Extremism leads to Terrorism.
Are Jewish schools exempt?
Recent press articles have equated
Jewish schools with radical Muslim schools some of which promote segregation
from the wider society. This is worrying but unsurprising. About 18000 children aged 5 to 16, attend
Jewish schools in the UK. The schools
range from those who describe themselves as having a ‘Jewish Pluralist Ethos’ like JCOSS to Talmud Torah Tiferes
Schlomoh which ‘has been branded a failing school by Ofsted, which judged it spends too
much time teaching Jewish religious studies’ (Ham and High, 9 April 2015).
All
sensible people would applaud
the Government’s new, revised Prevent strategy on Extremism and Terrorism and would do whatever they can to support
it. Prevent concludes that extremism leads to terrorism. We may think nothing like this would happen
in our schools but recently in Israel an alleged ‘terrorist Jew’ fire bombed a
Palestinian house in Duma killing a small child. It is too easy to say it
simply would not happen in Britain. We cannot be complacent: firstly it might
happen here, and secondly even if it doesn’t, our detractors are starting to
tar us with the same brush as the Muslim extremists as was shown in a Sky News report on this subject last week by a National Secular Society spokesman
Most of our Jewish
schools strive to teach our children the value of tolerance and respect for the
wider community, indeed in many Jewish schools there are non-Jewish students
learning alongside the Jewish students in harmony and respect. However the Prevent strategy has gathered
evidence which shows worryingly a different picture both globally and in the
UK:
‘There have been allegations that a minority of independent
faith schools have been actively promoting views that are contrary to British
values, such as intolerance of other cultures and gender inequality. There have
also been reports that some independent faith schools have allowed extremist
views to be expressed by staff, visitors or pupils..’ ( Prevent Strategy
Review 10.32)
Can we in the Anglo
Jewish community be certain that this does not apply to any of our independent
faith schools?
The problems begins
to arise in those Jewish schools, some
of which are state funded, which do not wish to teach the children to mix with
the general population, often insultingly referred to as ‘goyim’. Their
curriculum is limited, not including for example sex education, or Science,
Music or Art in full. The School’s view is these subjects are not deemed
suitable or necessary for its children. The result is that children in these
schools are not being exposed to British society. Would it not be better for
the children from these so called ultra-orthodox schools to be taught about all
that society can offer and then educated,
having that knowledge, that as Jews they need to be circumspect as to
how much it is proper for them to avail themselves of?
What is required is a
dialogue with the Rabbis who run these schools, explaining just how dangerous
and potentially disastrous this blinkered approach could be. Isn’t there a
profound risk that extremism in the Jewish world will turn into terrorism, and
then fuelled by media reports, become anti Semitism?
Our non-Jewish
friends may believe us when we tell them that it is only a minority of schools
who act in this way. However the figures show that as much as one in four of
the 10000 primary school children in Jewish school do in fact go to schools
which the majority of Anglo Jewry would consider right wing; the schools with
these limited curriculums are thus failing to teach pupils all that society can
offer.
Indeed such is the
concern in the wider community that
the Government’s Chief inspector
of schools has only this week said that he will ensure that all schools teach
the importance of British values as a “top priority” and he referred
specifically to those with a large
Jewish and Muslim intake.
We need to face up to
the potential dangers and help ourselves.
Lola
Fraser
Academic
Friends of Israel
