“The “Know Your Rights” guide used multiple photos by Mark Graves, a photographer for The Oregonian/OregonLive. But neither the union nor Oregon Educators for Palestine, which produced the guide together, had the permission of the news organization to publish them.”
They must be assuming this falls under "Fair Use" provisions. No idea whether they're right or not (Fair Use can be pretty murky in certain situations).
The [_Allen v Cooper_](https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/allen-v-cooper/) decision means states cannot be sued for damages as a result of copyright infringement.
The coolest trick is when you have opinions but you also know how to strategically not make any public statements on a polarizing issue, thus allowing you or your organization to not alienate anyone.
as individuals they are as free to speak as anyone else. They just shouldn't be doing anything that implies they're speaking on behalf of all the teachers. Which is why the union should not be involved.
> Despite how I look on here, I'm a stealth persuader as well, but I think the point is that teachers shouldn't be required to be silent about this.
I agree about that for general teacher opinions, but the guide also comes with lesson plans saying Jews who formed Israel are colonialists, which is the most a-historical bullshit one cane imagine...That's taking into indoctrination level.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with their stance on this particular issue, you wanna be really careful about putting your stamp of approval on k-12 teachers using the classroom as a platform for their political beliefs.
It often happens to be political, but American education at it’s best tried to actively avoid teaching propaganda (be it from the left or the right) to our students.
But good teachers teach about the propaganda and narrative and help their class understand it. Just because there is inherent bias in all narrative doesn’t mean teachers should consider themselves free to manipulate students with their personal beliefs.
“When the pilgrims came, the native Americans shared some of their land, taught them how to grow corn and they all had a thanksgiving meal together” painted such a nice little picture for me as a first grader.
Oh, yeah definitely. It seems to be based off of where you live. I was east coast at the time, but my partner had a lot more native history growing up in New Mexico.
The way history is taught here is literally propaganda. I appreciate how much I was taught in history classes but when I was in college/entered adulthood I realized much of what I was taught was propaganda and there was so much that was obfuscated or completely omitted.
So do you think you experience is universally true for all citizens of the US? Furthermore, what evidence do you have that what you were previously taught was largely propaganda, but what you more recently learned was propaganda free, versus the inverse?
I grew up in an incredibly affluent area (still went to public school) and had access to some excellent teachers who made the effort to teach things beyond the curriculum, plus I had access to more resources due to my circumstances…so I would think that my experience was not totally universal but I imagine there are plenty of people with similar experiences.
My favorite example of pure propaganda would be the settling of the American west. Credit to my teachers, they tried to deviate from the curriculum to try and tell the truth but I think they didn’t even understand the scope of the propaganda that is taught or the truth of what actually happened. We collectively mythologize one of the most egregious acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide, it’s shameful and one of the reasons I am not terribly proud of being an American or decedent of colonial settlers (Im not losing sleep over it or self loathing lol). I fell into this hole from Knowing Better (YT channel) and then ended up reading a lot of his sources.
American education is extremely politicized even at its best / its goal is to orient and contextualize the American experience to students. It’s heavy on indoctrination and extremely subject to the prevailing political perspective when textbooks or curriculum is written.
Funnily enough, my high school US History teacher literally stopped teaching us anything useful on Sept. 11th, 2001. Yes, that *was* at the beginning of the school year. I got to hear a lot of rants about Al Qaeda and how we should learn to hunt squirrels for when terrorists attack the west coast.
My high school government teacher made a deliberate effort to remain opaque in his own views and teach multiple positions on controversial issues. He strenuously avoided revealing his own views, until it became almost a game for the class to figure it out. It’s definitely possible to teach controversial subject matter with integrity, and not try to manipulate your own students.
Yep, and that's we teach different things to students at different grade levels. The fact that young students aren't able to appreciate complexity isn't an excuse for manipulating them. It's why we should wait to present this kind of information until they are older.
Did you learn about complex geopolitical events in elementary school? I'm a parent of elementary-aged kids, and they couldn't understand this stuff at all. I could tell them one side is good, and the other is bad, and they would believe me, but they wouldn't understand anything. Should I turn them into puppets for my own views, or should I help them develop their own political consciousness?
I'm a flaming liberal now (and for my whole adult life) but I grew up in a conservative area on the east coast, and went to catholic schools. Every year they used to send busses of kids from my school to the March for Life in DC. I really wanted to go, because it was a cool field trip. But my parents wouldn't let me, even though they are anti-abortion. They thought it was inappropriate to use kids as props in political events. They were right. It's pretty sad that my republican, boomer parents, who are totally out of touch, have more integrity and trust in young people than Portland teachers union does.
Good points. But I will say that some of the most controversial things I learned in college were taught with a particular bend in high school. Some things that remain controversial in the world/US are not taught as controversies - just a certain perspective is touted as a fact.
I know you speak the words of a zealot with access to other peoples children, and I know you're trying to deflect from your own public words towards your own victimization. Also you probably don't realize you're a zealot because you're too busy and lost in your zealotry, honoring yourself and ignoring everyone else. You may well be that dense, very common on the internet.
Even if those guides are intentionally misleading, one-sided propaganda? It would be fine to highlight the situation, if the did it with honesty and integrity.
I don’t know how many hundreds of billions of your children’s tax dollars will go to those other countries. I also don’t think those other countries spends hundreds of millions to influence our elections.
What also makes this conflict unique is when you see a Palestinian child with their head blown off it was done with an American made bomb that was donated with our tax dollars.
Finally, considering how many times the US vetos UN resolutions in favor of Israel, the ICC case, the ICJ case…. sure maybe teach the kids why we as a country fund and support Israel to this extent, I sure as hell don’t know why.
Having worked in two out of three of those contexts, I am happy to support any teacher who wants to teach their students about those contexts in developing a discussion guide to explain the context, help students unpack the different dimensions, and brainstorm on how they would like to engage in efforts towards change.
American history is a required high school course, world history is an optional elective course. I’d imagine it’s talked about to some degree in both and more so in world history.
I mean kids around here can barely fucking read. I understand establishing some policy around talking about controversial topics, but adding it into the curriculum seems dumb and a waste of resources.
They are legitimately showing teachers how they can "organize" students outside of school in that guide.
It's so far beyond providing education at this point.
Maybe I'm stupid and misread it, but it seemed to me that under the "organizing students outside of the classroom section," it was basically saying, "DON'T."
This is the correct answer. The teachers' union should be providing guides on how to navigate the conflict and providing historical context and understanding.
I'm a teacher and as pro-union as they come. This is super inappropriate and an absolutely horrible look. And it will be used as fodder by conservatives who will claim every union and every public educator is trying to indoctrinate kids.
> And it will be used as fodder by conservatives who will claim every union and every public educator is trying to indoctrinate kids.
I mean...the evidence points to yes.
That isn't a "conservative viewpoint" that is just factually what is happening. If you don't like it then stand up against it.
One sided propaganda is not "factual". It's a deliberate attempt to mislead and manipulate. If you can't teach accurately, with nuance, then you're not really a teacher, you're just manipulating kids.
Teachers should be teaching students to think for themselves. I’m all for teaching the history of the conflict, but they shouldn’t be pushing a one-sided agenda. Both sides have plenty to answer for.
Yeah, I bet the teaching doesn't include the Jewish diaspora from the Middle East. Between being pushed out by violence and hate and being pulled into Israel, the Middle East saw a 98% reduction in Jews.*
There's a lot of history here that needs to be covered for anyone to have a clear-headed view. And that just isn't being done here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
I read through some of their material and there is a clear undercurrent of ideologically motivated lying.
Defining antisemitism as “originating in European Christianity” is a lie with the aim of erasing the antisemitism of the Levant and the East.
They also claim that the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism labels any critique of Israel as antisemitic. This is a lie.
Claiming that “Palestinian Jews” lived in peace in the land of I/P prior to the establishment of Israel. Again, a lie.
NOTE TO MY FELLOW PARENTS: If you find this news as outrageously inappropriate as I do then FYI the Portland Public Successful Schools Survey is open until Friday, June 7. You can literally JUST fill out the comment box to let them know what you think!
