An educator’s perspective on teaching about antisemitism and the Middle East conflict

Lexington High School social studies teacher Jessica Antoline delivered the following testimony to the Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism, chaired by state legislators, on Feb. 10:

Good afternoon. My name is Jessica Antoline and I am a social studies teacher at Lexington High School. I have been a teacher for nine years and I’m here to share my experiences of teaching about antisemitism and the ongoing war since the October 7 attacks.

I am not here to speak for the MTA, nor am I here to speak for any organization about how to educate students on the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the Israeli-Hamas war. Nor am I speaking on behalf of all history teachers. I am in awe of the creativity and knowledge of my history colleagues, and I have a supportive department that encouraged me to come today. I know how rare this is given how many teachers are exposed to and unprotected from the barrage of media and politics that rage against our work.

My academic background is in religion, archaeology, history and museums. That isn't unique. I am an educator at the intersection of history and memory. That isn’t unique. But I am rare in that I was given the chance to teach exactly in my fields of study at Lexington when I was hired. I teach modern world history and the only course available at our school about modern genocides. I am also an instructor for Seton Hill University where I teach educators how they can create sustainable and accessible courses on antisemitism and the Holocaust. I say all this not to prove myself an expert. By no means. I say it with the hope that you can recognize that I care about the wave of anger and accusations that erupted here in Massachusetts because of the October 7 attacks and their aftermath.

History teaching is political, moral, personal and emotional. We are misled if we think we teach children "just how to think" or to just "become critical thinkers." That is an impossible job that we barely get to touch the surface of at the high school level. We are misled if we think we have to always teach "both sides" of a story. Rarely are there only two sides. We are misled if we think teachers pull material from a single curriculum guide or depend upon a single organization to support our teaching. That would go against everything we know about the challenges of constructing historical narratives, especially at the K-12 level, where students lack significant historical background knowledge and the amount they read outside of school is far less than in previous years.

What we need to know is that teachers teach because we care about history and are inspired by human change and interaction. But we are often assigned classes with content that is entirely foreign to us, often late in the school year. We are expected to teach such classes to impressionable young adults just a few months or weeks after we are given the assignment. Do you know how much dedication a teacher must have to learn historical material this quickly, let alone have the confidence to teach it? Again, I am here because that has not been my case. I was assigned classes at Lexington that focused on all of my content strengths. But the reality of our job, one that is underpaid and given impossible demands, is that this is NOT the case for most educators, which makes us vulnerable and doubtful of our skills and knowledge, opening us up to making grievous mistakes. (Of course, sometimes we relish the challenge of something brand new, but even that comes with massive stressors. Just ask my colleagues teaching economics this year.)

The uncertainty, the scramble, the expectation to teach current events, the realization that your own students are part of the violent narratives you are helping students process in your classrooms, it is all overwhelming.

I’ve never actually met a confident history teacher. I've met compassionate and kind ones, ones who make me so proud of their creativity and dedication, but not fully confident ones. Perhaps I am projecting, but what I noticed for the last nine years is that history teachers are regularly talking about what we don't know, what we wish we knew, and that we constantly doubt our knowledge because we are at the centers of angry and dangerous debates. It is a burden you do not have unless you have been or are an educator. The uncertainty, the scramble, the expectation to teach current events, the realization that your own students are part of the violent narratives you are helping students process in your classrooms, it is all overwhelming.

Given these burdens, what can happen? When the news of October 7 reached the United States, I started to get text messages, phone calls and emails from fellow teachers wondering that, if they addressed the violence of that day, and the war that followed, would they be in trouble? Are they teaching the "right" maps? The "most reliable" accounts? Would they be called antisemitic or Islamophobic for trying to talk about why people desire to live in the lands of their ancestors with equity and stability? Would they end up on the news or plastered around social media? Would their students hate them? Because that's what we do to educators, often without recognizing their struggles. President Trump doesn’t even seem to support our growth and development, which is a long and arduous process.

