Massachusetts schools need a balanced curriculum on the Mideast – The Boston Globe

The MTA was right that teachers need help teaching such an emotional, confusing topic. But the guidance the union came up with shows that the MTA itself is too biased to be trusted with that job.

Given how fraught the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become, the state should instead take the lead in providing a balanced and detailed curriculum for instructors to use if they teach about either the immediate conflict, now in uneasy ceasefire, or the longer history of the tensions.

It would be an unusual step for the state. But this is an unusual subject. And without a state curriculum to help schools, partisan sources may keep trying to fill the void.

The most recent worries about MTA bias came after the union posted on the members-only section of its website links to posters, films, books, and articles that were disproportionately critical of Israel; the posters in particular portrayed the long-time conflict in a one-sided way, some even trafficking in antisemitic themes.

The MTA initially portrayed the controversial material as nothing more than resources to help MTA members develop an appreciation of different perspectives on the conflict.

Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism, a group of concerned MTA members, had persistently urged the union leadership to take down the web page. But at a Feb. 8 meeting, despite being shown some of the antisemitic or otherwise offensive images, the MTA board of directors voted overwhelmingly against doing so, according to attendees.

It was not until mid-February — after a Feb. 10 grilling of the MTA president, Max Page, by the Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism in the Commonwealth — that the MTA announced it would remove “any materials that do not further the cause of promoting understanding,” asserting in that Feb. 19 statement that “MTA members would never want to have antisemitic materials on the MTA website.”

At the hearing, commission cochair Simon Cataldo, a Democratic state representative from Concord, put Page on the hot seat, highlighting numerous examples of content that had triggered concerns among Jewish MTA members and asking for his assessment of that content.

One was a poster of a large hand rising from a group of kaffiyeh-clad protestors to grab the tongue of a snake, with the words “unity in confronting zionism.”

Another poster proclaimed, “Zionists, [expletive]-off, free Palestine.”

A third featured a kaffiyah-wearing fighter with an assault rifle and proclaimed, “What was taken by force can only be returned by force.”

Yet another presented dollar bills folded into a star of David.

Cataldo also spotlighted “Handala’s Return: A Children’s Story and Workbook,” an early-elementary-grades-level book about a Palestinian youth that includes sentences like this: “Children like me keep having their homes taken by the Zionist bullies.”

The MTA has now purged the links to the sites containing those posters. But Jewish MTA members say more needs to be done, noting that the union’s website still has the curricular material portraying Zionists as home-stealing bullies and remains very unbalanced. A link to “Handala’s Return” was still up as of last week.

“While Max Page claims that the MTA is reviewing the curricula-resources web page, there is no clear structure or system in place for how this review is being conducted, who is responsible for conducting it, and what criteria is being used,” says MTA member Jany Finkielsztein, also a member of MEAA. “Given the MTA’s track record over the last year and a half, it is really difficult to trust that the final result will be balanced.”

Although Page can certainly be faulted for having been slow to respond, the larger controversy appears to reflect an ideological strand of thought within the union. Some MTA members and activists clearly view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of the postcolonial or settler-colonialism frame popular with the academic left. Its adherents tend to discount the long history of Jews in the Mideast and glide over the fact that the 1947 United Nations action that helped establish Israel also envisioned a sovereign Arab state, only to have that plan rejected by the Arab world.

That pro-Palestinian slant is clearly reflected in the website content, which the MTA’s division of training and professional learning assembled pursuant to a motion the MTA executive board approved in December of 2023.

That outlook is also reflected in a letter an internal MTA group called MTA Rank and File for Palestine sent to presidents of MTA locals in support of the controversial content.

“As MTA members, we should be proud that our union is providing resources that finally clarify the historical record,” the group wrote. “Seeking a balance in perspective on this situation is a flawed premise…. There is no balance to 76 years of ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”

MTA Rank and File for Palestine was founded by former MTA president Merrie Najimy, Page’s predecessor, who views many things through the prism of racism. Najimy spoke at the MTA board meeting in opposition to altering the web page, according to several attendees.

At the recent commission hearing, Najimy said that comments she had heard during the hearing and considered racist had agitated her to such a degree that her smart watch had alerted her that her heart rate was elevated.

“That is a physical manifestation of racism,” she declared. A participant in Gaza-related protests, Najimy insisted that one could be part of a rally chanting “We don’t want no Zionists here” and still teach objectively in the classroom about the conflict.

“People can be activists on the street … and be in a different space being an educator,” she said.

Parents and the general public can perhaps be forgiven for looking skeptically on that contention. No one should want their kids subjected to a biased or unbalanced account of the complex history and controversies of this, or for that matter, any, region.

Most teachers, we believe, want to teach the subject with the nuance and sensitivity it deserves but may not have the training or expertise to do so. And for that reason, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should contract with a well-regarded curriculum-development firm to produce a balanced lesson plan on the situation in the Middle East and the centuries of conflict that preceded it.

DESE’s high school world history framework on the subject consists of eight bullet points listing the general concepts that should be taught, from the Zionist movement through the United Nation’s 1947 vote to create two independent countries, to the region’s wars, to the more recent attempts at a two-state solution. But though useful as a general guide, it stops well short of specifying the events or facts that should be taught. It is not a curriculum.

A state-provided curriculum would aim to be a balanced resource for the state’s teachers. Like everything else about the Middle East, it would be highly scrutinized and undoubtedly imperfect. Still, it would help reassure parents that their children were receiving as balanced an overview as possible of this complex conflict. And its existence would provide even more reason for the MTA to bring to a close its ill-advised attempt at providing content for the state’s teachers.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.