In a summary of its report, the organization said its primary finding was “a demonstrated lack of subject matter expertise in the creation and oversight of these Middle East curricula, and the vast majority of materials used do not originate from authoritative sources or are so altered as to have lost their authority.”

According to Verity Educate, Newton’s Mideast curriculum has featured “a high frequency of inaccurate and false information,” “academic dishonesty in multiple pieces of material,” “material taken directly from a hate-filled, religious, proselytizing website (IslamicWeb.com)” that prophesies about an Armageddon when all Jews will be murdered and the rest of the world will convert to Sunni Islam, and “assignments that prejudice students in favor of the radical position of a one-state scenario in Israel/the West Bank/Gaza.”

Dr. Ellen R. Wald, executive director of Verity Educate, said her organization approached Newton Public Schools three times about discussing the report before its release, but never received a response. Newton Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman, School Committee Chair Matt Hills, and Mayor Setti Warren all did not respond to JNS.org requests for comment on Verity Educate’s report.

While much of the debate in this ongoing Mideast curriculum fracas has centered on whether or not certain controversial texts are still being distributed to students, Wald said, “We did not analyze material that we had a reason to believe was no longer currently in use.” For instance, Verity Educate did not examine the much-debated “Arab World Studies Notebook” (AWSN), which the Newton district said it removed during the 2011-12 academic year.

The Boston-based advocacy group Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), however, said in May that AWSN, a Saudi-financed text on Middle East history that falsely claims Israeli soldiers murdered hundreds of Palestinian nurses in Israeli prisons, was still being used in at least three separate classes during the 2012-13 school year in Newton.

Throughout the Newton schools controversy, APT has been at odds with the Boston area Jewish establishment, including the ADL, JCRC, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies (Boston’s Jewish federation). APT placed an ad in Boston-area newspapers in October 2013 spotlighting the presence of anti-Israel texts in Newton schools including the AWSN; “A Muslim Primer,” which claims that astronaut Neil Armstrong converted to Islam, but that the anti-Muslim U.S. government warned him “to keep his new religion to himself or he could be fired” from his government job; and “Flashpoints: Guide to World History,” which asserts that Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, is the capital of Israel, and that Jerusalem is the capital of “Palestine.”

At the time, ADL attempted to dismiss APT’s findings, joining leaders from JCRC and Combined Jewish Philanthropies in a November 2013 statement which said that “based on a careful review of the materials at issue by ADL and JCRC, there is substantial reason to believe that the allegations made in the [APT] ad are without merit.”

Wald told JNS.org that Verity Educate is “aware that there was a lot of controversy surrounding the entire issue,” and feels that its report will both “provide a new insight into the content” of the Newton curriculum and reveal that “neither side was really correct in what they were accusing.”

“We did not find that there was any overarching bias in these curricula,” Wald said. “We found instances of bias — instances of bias against Israel, against the Untied States, and we actually found several instances of a Neo-Orientalist perspective towards Arabs, and an infantilization of Arabs. … Our overarching finding was this lack of authoritative material.”

“As a scholar and as a former teacher, it pains me to see students being given material that is not factually correct and comes from sources that are not authoritative, particularly sources that students would not be permitted to cite in a paper themselves,” said Wald.

Asked how the Newton curriculum compares to others Verity Educate has analyzed, Wald said she has “never seen quite so much educational material being provided to students that was not educational or did not come from an authoritative source.” She said the impact of exposing to students to such material is that they are prevented from “developing a kind of fluency in historical matters that is necessary for the subject,” adding that the Newton curriculum’s tendency to present arguments as facts hinders students’ “development of critical thinking.”

Yet because it is not an advocacy organization, Verity Educate will not be recommending any solutions for the Newton school district’s problems.

“It’s really up to the people of Newton to decide if this is the kind of material that they want their students to be receiving,” Wald said.

A full copy of Verity Educate’s report can be requested at verityeducate.org/newton.