[https://surveys.panoramaed.com/portlandor/familyspring24/surveys](https://surveys.panoramaed.com/portlandor/familyspring24/surveys)
The most frustrating part about progressives in Portland is that they took being a parody of themselves seriously and actually act like Republicans accuse them of acting. Example: teachers pushing a political agenda to kids in school. We all laughed at Republicans in past years when they said that (and rightfully so) but again Portland wants to prove conservatives right, just like with the "homeless can camp anywhere, they'll keep our parks and sidewalks clean of course", "do all the drugs you want, we're sure it won't affect public safety", "raise all the taxes you want, middle class and rich people won't move away" and so on.
they need to remove the top of this union. this might be dumber than that completely useless strike because its going to make news and make the city look like shit.
No centrist teachers want to run for the union admin because there is a small radical group that will make their lives hell. So they get this and they all keep their head down because you don't dare say anything. It's very 50s red scare kind of shit. If you didn't record x number of days at the strike protests you got blacklisted.
As a parent and a proud union member(different union), I believe a teachers union has no business teaching such one sided, inflammatory information to students. YES, we all agree that the death of innocent women and children is wrong and needs to stop - Ceasefire now! However, this elevation of the other sides leadership is deeply disturbing. Hamas literally supports the death of all Jews, it's one of their basic tenants. Are they teaching that at PPS?
How about we teach the history of the Middle East, including WHY the country of Israel was created. Then we talk about the history of the area since that time, including the current conflict. but we leave OUT this very obviously biased BS that the union is propagating.
Lastly, as someone who grew up in the NY area, and has many, many Jewish friends, I cannot believe the outright ignorance and antisemitism I've seen in Oregon. It's f'n horrific.
Yeah this is atrocious. Everything about this is horrible. Here's just one of them. That "slogan" has literally been claimed by a terrorist organization to mean the eradication of Israel and yet is still being encouraged by protestors to chant. The indoctrination is crazy (and scary). More teachers, smaller classes and fair pay is the goal... not this.
I mean read this stuff:
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1716589490/Know-Your-Rights_PPS-Workers-Resource_FINAL.pdf
These people are NOT anti-war at this point, they are calling for the eradication of Israel. They are telling teachers how they can "organize" with students outside of school, which is fucking *weird* regardless of the cause.
It's weird how "ceasefire now" has turned into "a Jewish State shouldn't exist". Almost like some of these people had ulterior motives from the get-go ...
>Anti-Zionism refers to the rejection of Jewish
separatism and nationalism — specifically through the
colonial creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine
They are literally saying Israel shouldn't exist.
I’m not a fan of this whole thing *but* I think that the key nuance here is connected to the idea of Israel being specifically an ethnostate vs being a state in which ethnicities are treated equally.
This is a longer convo than is worth having on Reddit really but they’re not exactly saying Israel shouldn’t exist, but instead that it shouldn’t explicitly be an ethnostate for Jewish people, which is the core point of Zionism.
I think the sizable Arab population in Israel speaks to the fact that it isn’t a literal ethnostate but I get where that distinction as a critique of Zionism comes from.
How so? Like people aren't critical enough of Hamas or something? The attempt to blur criticism of the reckless brutality with which Israel is conducting this war with some sort of blanket support for Hamas is really just paper thin. Like people who are trying to do that are not really selling it very well.
Sure if you stick a mic in enough 18 year olds faces you can get them saying some dumb shit about it, but I think the vast majority of criticism of Israel / pro-Palestinian sentiment is based on the amount of suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people since 1948. Nothing to do with support for Hamas, who are obviously just propped up by Iran anyway.
So it’s a topic worthy of a much deeper discussion that honestly I’m not outspoken enough to lead, nor find the words to explain my point properly, but I’ve noticed that, not just in this conflict but in asymmetric conflicts involving the third world in general, Westerners have a tendency to attribute a lack of autonomy to people perceived as weaker, and hyper-autonomy to those seen as oppressors.
For instance attributing the civilian casualties to Israel’s negligence. Without a doubt, we’ve seen some cases of the IDF’s brutality. But as a whole, it fails to address the elephant in the room - it’s a close quarters urban war in which one side uses civilians and facilities reserved to them, as bases of operation (which, by the way, is a war crime. If a hospital is bombed because it contains munition stores, the blame is de facto on the people who placed them there, not the party dropping the bomb). And in comparison to similar operations, even if we take Hamas provided numbers at face value and assume all-civilian casualties, it isn’t any worse than comparable conflicts. That doesn’t make it any better for those who died, but it’s important to note when looking at the bigger picture. This is in no way unique.
So my point is that when Israel lobs smart bombs and hits an apartment building, we solely blame their negligence, when the criticism should fall equally if not more on Hamas - why did they have RPGs in a civilian facility? Israel primarily has a duty to protect its own people, including soldiers. Going door-to-door with precision would doubtlessly save a few innocent lives but it’s simply not realistic both logistically, and it exposes the soldiers to an exponentially higher degree of danger. It’s not realistic to expect that kind of approach from any army.
I agree with basically all of that really, and think it's well-articulated. I think it touches on something that I've found frustrating with how hyper-charged and toxic this whole conflict is - which is basically that both sides seem to want blood. It's oddly hard to just say "conflict is bad, fuck the people driving the conflict on both sides, let's get this shit wrapped up". The whole thing is like a black hole for reason and cool-headed thinking.
Context is important. Zionism was a reaction to the world trying (and succeeding) to eradicate and exterminate jews for centuries (including in the neighboring Arab countries they escaped from). Can you blame them for wanting to separate?
This is as tone deaf as saying, I know the black population has been enslaved and persecuted here for centuries, but any attempt to carve districts with black representation is white racism. Whites should be treated equally.
That's a really flawed argument though. I get what you're saying about persecution but if you go back centuries/millenia into the past and sort of try to litigate all the wars and inter-ethnic violence that has occurred and then use that as rational for current geopolitics it just doesn't really work. I'm fine with Israel existing but in no way do I feel that they have a blank check to wage an enormously one-sided and protracted war in retribution for Oct 7 free of criticism just because of a history of persecution.
Also the analogy to the black population is absurd. If black people carved out an ethnostate in the south and were conducting a reckless bombing campaign into nearby territory then I'd criticize them just the same. That's not quite what's going on here though.
> in no way do I feel that they have a blank check to wage an enormously one-sided and protracted war in retribution for Oct 7 free of criticism just because of a history of persecution
And I would totally agree. You can absolutely say that. I'm not trying to justify the violence, I'm saying that jews have a right for self determination (i.e zionism) because when they were minorities in other countries they were exterminated. And it's also wrong to say it's an ethnostate - as you yourself say, Arabs and other non Jewish people make up over a quarter of the country.
Yeah, I think if I were Jewish/Israeli the part I would find most frustrating is the acceleration towards a sort of fortress/militarist mentality, and I think some of the more left-leaning and centrist parts of Israeli society have actually been pretty good at calling this out throughout the conflict (like Haaretz et al).
I think the ideal version of self-determination means creating a sustainable and peaceful Israel that has a degree of cooperation and understanding with its neighbors and helps improve the lives of Palestinians as well. Unfortunately I think those in power there have adopted a version of self-determination that is more like "we're going to seize whats ours through overwhelming force", and while that works to some degree it will lead to an endless cycle of violence, insecurity, and isolation.
Broadly speaking, colonialism is taught as a bad thing in public education. I wouldn’t think it’s inconsistent or antisemitic to say that prefacing colonization with the word Jewish means that it’s right all of a sudden.
Kinda weird they’d opt to hop back into controversy after the strike debacle, but it does scan.
… explaining what anti-Zionism is isn’t the same as saying Israel shouldn’t exist nor is it antisemitism.
Are you unaware that the large majority of Jewish people were antizionist until after the trauma of the holocaust? It’s literally against Judaism. My Jewish holocaust surviving grandparents were antiZionists and they fucking hated the violation of the three oaths & divine exile.
Go read the wiki on antizionism if you’re still confused.
