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Investing in Future Decision Makers

‘It’s the most meaningful and dynamic project I’ve done in my 26 years of teaching,’ says Miriam Chaim, one of the field co-ordinators of the Children Teaching Children project in Israel. ‘We talk about the essentials of our existence, Jews and Palestinians in this country. What does it mean to be a member of a minority/majority group?

Miriam Chaim has been working for six years with the Children Teaching Children programme (CTC) in which Jewish and Arab girls and boys meet each other in school. CTC is a dialogue between people who live very separated lives in school and in their communities. The majority of Jews (approximately 80 per cent of the population) hardly ever meets the minority of Palestinians, so how could they get to know each other? Their opinions are formed by their own collective narratives, myths, stereotypes, prejudices and media rather than by face to face contact.

Miriam Chaim: ‘Our message to the children is not to take things for granted. Not to accept the situation as it is. We make both students and teachers think about reality in a different way. We use workshops and games. In highschool we play the parliament game. All children walk around in a class room with statements and opinions written on paper and hung on the walls. Statements about the flag, about the national institutions, about the division of resources... you name it. For example: at the present situation the flag is not representing the Arab community. On the wall are three statements regarding this matter: let’s leave it as it is, let’s add an Arab symbol to the Jewish flag, or: let’s make a cosmopolitan flag where every citizen is represented.’

‘Every child moves around the room and stops at the opinionboard where his or her idea is reflected. The children with similar ideas, both Jewish and Arab, find each other at this board and they are asked to form a party. Together they develop their own programme and propaganda. In the end all parties will debate. This way, the children learn that they can have common interests or disputes, and still express themselves openly. They can dialogue and confront over the controversies, and still act in the same framework.’

The Children Teaching Children programme has been running since 1987, and is one of the programmes initiated by the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace in Givat Haviva. This is a national education center, located in the Northern Sharon Valley in the centre of Israel. There are two directors, one Palestinian and one Jewish: Jalal Hassan and Shuli Dichter.

‘Our mission is change the nature of citizenship in Israel from being focused on the Jews’, says Jalal Hassan, ‘to a citizenship that includes equally all the citizens of the state. We offer the teachers and the students a process of dialogue that will help them cope with the conflict between Jews and Palestinian in Israel and help them develop skills and abilities to change reality for the better.’

Over 50,000 children, young people and adults from Israel and abroad come to Givat Haviva each year to participate in seminars, workshops, courses, conferences and formal and informal educational programmes. The Encounter Program CTC is one of the activities of the center for teachers and pupils in junior high school. In 1996 more than 1,200 pupils and 80 teachers of 23 schools joined the programme, Jewish and Arabs in equal numbers.

Former premier Yitzhak Rabin congratulated Givat Haviva on their work: ‘The peace process will only succeed if it takes hold at the grassroots level. The efforts of Givat Haviva are an important contribution to this urgent goal.’

After the election-victory of Netanyanu’s Likud-party, the Ministry for Education made a massive cut in the Jewish-Arabic Encounter Programmes. Instead of the 25 per cent increase which was planned, Children Teaching Children had to reduce its activities by twenty percent. However, the center is not about to give in - the list of schools wanting to participate in their programme is longer than ever. The total budget of CTC is approximately 350,000 us dollar, of which 230,000 comes from fundraising. In comparison: a modern tank, such as used by the Israeli army, costs 12-15 million dollar.

Each CTC-project takes two years. Jewish and Arab schools, classes, teachers and pupils are paired into mixed teaching and learning groups which meet two to six times a year within the classroom setting in each community’s home school on an alternating bases.

Over the course of the two years the Arab and Jewish teachers meet regularly, to evaluate and plan the next class. The teachers participate during this period in a on-going dialogue group where they can share their experiences. Ten field co-ordinators of the Givat Haviva’s Jewish-Arab Center for Peace supervise the CTC-programme.

The character of the CTC-programme has changed over the years. The youngsters were supposed to teach each other their mother tongue. However, where most of the Arab children liked to improve their knowledge of Hebrew, many Jewish children were not prepared to learn Arabic. For a long time the encounters were mainly in Hebrew. ‘Since we understand that language is a way of self-expression rather than just an instrument of communication, we try to encourage both sides to speak in their own language’, says director Shuli Dichter. ‘In the beginning the encounter was the focal point, later we discovered the importance of confronting the children with their own prejudices and anxieties. The encounter is now a tool to accelerate the educational process for each side to learn about itself and its attitudes towards the other side.’

