Published: 17 August 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Over the past five years in East Jerusalem, Palestinian students enrolling in Israeli curriculum have risen by 160 percent. But how do you teach citizenship to a noncitizen?
FOR MOST OF the nearly five and a half decades of the occupation, the Palestinian curriculum was the sole study program, but for years now the Israeli curriculum and matriculation exams have been gaining a foothold in East Jerusalem.
It’s not only a matter of changing textbooks or investing more funds in building new schools, it involves issues of national and personal identity. How, for example, do you teach civics to students who aren’t citizens? More than 90 percent of Jerusalem’s Palestinians aren’t Israeli citizens.
The Alpha school in the Beit Hanina neighbourhood is one of 32 schools that have been built in East Jerusalem in recent years. It was built from scratch, with standards similar to typical Israeli schools and far above the standard in the east of the city.
Its angled desks can easily be moved to create different seating formations. Plus there are wide, well-lit corridors, large windows, a nice soccer field, labs, an impressive teachers’ room and even a hall for parents’ activities.
This year 1,140 first-grade Palestinian students will begin studying the Israeli curriculum.
This is only one-sixth, around 17 percent, of all Palestinian students in East Jerusalem for that grade, but until a decade ago this figure was under 10 percent.
The building of new schools encouraged the shift from private schools to public ones. Other factors were the separation barrier, which cut the East Jerusalemites off from the Palestinian schools in the West Bank, and parents who wanted better education for their children.
They chose schools teaching the Israeli study program for several reasons. Parents were troubled that their children didn’t know Hebrew, a huge obstacle in finding work. They are also dissatisfied with the Palestinian curriculum, which is seen as outdated, says Alpha's principal, Akram Ibrahim.
FULL STORY Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem embrace Israeli curriculum, raising tough questions (Haaretz)
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Palestinian families forced to share homes with settlers in Sheikh Jarrah (Al-Monitor)
Several Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah are forced to share their homes with Israeli settlers
Photo: Akram Ibrahim, the principal of the Alpha school in East Jerusalem (Emil Salman)