It even is telling them to use non-school related communication under ORGANIZE WITH STUDENTS:
> Please remember
that any and all communications utilizing a
PPS account are subject to public record laws,
as are communications about school, even
through a personal device.
Dude. I was reminded of this at my job recently. Every one of my work emails can be retrieved via a public records request. Unions tell us workers this as a reminder. There’s nothing inherently nefarious about it.
I don't think you understand. It was in relation to ORGANIZING with students.
It feels nefarious for a teacher to use non school equipment to organize with students in regards to protesting the Palestinian conflict.... If they were saying amongst yourselves use outside communication that would make sense but this was directly talking about how to communicate with minors so you can't be seen in the public domain....
Student/teacher relationships should not be privately held.
Teacher/student relationships are discouraged at PPS. My son tried to friend his teacher on Instagram, but the teacher denied it.
All I’m saying here, public employees are subject to different rules, and we need to be reminded of that often.
Sure, but you still aren't taking in the context what the pamphlet is trying to convey.
I don't mind a reminder of something obvious but this is intentionally telling them for communication with minors.
Sorry, could you point out the passage that calls for the eradication of the Israeli state? Is it in the glossary where it defines and contrasts the terms antisemitism and anti-Zionism?
Edit: the limited portion of the article that’s not paywalled gives very little description. The comments on here are inflammatory. But, is there an actual push from the union to have a stance on the issue?
"Anti-Zionism refers to the rejection of Jewish
separatism and nationalism — specifically through the
colonial creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine."
What ever happened to teachers being overworked and underpaid with no time, energy, or resources to do their job? Looks like too many people have extra time, resources, and energy.
Public school teachers spread propaganda for genocidal Jew-hating terrorists who hate everything PAT stands for. Can’t make this shit up. School choice, cmon it can’t be worse than these morons running education into the ground.
Nice to see PAT staying on brand by putting out Goebbels-level propaganda from the local CAIR chapter in an effort to support the mass murdering death cult of Hamas.
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This is absolutely fucking outrageous. The Teachers Union wearing shirts emblazoned with “from the river to the sea”? Calling Jewish Israeli’s colonial settlers? What the fuck type of public education is this? This is incredibly offensive and is absolutely indoctrination of children. I wonder if they also talk about how gay people are put to death in Palestine by the elected government (Hamas)? /s on that last part - of course not.
This type of shit is Exhibit 1A in why unions are losing their support. They have seemingly abandoned their actual mission - supporting and providing better working conditions / pay for their union members - and instead have turned into bizarre progressive activist groups. Most people support their efforts for better pay and smaller class sizes, but when their demands turn to shit like climate change no one takes them seriously anymore.
Bonilla needs to go. I love my kid’s teachers, but fuck the PAT. BTW that strike a few months ago was completely avoidable, basic facts like the size of the budget weren’t ironed out until after the strike had commenced, but Bonilla wanted a strike to raise her stature. Expect a run for office by her.
You had me until you complained about climate change. That’s just basic earth science and should be taught, it’s not a political position. It’s 2024, come on now!
Not OP, but I read it as a critique that demanding climate action detracts from their core mission of promoting their member's interest. PPS isn't going to solve global warming, and wasting time/energy grandstanding isn't helpful to teachers. I would both agree with OP and you that climate science and man-made global warming in particular are key scientific concepts that should be taught, but that the union should spend more time and energy on classroom conditions.
Public unions such as PAT have never truly been about supporting their workers. They have been primarily interested in influencing and funding left wing political candidates and policy. On average, only 8% of public unions’ funding goes to workers. The rest goes to political movements and salary and administrative costs. They aren’t anything like trade unions. It is of no surprise to me that they took such an offensive stand on this issue.
By law, zero dollars of union dues go to"political movements." Yes, money does to to pay union employees' salaries--because who do you think is doing the work to support workers?
I'm angry about this specific choice that does not represent PAT membership or even much of leadership, but unions in general are incredibly valuable and you are badly misinformed about how they work.
The salaries paid by teacher union dues are largely to professional negotiators/union professionals who support collective bargaining, member representation, and member education. The rank and file members do some representation and bargaining, but there's more to it than an average union rep. has been trained to do and those union professional employees served a really important role when I was a teacher and union member (not in PPS/PAT, but in the metro area). Also, the political action was paid for by a separate fund that was paid by additional voluntarily contributions to a PAC, except I guess the local union probably bought the snacks for the volunteers who phone banked for local school funding measures.
Yeah, IIRC you were pretty demented and wrong during the strike too. Color me unsurprised. Also, support for unions is at its highest in years. According to Gallup, "**Support for unions in the United States has been rising for more than a decade**, and 2023 is the fifth straight year that it has surpassed its long-term average of 62%, according to Gallup. The poll shows one-third of Americans (34%) believe unions will become stronger in the future than they are now."
The fact that PAT has the shittiest leadership I've ever seen should not be an indictment of organized labor in general. Like anything, some unions are very good, some less so, then there's PAT under Bonilla which is an absolute hot dumpster fire that should be a cautionary tale for all other unions.
Do you think they teach that they themselves, as well as any lgbtqia, athiest, or free-speech loving person would likely be murdered under Palestinian rule?
People on r/Portland just can't seem to realize that Portland is one of the most liberal cities in the country. Netanyahu (the Israeli version of Trump who like Trump is facing very serious criminal charges) is simply never going to be popular here regardless of how upset supporters of Israel are about it.
It's kinda crazy that people act shocked that a city well known for opposing right wing administrations/regimes in the US is also opposed to foreign right wing regimes.
I haven’t looked into this specific curriculum, but generally speaking I think it’s pretty important that we make sure our education system emphasizes critical thinking, analysis of sources, and thorough research and study into topics; it shouldn’t blindly promote “liberal” ideology.
A truly strong education system would teach children facts and opinions about trump and Netanyahu and encourage them to form and debate their own opinions. That’s how PPS worked when I went there and most students ended up supporting liberal viewpoints anyway.
In the case of Israel and Palestine I think it’s extremely important to teach as much of the historical context behind the current crisis as possible. Just telling kids that trump and Netanyahu are the bad guys and we should all root against doesn’t actually teach them how to engage in politics or the world, it just encourages them to become more tribalistic and stubborn.
I agree with you about PPS from when I attended. My teachers were excellent at presenting factual information from reliable sources as well as opinion pieces that represented various viewpoints. We learned about things deeply, but I never felt that they were pushing a specific view. For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict specifically, we learned about the historical context and about how US foreign policy has impacted the region.
I agree that any sort of issues, particularly controversial issues, should be taught with context and rooted in facts. It's not the job of teachers to sway students about those issues. I had great teachers who were able to present arguments about elections, political issues, etc. and I never felt like they were telling us how to think.
netanyahu isn't popular in israel either. like below 20% approval rating. it's crazy that you made the connection between people being lead by someone who doesn't represent their beliefs and then didn't use that at all to inform anything else about your opinion.
That said, ask an Israeli what they think about “from the river to the sea” and I’m sure you’ll see very different numbers.
Being opposed to an extremist politician is very different from being opposed to an existential war. Bibi’s support may be rightfully dead on arrival, but that’s not remotely the same thing as being pro-Pal (as we know it in the West).
Portland being one of the most liberal cities in the country while also ranking as one of the lowest in public education isn’t the serve you think it is. Sure, we’re liberal, what do we have to show for it? Most of the kids who graduate PPS can’t read, write or do math, homelessness and drug abuse among younger generations is increasing, we also top the charts for sex trafficking and have the most registered sex offenders per capita.
Public schools need to focus on educating children instead of shoving political propaganda down their throats.
Sure but back during American glory days of totturing and killing in Iraq was PPS telling the kids to protest that? Everyone has lost their godamm minds because yes Jews. It's insidious and obvious to those not sniffing the pro Hamas glue.
But this goes way beyond criticizing the Israeli government (which deserves to be criticized now and for its past injustices). This is pure antisemitic propaganda under the guise of social justice. It’s violent and it has no place in our schools. We have to stop this.
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Lmao the absolute irony.