The CTC is the only project in Israel of this kind permitted to function within the regular school programme on an on-going basis. It took a long time to bring Jews and Palestinians together on an educational programme that is a integral part of the school curriculum.

Shuli Dichter: ‘When the state of Israel was established in 1948 suspicion and hostility between the Arabs and Jews dominated. At that time the Palestinians who stayed within the borders of the State (about 150,000) were given Israeli citizenship and were put under military rule. These Palestinian citizens were considered a potential threat. Education in relation to ‘the other’ was different for Jews and Arabs. In the Jewish students’ curriculum the Palestinians were ignored. The few pioneering attempts to include the Palestinians in the Jewish picture were academic endeavours at studying the Palestinians from an anthropological perspective or in order to ‘know the enemy’.

‘For the Palestinians the language of instruction in schools is Arabic, but the Jewish-Israeli Ministry of Education dictated the curriculum. It included a massive body of knowledge, which was to ensure a deep acquaintance with the Jewish history, culture and heritage, including a justification for Zionism. In the first twenty years the Jews and Palestinians were not educated toward any kind of togetherness. In the few encounters between students, the initiative was always in the hands of the Jews, and the ‘chosen’ Palestinians were passive players.’

In the 1970s and the 1980s educational concepts and methods were imported from the Western world. Those concepts, however, reflected the idea of a pluralistic civil society in a democratic context. Several potentially positive elements were brought into the encounters, such as the symmetric setting (half Jews, half Palestinians) in a workshop, and one Jewish and one Arabic facilitator. Nevertheless, the goals of the encounters were not achieved, due to the fact that the participants only met once, and then new participants were invited for the next encounter. This meant that the encounters were too short and lacking content and vision, necessary for an educational process of change.

Moreover the Jews and Palestinians represented two different nations, living in one state, each in conflict with the other. Neither of them are, or ever were, seeking to integrate or develop a shared identity. Bringing students together with the intention that contact in itself would change and improve the relations had the effect of further entrenching the traditional hegemonic relationship between the two sides.

Children Teaching Children was born as a result of the dissatisfaction with the existing methods of education towards coexistence in Israel at that time. CTC created the possibility to organise the encounters in a continuing process. Sharing responsibility for the programme, as well as it’s undefined curriculum over a long period of time, created an atmosphere of openness.

Dialogue is never easy between Jews and Palestinians. ‘On the Palestinian side decades of deprivation and the lack of legitimisation of their collective identity have been internalised. In a dialogue they find themselves obliged to teach the Jews about their experience, but are constantly torn between playing ‘the good Arab’ and authentically expressing their frustration and rage. The Jews, who’s collective consciousness in Israel has been raised to view themselves as the masters of the land, legitimising this with the Jew’s history of persecution and genocide, find themselves having to question their reality, which up until that point they had taken for granted.’

In a classroom six children are discussing the 50th anniversary of the Israeli state. What is for some a celebration is a disaster for others. The children, three Arabs and three Jews, are preparing a lesson for their schoolmates. ‘I am a bit apprehensive about the anger of the Jewish schoolchildren,’ admits Nadra (14), who comes from the Arab village Arara. Galit (15) who lives in the Jewish community of Tivon says: ‘It’s important to get the message to our schoolmates that they should avoid being offensive or provocative, but still to speak their minds.’

In spite of all the problems the participants of CTC have faced, the programme has been successful in some places. In Emek, Hefer, Baka, Nazareth, Tivon and Haifa students, like Galit and Nadra, have chosen to continue the programme for a third year, and have forced the organisation to develop a CTC continuation programme for high school students. CTC was also selected to be presented at the World Exposition 2000 in Hannover, Germany. It was one of the projects chosen in the category of Humankind and will represent an international model of dialogue between two conflicting communities.

In 1999 two programmes will be added: Dialogue Among Teachers and Dialogue Among School Principals. The two target groups are considered social change agents and community leaders and as such, both are expected to be a vehicle for a true dialogue between the two national communities in the state of Israel.

Director Jalal Hassan: ‘We believe it is important to work with these leaders. These clubs or councils are made up of students who are elected by their peers, and possess a great deal of social awareness: they are leaders in their schools and have the potential to be key leaders in their communities or in the general public. Second, the students who join the programme will be volunteering their time during their after-school hours, signifying their dedication to the programme. Therefore, we believe we are investing in people who may later become decision makers.’

Maybe these decision makers will choose to invest in dialogue rather than tanks.

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