Members of California’s Oakland Education Association held a “teach-in” for children aged 4-18 to present pro-Palestinian material.
Oakland Unified School District’s Superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, said the teach-in was not aligned with the district’s protocol, according to Fox News.
“I want to again make clear that our expectation is that all educators, in every classroom across the District, take seriously their responsibility to adhere to principles of education, and to keep their personal beliefs out of the classroom,” she stated.
Judy Greenspan, the organizer of the “From Gaza to Oakland” teach-in, said, “As a Jewish teacher, this is a very important issue for me. We feel that OUSD has been very one-sided and has leaned very heavily on the Israeli educational lobby.”
According to the curriculum for the teach-in, students were to draw pictures of Zionist leaders, read the book P is for Palestine, learn how human rights are being infringed upon, confront stereotypes of Arabs, and grasp “settler colonialism.”
One book tells students, “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.”
Another source tells students, “During World War II, many Jewish people were killed and mistreated. The world wanted to make sure that never happened again. Unfortunately, the Zionists used it to justify displacing and killing Palestinians.”
The material does not mention the Holocaust.
Former California State Senator Melissa Melendez (R) condemned the teach-in, tweeting, “How about we stop injecting radical ideology and indoctrination, and instead double down on teaching our students reading, math, and civics, not anti-Semitism and hatred.”