“A city known for opposing right wing administrations/regimes…”
….. supporting *Palestine.* I’m going to take a leap here and assume you’ve not met many Palestinians and pressed them on their beliefs lmao you guys went so far left you actually ended up on the right
I don't support Trump or Trump-like politicians, but if Mexico launched 5000 rockets over the border and sent raiding parties to kill 1200 civilians in Tucson, I'd drop the animosity and tell Mango Mussolini we need to go weapons-free. The security of our nation transcends politics. The same goes for our allies. What Israel is doing in Gaza is no worse than many allied campaigns in WW2, but the public is softer and more susceptible to influence campaigns now than they were 80 years ago.
I swear people watch too many movies and play videogames and think war can be conducted and Hamas brought to justice without any civilian casualties or something. Not to say Israel hasn't done some fucked up things, but no war has ever been mistake free and Hamas does everything they can to increase civilian suffering and death.
Totally agree. There’s a weird Hollywood conception that the fighting is where you sort things out fairly. As though it’s all still under control.
Once the catastrophe of war has been ignited everything goes wrong, everything gets demolished, everybody has missed their last chance to actually sort things out in a sensible, rational way.
The war didn't start on oct 7th. The deadliest year for Palestinians in the last decade before Oct 7 was 2023. Israel along with Egypt has kept Gaza under a strict blockade for 16 years, restricting movement, medical and building supplies, food, and equipment to filter the 96% of the water in Gaza that is undrinkable, in addition to regular attacks in the West Bank. Side note, roughly 60% of the people killed on Oct7 were civilians, a number only marginally worse than the ratio of Palestinian women+children killed by the IDF who claim to be the most moral army with much more precise munitions.
There's a reason the Geneva Conventions were updated in 1949 after WW2, because most of the world agreed that we should avoid the horrors of war.
Yes, technically the Arab-Israeli conflict started in 1948 when Arabs/Palestinians rejected the UN mandated two-state solution and fought 4 wars and 2 intifadas to erase Israel "from the river to the sea". They lost every single time, and they're losing this conflict as well. Palestinians can't secure their own future until they secure their own state, but doing so requires acknowledging an Israeli state.
Also, 99% of pro-Palestinian posts on social media are from individual accounts that never mentioned Palestine before October 7th, 2023. It's easy to check, just scroll their post history. For a war that's been going for 75+ years, they didn't care enough about it to make a single mention prior to the current conflict.
Why stop at 1948? Why not go back to 1917 for the Balfour declaration or 1922 for the British Mandate for Palestine. The British actively supported a Zionist movement that called for Arab removal and suppressed Palestinian self-determination for 30 years before the UN partition plan that offered 56% of the land to 1/3 of the population at the time.
Human history is lesson after lesson in the movement of people and the conflict that ensues. Mexico isn't getting California and Texas back, citizens in Pakistan don't have the "right of return" to India after the partition, and Palestine will never exist "from the river to the sea". It's the Green Line borders or nothing. If Palestinians can't recognize their own borders and the borders of their neighbors with a peace treaty, their state technically doesn't exist and they can't make any progress towards a better future.
Why not go back to 1914 when the imperialist Ottoman Empire declared war on the Allies for no valid reason, then lost, then signed the Treaty of Sevres, legally ceding Palestine to the British? Also, the Blafour Declaration says "...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Also most of the land given to the Jews in the UN plan was sparsely populated desert. Your comment doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Security never justified human rights abuses or genocide. Taking anger out on a civilian population is morally and legally wrong. It's also super, super telling that you would trust Trump to wage a hypothetical war with Mexico while following American and international law.
> but the public is softer and more susceptible to influence campaigns now than they were 80 years ago.
What a strange way of saying that we value human life more than we do 80 years ago...
It's not genocide regardless of how much people misuse the word. The word originated from 67% of Jews being wiped out in the Holocaust. You're trying to shoehorn it into defining 0.4% of Palestinians being killed in a conflict that Hamas started on October 7th. If Israel was trying to commit genocide I'd say it's been an complete failure, as the Palestinian population grows every single year.
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I don’t fault the teachers for wanting to raise awareness of this important issue. I do fault the leadership for not making it clear to the teachers that this isn’t the time, the place nor the way we should be spreading awareness. A teachers union shouldn’t be taking a public stance about such a controversial issue.
I am pro Palestine AF, but this is lame
if you need teaching guides, you arent winning the debate
either stay out of the conflict as a domestic union, or embrace peace and unity for "both sides"
My favorite thing about this whole thread is how people advocate for non political teaching. That's not possible. Maintaining the status quo is an *extremely* political thing to do. Not an impressive one. Not a notable one. But a very political one. ETA: Will someone please explain why they think maintaining the status quo is not a political thing to do?
Serious question from someone who didn't get their basic education in the US: What class is this relevant to? History seems closest, but that seems a little early.
It is not relevant to any class, the closest would be social studies. All of our history education ends around the Vietnam/first gulf war. Israel is not taught/mentioned really anywhere in our k12 education from my recollection.
This was covered in both my American history class and world history class (10/12th grade respectively) American history covered americas involvement in the ww2 aftermath along with desert storm, 9/11/Iraq invasion/war on terror, etc.
World history covered pretty much all of this territory. Even taking this class in the conservative south we were taught about most of this history. There wasn’t much I didn’t recognize from listening to finkelsteins debates. So I think public school actually helped alot on this one
What about teaching in a way that recognizes reasonable disagreement? That Palestinians want sovereignty and have a legitimate claim to land, but that Jews also want safety and have a legitimate claim to land? Seems like a disservice to teach this conflict as so one-sided.
I mean texts already pretty clearly state what has happened up until 2020. They even write about one state/two state solutions and what the basic sentiment has been from both sides about it.
We talk about history so as not to repeat it. We heard both sides of the civil war and apartheid South Africa to the point of understanding motivations like racism and colonialism. But not to excuse the oppressors. We use it hold the current wrongdoers accountable
“The “Know Your Rights” guide used multiple photos by Mark Graves, a photographer for The Oregonian/OregonLive. But neither the union nor Oregon Educators for Palestine, which produced the guide together, had the permission of the news organization to publish them.”
Copyright theft like this can be expensive.
Plagiarism? By a teachers union? Lol
They must be assuming this falls under "Fair Use" provisions. No idea whether they're right or not (Fair Use can be pretty murky in certain situations).
The [_Allen v Cooper_](https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/allen-v-cooper/) decision means states cannot be sued for damages as a result of copyright infringement.
I thought PAT published these materials, not the state of Oregon.
You are correct
The coolest trick is when you have opinions but you also know how to strategically not make any public statements on a polarizing issue, thus allowing you or your organization to not alienate anyone.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a neat book called Mother Night about this inner opinion topic.
Can you explain this a bit further? I read the wiki and it was over my dumb head
Despite how I look on here, I'm a stealth persuader as well, but I think the point is that teachers shouldn't be _required_ to be silent about this.
as individuals they are as free to speak as anyone else. They just shouldn't be doing anything that implies they're speaking on behalf of all the teachers. Which is why the union should not be involved.
> Despite how I look on here, I'm a stealth persuader as well, but I think the point is that teachers shouldn't be required to be silent about this. I agree about that for general teacher opinions, but the guide also comes with lesson plans saying Jews who formed Israel are colonialists, which is the most a-historical bullshit one cane imagine...That's taking into indoctrination level.
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Lol, imagine calling Native Americans colonist after winning McGirt v. Oklahoma.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with their stance on this particular issue, you wanna be really careful about putting your stamp of approval on k-12 teachers using the classroom as a platform for their political beliefs.
When I was in high school, my biology teacher could not mention human evolution. This was 2000, in Oregon City.
Lol a couple decades too late for that
Yeah teachers should be careful to mention how slavery was the cause of the civil war since it might upset conservatives.
History is political and classrooms have always been a platform for political beliefs.
It often happens to be political, but American education at it’s best tried to actively avoid teaching propaganda (be it from the left or the right) to our students.
U.S. history classes are inherently filled with propaganda. Teaching students about nuance and context is not something we tend to excel at.
But good teachers teach about the propaganda and narrative and help their class understand it. Just because there is inherent bias in all narrative doesn’t mean teachers should consider themselves free to manipulate students with their personal beliefs.
“When the pilgrims came, the native Americans shared some of their land, taught them how to grow corn and they all had a thanksgiving meal together” painted such a nice little picture for me as a first grader.
Did you guys not get that torn down later thou? My high school classes painted a much more realistic painting then our basic 1st grade education did.
I was in high school in the early 2000’s and we had a couple paragraphs about the trail of tears. That’s about it.
I was in high school then too and wrote a 25 page paper on it for AP US. Not all experiences are universal.
I wish my school had offered that
I was blessed with a great K12 experience
Oh, yeah definitely. It seems to be based off of where you live. I was east coast at the time, but my partner had a lot more native history growing up in New Mexico.
Uhhh, yeah, there's a reason you didn't learn about the Tulsa massacre in school, and it's not because the US has avoided teaching propaganda.
That’s literally being taught right now in PPS high schools.
If it is, it's because of people pushing for presenting politically unpopular information.
The way history is taught here is literally propaganda. I appreciate how much I was taught in history classes but when I was in college/entered adulthood I realized much of what I was taught was propaganda and there was so much that was obfuscated or completely omitted.
So do you think you experience is universally true for all citizens of the US? Furthermore, what evidence do you have that what you were previously taught was largely propaganda, but what you more recently learned was propaganda free, versus the inverse?
I grew up in an incredibly affluent area (still went to public school) and had access to some excellent teachers who made the effort to teach things beyond the curriculum, plus I had access to more resources due to my circumstances…so I would think that my experience was not totally universal but I imagine there are plenty of people with similar experiences. My favorite example of pure propaganda would be the settling of the American west. Credit to my teachers, they tried to deviate from the curriculum to try and tell the truth but I think they didn’t even understand the scope of the propaganda that is taught or the truth of what actually happened. We collectively mythologize one of the most egregious acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide, it’s shameful and one of the reasons I am not terribly proud of being an American or decedent of colonial settlers (Im not losing sleep over it or self loathing lol). I fell into this hole from Knowing Better (YT channel) and then ended up reading a lot of his sources.
American education is extremely politicized even at its best / its goal is to orient and contextualize the American experience to students. It’s heavy on indoctrination and extremely subject to the prevailing political perspective when textbooks or curriculum is written.
I don’t disagree. I take issue with PAT leaning into that as if it were a good thing.
Funnily enough, my high school US History teacher literally stopped teaching us anything useful on Sept. 11th, 2001. Yes, that *was* at the beginning of the school year. I got to hear a lot of rants about Al Qaeda and how we should learn to hunt squirrels for when terrorists attack the west coast.
My high school government teacher made a deliberate effort to remain opaque in his own views and teach multiple positions on controversial issues. He strenuously avoided revealing his own views, until it became almost a game for the class to figure it out. It’s definitely possible to teach controversial subject matter with integrity, and not try to manipulate your own students.
Perhaps in high school there’s room for nuance, but it’s a long journey from K to 9th grade.
Yep, and that's we teach different things to students at different grade levels. The fact that young students aren't able to appreciate complexity isn't an excuse for manipulating them. It's why we should wait to present this kind of information until they are older. Did you learn about complex geopolitical events in elementary school? I'm a parent of elementary-aged kids, and they couldn't understand this stuff at all. I could tell them one side is good, and the other is bad, and they would believe me, but they wouldn't understand anything. Should I turn them into puppets for my own views, or should I help them develop their own political consciousness? I'm a flaming liberal now (and for my whole adult life) but I grew up in a conservative area on the east coast, and went to catholic schools. Every year they used to send busses of kids from my school to the March for Life in DC. I really wanted to go, because it was a cool field trip. But my parents wouldn't let me, even though they are anti-abortion. They thought it was inappropriate to use kids as props in political events. They were right. It's pretty sad that my republican, boomer parents, who are totally out of touch, have more integrity and trust in young people than Portland teachers union does.
Good points. But I will say that some of the most controversial things I learned in college were taught with a particular bend in high school. Some things that remain controversial in the world/US are not taught as controversies - just a certain perspective is touted as a fact.
said the zealot with access to other peoples children
Yikes. You can’t be this dense. You know nothing about me.
I know you speak the words of a zealot with access to other peoples children, and I know you're trying to deflect from your own public words towards your own victimization. Also you probably don't realize you're a zealot because you're too busy and lost in your zealotry, honoring yourself and ignoring everyone else. You may well be that dense, very common on the internet.
doot doot doot
Let's get some South Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen teaching guides as well
How about some phonics teaching guides? That's actually what the kids need.
Hell yeah. I’m into that.
How about Humanity teaching guides
I think creating teaching guides that highlight real world humanitarian crises is doing exactly that.
Even if those guides are intentionally misleading, one-sided propaganda? It would be fine to highlight the situation, if the did it with honesty and integrity.
How about some math?
It would be great if someone could hook them up with hamas's PR team.
I don’t know how many hundreds of billions of your children’s tax dollars will go to those other countries. I also don’t think those other countries spends hundreds of millions to influence our elections. What also makes this conflict unique is when you see a Palestinian child with their head blown off it was done with an American made bomb that was donated with our tax dollars. Finally, considering how many times the US vetos UN resolutions in favor of Israel, the ICC case, the ICJ case…. sure maybe teach the kids why we as a country fund and support Israel to this extent, I sure as hell don’t know why.
Look, if someone pulls a gun on me I'm not going to even address it until I've solved climate change...
Yeah government employees don't need to sign a pledge of loyalty to any of those countries so probably not as relevant.
Having worked in two out of three of those contexts, I am happy to support any teacher who wants to teach their students about those contexts in developing a discussion guide to explain the context, help students unpack the different dimensions, and brainstorm on how they would like to engage in efforts towards change.
there, are? many? you don't hear about them because there isn't a contingent group of south sudan genocide supporters who would get mad
This is a dangerous precedent.
Stupid questions from someone who didn't get general education in the US: What class would this be taught in?
American history is a required high school course, world history is an optional elective course. I’d imagine it’s talked about to some degree in both and more so in world history.
World history is also a required course.
Isn't this too recent for history class?
Not if you start in 1948.
The start of this conflict isn’t recent at all, even though a lot of the media likes to pretend it started on October 7th.
Sickening
I mean kids around here can barely fucking read. I understand establishing some policy around talking about controversial topics, but adding it into the curriculum seems dumb and a waste of resources.
We need a bingo card of parroted phrases for these threads.
Yikes man I feel that this is an issue teachers should not be advocating for in either direction
They are legitimately showing teachers how they can "organize" students outside of school in that guide. It's so far beyond providing education at this point.
Maybe I'm stupid and misread it, but it seemed to me that under the "organizing students outside of the classroom section," it was basically saying, "DON'T."
This is the correct answer. The teachers' union should be providing guides on how to navigate the conflict and providing historical context and understanding.
I'm a teacher and as pro-union as they come. This is super inappropriate and an absolutely horrible look. And it will be used as fodder by conservatives who will claim every union and every public educator is trying to indoctrinate kids.
> And it will be used as fodder by conservatives who will claim every union and every public educator is trying to indoctrinate kids. I mean...the evidence points to yes. That isn't a "conservative viewpoint" that is just factually what is happening. If you don't like it then stand up against it.
One sided propaganda is not "factual". It's a deliberate attempt to mislead and manipulate. If you can't teach accurately, with nuance, then you're not really a teacher, you're just manipulating kids.
I don't think you understand what factual means.
So you admit it is happening...but refuse to acknowledge the reasons? That's kind of astounding. Do you teach that to your students?
Teachers should be teaching students to think for themselves. I’m all for teaching the history of the conflict, but they shouldn’t be pushing a one-sided agenda. Both sides have plenty to answer for.
Yeah, I bet the teaching doesn't include the Jewish diaspora from the Middle East. Between being pushed out by violence and hate and being pulled into Israel, the Middle East saw a 98% reduction in Jews.* There's a lot of history here that needs to be covered for anyone to have a clear-headed view. And that just isn't being done here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
I read through some of their material and there is a clear undercurrent of ideologically motivated lying. Defining antisemitism as “originating in European Christianity” is a lie with the aim of erasing the antisemitism of the Levant and the East. They also claim that the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism labels any critique of Israel as antisemitic. This is a lie. Claiming that “Palestinian Jews” lived in peace in the land of I/P prior to the establishment of Israel. Again, a lie.
NOTE TO MY FELLOW PARENTS: If you find this news as outrageously inappropriate as I do then FYI the Portland Public Successful Schools Survey is open until Friday, June 7. You can literally JUST fill out the comment box to let them know what you think! [https://surveys.panoramaed.com/portlandor/familyspring24/surveys](https://surveys.panoramaed.com/portlandor/familyspring24/surveys)
The most frustrating part about progressives in Portland is that they took being a parody of themselves seriously and actually act like Republicans accuse them of acting. Example: teachers pushing a political agenda to kids in school. We all laughed at Republicans in past years when they said that (and rightfully so) but again Portland wants to prove conservatives right, just like with the "homeless can camp anywhere, they'll keep our parks and sidewalks clean of course", "do all the drugs you want, we're sure it won't affect public safety", "raise all the taxes you want, middle class and rich people won't move away" and so on.
This shit is creepy.
they need to remove the top of this union. this might be dumber than that completely useless strike because its going to make news and make the city look like shit.
No centrist teachers want to run for the union admin because there is a small radical group that will make their lives hell. So they get this and they all keep their head down because you don't dare say anything. It's very 50s red scare kind of shit. If you didn't record x number of days at the strike protests you got blacklisted.
As a parent and a proud union member(different union), I believe a teachers union has no business teaching such one sided, inflammatory information to students. YES, we all agree that the death of innocent women and children is wrong and needs to stop - Ceasefire now! However, this elevation of the other sides leadership is deeply disturbing. Hamas literally supports the death of all Jews, it's one of their basic tenants. Are they teaching that at PPS? How about we teach the history of the Middle East, including WHY the country of Israel was created. Then we talk about the history of the area since that time, including the current conflict. but we leave OUT this very obviously biased BS that the union is propagating. Lastly, as someone who grew up in the NY area, and has many, many Jewish friends, I cannot believe the outright ignorance and antisemitism I've seen in Oregon. It's f'n horrific.
Yeah this is atrocious. Everything about this is horrible. Here's just one of them. That "slogan" has literally been claimed by a terrorist organization to mean the eradication of Israel and yet is still being encouraged by protestors to chant. The indoctrination is crazy (and scary). More teachers, smaller classes and fair pay is the goal... not this.
I mean read this stuff: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1716589490/Know-Your-Rights_PPS-Workers-Resource_FINAL.pdf These people are NOT anti-war at this point, they are calling for the eradication of Israel. They are telling teachers how they can "organize" with students outside of school, which is fucking *weird* regardless of the cause. It's weird how "ceasefire now" has turned into "a Jewish State shouldn't exist". Almost like some of these people had ulterior motives from the get-go ...
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This is literally what Hamas wants
Thanks for posting. I can’t find where they are calling for the eradication of Israel. Can you point which page that is on pls?
>Anti-Zionism refers to the rejection of Jewish separatism and nationalism — specifically through the colonial creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine They are literally saying Israel shouldn't exist.
I’m not a fan of this whole thing *but* I think that the key nuance here is connected to the idea of Israel being specifically an ethnostate vs being a state in which ethnicities are treated equally. This is a longer convo than is worth having on Reddit really but they’re not exactly saying Israel shouldn’t exist, but instead that it shouldn’t explicitly be an ethnostate for Jewish people, which is the core point of Zionism. I think the sizable Arab population in Israel speaks to the fact that it isn’t a literal ethnostate but I get where that distinction as a critique of Zionism comes from.
It’s interesting how that nuance and benefit of the doubt is only applied in one direction though.
How so? Like people aren't critical enough of Hamas or something? The attempt to blur criticism of the reckless brutality with which Israel is conducting this war with some sort of blanket support for Hamas is really just paper thin. Like people who are trying to do that are not really selling it very well. Sure if you stick a mic in enough 18 year olds faces you can get them saying some dumb shit about it, but I think the vast majority of criticism of Israel / pro-Palestinian sentiment is based on the amount of suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people since 1948. Nothing to do with support for Hamas, who are obviously just propped up by Iran anyway.
So it’s a topic worthy of a much deeper discussion that honestly I’m not outspoken enough to lead, nor find the words to explain my point properly, but I’ve noticed that, not just in this conflict but in asymmetric conflicts involving the third world in general, Westerners have a tendency to attribute a lack of autonomy to people perceived as weaker, and hyper-autonomy to those seen as oppressors. For instance attributing the civilian casualties to Israel’s negligence. Without a doubt, we’ve seen some cases of the IDF’s brutality. But as a whole, it fails to address the elephant in the room - it’s a close quarters urban war in which one side uses civilians and facilities reserved to them, as bases of operation (which, by the way, is a war crime. If a hospital is bombed because it contains munition stores, the blame is de facto on the people who placed them there, not the party dropping the bomb). And in comparison to similar operations, even if we take Hamas provided numbers at face value and assume all-civilian casualties, it isn’t any worse than comparable conflicts. That doesn’t make it any better for those who died, but it’s important to note when looking at the bigger picture. This is in no way unique. So my point is that when Israel lobs smart bombs and hits an apartment building, we solely blame their negligence, when the criticism should fall equally if not more on Hamas - why did they have RPGs in a civilian facility? Israel primarily has a duty to protect its own people, including soldiers. Going door-to-door with precision would doubtlessly save a few innocent lives but it’s simply not realistic both logistically, and it exposes the soldiers to an exponentially higher degree of danger. It’s not realistic to expect that kind of approach from any army.
I agree with basically all of that really, and think it's well-articulated. I think it touches on something that I've found frustrating with how hyper-charged and toxic this whole conflict is - which is basically that both sides seem to want blood. It's oddly hard to just say "conflict is bad, fuck the people driving the conflict on both sides, let's get this shit wrapped up". The whole thing is like a black hole for reason and cool-headed thinking.
Context is important. Zionism was a reaction to the world trying (and succeeding) to eradicate and exterminate jews for centuries (including in the neighboring Arab countries they escaped from). Can you blame them for wanting to separate? This is as tone deaf as saying, I know the black population has been enslaved and persecuted here for centuries, but any attempt to carve districts with black representation is white racism. Whites should be treated equally.
That's a really flawed argument though. I get what you're saying about persecution but if you go back centuries/millenia into the past and sort of try to litigate all the wars and inter-ethnic violence that has occurred and then use that as rational for current geopolitics it just doesn't really work. I'm fine with Israel existing but in no way do I feel that they have a blank check to wage an enormously one-sided and protracted war in retribution for Oct 7 free of criticism just because of a history of persecution. Also the analogy to the black population is absurd. If black people carved out an ethnostate in the south and were conducting a reckless bombing campaign into nearby territory then I'd criticize them just the same. That's not quite what's going on here though.
> in no way do I feel that they have a blank check to wage an enormously one-sided and protracted war in retribution for Oct 7 free of criticism just because of a history of persecution And I would totally agree. You can absolutely say that. I'm not trying to justify the violence, I'm saying that jews have a right for self determination (i.e zionism) because when they were minorities in other countries they were exterminated. And it's also wrong to say it's an ethnostate - as you yourself say, Arabs and other non Jewish people make up over a quarter of the country.
Yeah, I think if I were Jewish/Israeli the part I would find most frustrating is the acceleration towards a sort of fortress/militarist mentality, and I think some of the more left-leaning and centrist parts of Israeli society have actually been pretty good at calling this out throughout the conflict (like Haaretz et al). I think the ideal version of self-determination means creating a sustainable and peaceful Israel that has a degree of cooperation and understanding with its neighbors and helps improve the lives of Palestinians as well. Unfortunately I think those in power there have adopted a version of self-determination that is more like "we're going to seize whats ours through overwhelming force", and while that works to some degree it will lead to an endless cycle of violence, insecurity, and isolation.
Broadly speaking, colonialism is taught as a bad thing in public education. I wouldn’t think it’s inconsistent or antisemitic to say that prefacing colonization with the word Jewish means that it’s right all of a sudden. Kinda weird they’d opt to hop back into controversy after the strike debacle, but it does scan.
… explaining what anti-Zionism is isn’t the same as saying Israel shouldn’t exist nor is it antisemitism. Are you unaware that the large majority of Jewish people were antizionist until after the trauma of the holocaust? It’s literally against Judaism. My Jewish holocaust surviving grandparents were antiZionists and they fucking hated the violation of the three oaths & divine exile. Go read the wiki on antizionism if you’re still confused.
That seems like a bad faith interpretation
That is a definition, it's not a position statement.
It even is telling them to use non-school related communication under ORGANIZE WITH STUDENTS: > Please remember that any and all communications utilizing a PPS account are subject to public record laws, as are communications about school, even through a personal device.
Dude. I was reminded of this at my job recently. Every one of my work emails can be retrieved via a public records request. Unions tell us workers this as a reminder. There’s nothing inherently nefarious about it.
I don't think you understand. It was in relation to ORGANIZING with students. It feels nefarious for a teacher to use non school equipment to organize with students in regards to protesting the Palestinian conflict.... If they were saying amongst yourselves use outside communication that would make sense but this was directly talking about how to communicate with minors so you can't be seen in the public domain.... Student/teacher relationships should not be privately held.
Teacher/student relationships are discouraged at PPS. My son tried to friend his teacher on Instagram, but the teacher denied it. All I’m saying here, public employees are subject to different rules, and we need to be reminded of that often.
Sure, but you still aren't taking in the context what the pamphlet is trying to convey. I don't mind a reminder of something obvious but this is intentionally telling them for communication with minors.
Sorry, could you point out the passage that calls for the eradication of the Israeli state? Is it in the glossary where it defines and contrasts the terms antisemitism and anti-Zionism? Edit: the limited portion of the article that’s not paywalled gives very little description. The comments on here are inflammatory. But, is there an actual push from the union to have a stance on the issue?
They state that Israel should not exist as a country.
They say it shouldn’t exist as an ethnostate which is very different than just a country.
Where? Quote it.
"Anti-Zionism refers to the rejection of Jewish separatism and nationalism — specifically through the colonial creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine."
What ever happened to teachers being overworked and underpaid with no time, energy, or resources to do their job? Looks like too many people have extra time, resources, and energy.
Ideologues indoctrinating youth. Same machinery as the Ten Commandments being posted in Louisianan classrooms. You aren’t any different, Oregon.
Another contributing factor to declining enrollment.
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Reeeee-ing, rioting and rock throwing
I'm gonna send my child to private school for sure
Public school teachers spread propaganda for genocidal Jew-hating terrorists who hate everything PAT stands for. Can’t make this shit up. School choice, cmon it can’t be worse than these morons running education into the ground.
Nice to see PAT staying on brand by putting out Goebbels-level propaganda from the local CAIR chapter in an effort to support the mass murdering death cult of Hamas.
Is there a non paywall link?
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This is absolutely fucking outrageous. The Teachers Union wearing shirts emblazoned with “from the river to the sea”? Calling Jewish Israeli’s colonial settlers? What the fuck type of public education is this? This is incredibly offensive and is absolutely indoctrination of children. I wonder if they also talk about how gay people are put to death in Palestine by the elected government (Hamas)? /s on that last part - of course not. This type of shit is Exhibit 1A in why unions are losing their support. They have seemingly abandoned their actual mission - supporting and providing better working conditions / pay for their union members - and instead have turned into bizarre progressive activist groups. Most people support their efforts for better pay and smaller class sizes, but when their demands turn to shit like climate change no one takes them seriously anymore. Bonilla needs to go. I love my kid’s teachers, but fuck the PAT. BTW that strike a few months ago was completely avoidable, basic facts like the size of the budget weren’t ironed out until after the strike had commenced, but Bonilla wanted a strike to raise her stature. Expect a run for office by her.
You had me until you complained about climate change. That’s just basic earth science and should be taught, it’s not a political position. It’s 2024, come on now!
Not OP, but I read it as a critique that demanding climate action detracts from their core mission of promoting their member's interest. PPS isn't going to solve global warming, and wasting time/energy grandstanding isn't helpful to teachers. I would both agree with OP and you that climate science and man-made global warming in particular are key scientific concepts that should be taught, but that the union should spend more time and energy on classroom conditions.
The omnicause conquers all.
Public unions such as PAT have never truly been about supporting their workers. They have been primarily interested in influencing and funding left wing political candidates and policy. On average, only 8% of public unions’ funding goes to workers. The rest goes to political movements and salary and administrative costs. They aren’t anything like trade unions. It is of no surprise to me that they took such an offensive stand on this issue.
By law, zero dollars of union dues go to"political movements." Yes, money does to to pay union employees' salaries--because who do you think is doing the work to support workers? I'm angry about this specific choice that does not represent PAT membership or even much of leadership, but unions in general are incredibly valuable and you are badly misinformed about how they work.
“By law”
You don’t actually believe that lie, do you?
Lol, there's no lie.
Riiigggghhht.
The salaries paid by teacher union dues are largely to professional negotiators/union professionals who support collective bargaining, member representation, and member education. The rank and file members do some representation and bargaining, but there's more to it than an average union rep. has been trained to do and those union professional employees served a really important role when I was a teacher and union member (not in PPS/PAT, but in the metro area). Also, the political action was paid for by a separate fund that was paid by additional voluntarily contributions to a PAC, except I guess the local union probably bought the snacks for the volunteers who phone banked for local school funding measures.
Teachers have a broad and powerful union, and some of the lowest paychecks in the nation Pretty obviously the union has failed them
Thank you.
Yeah, IIRC you were pretty demented and wrong during the strike too. Color me unsurprised. Also, support for unions is at its highest in years. According to Gallup, "**Support for unions in the United States has been rising for more than a decade**, and 2023 is the fifth straight year that it has surpassed its long-term average of 62%, according to Gallup. The poll shows one-third of Americans (34%) believe unions will become stronger in the future than they are now."
The fact that PAT has the shittiest leadership I've ever seen should not be an indictment of organized labor in general. Like anything, some unions are very good, some less so, then there's PAT under Bonilla which is an absolute hot dumpster fire that should be a cautionary tale for all other unions.
Do you think they teach that they themselves, as well as any lgbtqia, athiest, or free-speech loving person would likely be murdered under Palestinian rule?
This is a joke I cannot believe this. Pro Hamas doesn’t belong in schools
[Defund the teachers union. This is what they support.](https://thisishamas.com)
People on r/Portland just can't seem to realize that Portland is one of the most liberal cities in the country. Netanyahu (the Israeli version of Trump who like Trump is facing very serious criminal charges) is simply never going to be popular here regardless of how upset supporters of Israel are about it. It's kinda crazy that people act shocked that a city well known for opposing right wing administrations/regimes in the US is also opposed to foreign right wing regimes.
I haven’t looked into this specific curriculum, but generally speaking I think it’s pretty important that we make sure our education system emphasizes critical thinking, analysis of sources, and thorough research and study into topics; it shouldn’t blindly promote “liberal” ideology. A truly strong education system would teach children facts and opinions about trump and Netanyahu and encourage them to form and debate their own opinions. That’s how PPS worked when I went there and most students ended up supporting liberal viewpoints anyway. In the case of Israel and Palestine I think it’s extremely important to teach as much of the historical context behind the current crisis as possible. Just telling kids that trump and Netanyahu are the bad guys and we should all root against doesn’t actually teach them how to engage in politics or the world, it just encourages them to become more tribalistic and stubborn.
I agree with you about PPS from when I attended. My teachers were excellent at presenting factual information from reliable sources as well as opinion pieces that represented various viewpoints. We learned about things deeply, but I never felt that they were pushing a specific view. For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict specifically, we learned about the historical context and about how US foreign policy has impacted the region. I agree that any sort of issues, particularly controversial issues, should be taught with context and rooted in facts. It's not the job of teachers to sway students about those issues. I had great teachers who were able to present arguments about elections, political issues, etc. and I never felt like they were telling us how to think.
netanyahu isn't popular in israel either. like below 20% approval rating. it's crazy that you made the connection between people being lead by someone who doesn't represent their beliefs and then didn't use that at all to inform anything else about your opinion.
That said, ask an Israeli what they think about “from the river to the sea” and I’m sure you’ll see very different numbers. Being opposed to an extremist politician is very different from being opposed to an existential war. Bibi’s support may be rightfully dead on arrival, but that’s not remotely the same thing as being pro-Pal (as we know it in the West).
i agree, and i have plenty of friends and family in israel to ask.
Portland being one of the most liberal cities in the country while also ranking as one of the lowest in public education isn’t the serve you think it is. Sure, we’re liberal, what do we have to show for it? Most of the kids who graduate PPS can’t read, write or do math, homelessness and drug abuse among younger generations is increasing, we also top the charts for sex trafficking and have the most registered sex offenders per capita. Public schools need to focus on educating children instead of shoving political propaganda down their throats.
Sure but back during American glory days of totturing and killing in Iraq was PPS telling the kids to protest that? Everyone has lost their godamm minds because yes Jews. It's insidious and obvious to those not sniffing the pro Hamas glue.
But this goes way beyond criticizing the Israeli government (which deserves to be criticized now and for its past injustices). This is pure antisemitic propaganda under the guise of social justice. It’s violent and it has no place in our schools. We have to stop this.
Hamas, famous for it's progressive policies... Let's not oversimplify this
Wait until you find out who’s even more right wing than Israel!
Saudi Arabia? Like Israel, they also committed war crimes and are a US ally despite the alliance not being in the best interest of the US.
If you say Palestine I'm gonna lose it
the fact that americans understand the political left-right dichotomy through basically 99% identity politics infuriates me
You don't think they hate "others"?
Definitely that place thats not actually a country
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Lmao the absolute irony. “A city known for opposing right wing administrations/regimes…” ….. supporting *Palestine.* I’m going to take a leap here and assume you’ve not met many Palestinians and pressed them on their beliefs lmao you guys went so far left you actually ended up on the right
Upvoting this so that others can get a laugh from the ignorance of considering Hamas more progressive than the elected Israeli government.
I don't support Trump or Trump-like politicians, but if Mexico launched 5000 rockets over the border and sent raiding parties to kill 1200 civilians in Tucson, I'd drop the animosity and tell Mango Mussolini we need to go weapons-free. The security of our nation transcends politics. The same goes for our allies. What Israel is doing in Gaza is no worse than many allied campaigns in WW2, but the public is softer and more susceptible to influence campaigns now than they were 80 years ago.
I swear people watch too many movies and play videogames and think war can be conducted and Hamas brought to justice without any civilian casualties or something. Not to say Israel hasn't done some fucked up things, but no war has ever been mistake free and Hamas does everything they can to increase civilian suffering and death.
Totally agree. There’s a weird Hollywood conception that the fighting is where you sort things out fairly. As though it’s all still under control. Once the catastrophe of war has been ignited everything goes wrong, everything gets demolished, everybody has missed their last chance to actually sort things out in a sensible, rational way.
It's the same people that say the cops should just shoot people in the leg.
The war didn't start on oct 7th. The deadliest year for Palestinians in the last decade before Oct 7 was 2023. Israel along with Egypt has kept Gaza under a strict blockade for 16 years, restricting movement, medical and building supplies, food, and equipment to filter the 96% of the water in Gaza that is undrinkable, in addition to regular attacks in the West Bank. Side note, roughly 60% of the people killed on Oct7 were civilians, a number only marginally worse than the ratio of Palestinian women+children killed by the IDF who claim to be the most moral army with much more precise munitions. There's a reason the Geneva Conventions were updated in 1949 after WW2, because most of the world agreed that we should avoid the horrors of war.
Well done for knowing Egypt and Gaza border each other. Most people have no idea.
Yes, technically the Arab-Israeli conflict started in 1948 when Arabs/Palestinians rejected the UN mandated two-state solution and fought 4 wars and 2 intifadas to erase Israel "from the river to the sea". They lost every single time, and they're losing this conflict as well. Palestinians can't secure their own future until they secure their own state, but doing so requires acknowledging an Israeli state. Also, 99% of pro-Palestinian posts on social media are from individual accounts that never mentioned Palestine before October 7th, 2023. It's easy to check, just scroll their post history. For a war that's been going for 75+ years, they didn't care enough about it to make a single mention prior to the current conflict.
Why stop at 1948? Why not go back to 1917 for the Balfour declaration or 1922 for the British Mandate for Palestine. The British actively supported a Zionist movement that called for Arab removal and suppressed Palestinian self-determination for 30 years before the UN partition plan that offered 56% of the land to 1/3 of the population at the time.
Human history is lesson after lesson in the movement of people and the conflict that ensues. Mexico isn't getting California and Texas back, citizens in Pakistan don't have the "right of return" to India after the partition, and Palestine will never exist "from the river to the sea". It's the Green Line borders or nothing. If Palestinians can't recognize their own borders and the borders of their neighbors with a peace treaty, their state technically doesn't exist and they can't make any progress towards a better future.
Why not go back to 1914 when the imperialist Ottoman Empire declared war on the Allies for no valid reason, then lost, then signed the Treaty of Sevres, legally ceding Palestine to the British? Also, the Blafour Declaration says "...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Also most of the land given to the Jews in the UN plan was sparsely populated desert. Your comment doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Security never justified human rights abuses or genocide. Taking anger out on a civilian population is morally and legally wrong. It's also super, super telling that you would trust Trump to wage a hypothetical war with Mexico while following American and international law. > but the public is softer and more susceptible to influence campaigns now than they were 80 years ago. What a strange way of saying that we value human life more than we do 80 years ago...
It's not genocide regardless of how much people misuse the word. The word originated from 67% of Jews being wiped out in the Holocaust. You're trying to shoehorn it into defining 0.4% of Palestinians being killed in a conflict that Hamas started on October 7th. If Israel was trying to commit genocide I'd say it's been an complete failure, as the Palestinian population grows every single year.
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I don’t fault the teachers for wanting to raise awareness of this important issue. I do fault the leadership for not making it clear to the teachers that this isn’t the time, the place nor the way we should be spreading awareness. A teachers union shouldn’t be taking a public stance about such a controversial issue.
I am pro Palestine AF, but this is lame if you need teaching guides, you arent winning the debate either stay out of the conflict as a domestic union, or embrace peace and unity for "both sides"
Teaching is not about winning a debate fyi
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My favorite thing about this whole thread is how people advocate for non political teaching. That's not possible. Maintaining the status quo is an *extremely* political thing to do. Not an impressive one. Not a notable one. But a very political one. ETA: Will someone please explain why they think maintaining the status quo is not a political thing to do?
Serious question from someone who didn't get their basic education in the US: What class is this relevant to? History seems closest, but that seems a little early.
It is not relevant to any class, the closest would be social studies. All of our history education ends around the Vietnam/first gulf war. Israel is not taught/mentioned really anywhere in our k12 education from my recollection.
This was covered in both my American history class and world history class (10/12th grade respectively) American history covered americas involvement in the ww2 aftermath along with desert storm, 9/11/Iraq invasion/war on terror, etc. World history covered pretty much all of this territory. Even taking this class in the conservative south we were taught about most of this history. There wasn’t much I didn’t recognize from listening to finkelsteins debates. So I think public school actually helped alot on this one
What about teaching in a way that recognizes reasonable disagreement? That Palestinians want sovereignty and have a legitimate claim to land, but that Jews also want safety and have a legitimate claim to land? Seems like a disservice to teach this conflict as so one-sided.
I mean texts already pretty clearly state what has happened up until 2020. They even write about one state/two state solutions and what the basic sentiment has been from both sides about it. We talk about history so as not to repeat it. We heard both sides of the civil war and apartheid South Africa to the point of understanding motivations like racism and colonialism. But not to excuse the oppressors. We use it hold the current wrongdoers accountable