So how do we cope with all of this? How do we help our students cope? One reality is that we may default to a curriculum or lesson from a trusted colleague, or use ones we "hear" are good, or seem easy to teach, or that the school adopted. I see educators do this all the time, and I see the regret that often comes with it. And when it comes to teaching antisemitism using already-constructed lessons, or indeed any sensitive subject like this, the organizations with the strongest voices, the ones with the most widely distributed and well-funded curriculum do not, and, frankly, should not "teach students just how to think." They have agendas, moral stances and goals. They aren’t neutral and they do not exist for educators to “just” teach critical thinking. The Shoah Foundation has an agenda. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has one. The ADL has one. Facing History has one. I could go on and on. They aren’t neutral. And that's their prerogative. They are nonprofits, they are educational and cultural organizations with passionate missions, and they have the right to exist and to struggle to achieve their goals. They fight for what they think is correct. Such battles exist in all subjects. We are part of these battles, not separate from them. And so teachers can, willfully or unknowingly, not just push the agendas of their public schools, or of the Massachusetts social studies curriculum standards, but also of the organizations that provide the materials they may feel the need to depend upon for support in their difficult jobs. And we know there are gaps, some unintentional, many intentional, in what is out there for teachers to rely upon and potentially use as part of curriculum on antisemitism, the history of Israel and Palestine, and the war, but we can end up using those sources anyway.

Often it is not until several years into a course that a teacher feels strong enough to pull significant amounts of their own sources with confidence and use the skills of a historian to evaluate those sources. But we are not really given the time to do these things even though we have the skills to do so. And those strong, experienced teachers corroborating documents ALSO have to make arguably insane decisions, going against all that they know about how to approach the construction of historical narratives. Often after all of their work and research, they end up choosing perhaps five documents to represent an entire series of events, beliefs, decisions, because that's what most kids can handle and succeed with in the time a teacher has to teach. Within that critical choice lies all that a history teacher is: their politics, their perspectives, their experiences or lack thereof, and their love of learning.

But whether a teacher pulls from organizational curricula or pulls the historical documents themselves, much of what exists or is created is simplified or becomes purely document-based, such as having students examine the "founding" documents of Israel and Arab nationalism, but not the sadness, violence and anger that comes with it. History doesn't work that way. We saw that with the MTA. There were teachers who were genuinely interested in understanding anti-Palestinian racism and moving beyond what is out there for teachers to access. Moving beyond the “neutrality” and safety of particular documents. There were Jewish teachers who wanted to teach in new ways and dig into what people are experiencing today and the viewpoints of key stakeholders. But that takes intensive reflection, time, resources and money, and we seem to want to act fast. And so, our fears sanitize learning opportunities, our media anxiety accelerates our own anxiety, and our education system has doubtfulness built within it that reduces our ability to make informed decisions in time for our students to have interactive learning.

So, it seems that the situation we have created for ourselves is that we continue to struggle to give teachers what they need to teach about conflict now. For example, how does a teacher approach the murderous rampage unleashed on October 7 that is available to view all over the internet? How do we approach a headline that says “Knesset bill offers cash to Gazans willing to relocate?” We know the dangers of conflating people with their governments, but they are intertwined in a complex cultural web. Of course children are going to ask about what leaders and media figures say and how representative their words are of general thinking.

There is no such thing as presenting history ‘neutrally.’ It does not exist.

Educators of all kinds are exposed, vulnerable and doubtful, but we are also stunning in our resilience. So are students. We walk down a common path. Students do want to know the perspective of their teachers. They know that teachers set examples and that great teachers don’t ask you to be like them, they ask you to consider what they have for you in each lesson they present. The greatest educators I have seen in my life are honest with their students about their own perspectives BEFORE they attempt to teach a controversial subject, not after, not never. There is no such thing as presenting history "neutrally." It does not exist. And we are misled if we think teaching is or should be neutral. I would not want a neutral teacher. I would want one that cares so much about their topic that they help students through the history and say, here's my conclusion, here's how I got to it. What's yours? Tell me what your perspective is? What can you find out about this subject? Sometimes a value-neutral position is unacceptable. Interactive objectivity is necessary in learning.

Perhaps we fear that if we presented students the horrors and origins of October 7, the hopeful and angry history of the establishment of Israel, the strategic choices of imperial powers that led to the creation of the “objective documents” they see in their lessons, the violence that removed and continues to remove Palestinians from their homes, the everyday sadness, frustration and sense of despair in the lives of those who live in the chaos, the racism that is reported all over the media, that students would have no answers and no conclusions. Instead, they would confront a stunning array of contradictory accounts, vast imbalances of power, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, nationalism and inequity. The parents, communities and organizations that provide or support certain curriculum may indeed also find students contradicting their organizational or cultural goals.

The path to critical thinking can be painful and is often lonely. It is one that we cannot always control, no matter how much we wish to. Historical analysis topples governments. It causes organizations to revise their mission statements. It changes children and moves them in and out of cultural circles, including their own families and friends.

And so, I want to leave you with a quotation from the film “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” which was not a “neutral” film by any means. And yet I imagine most people in this room would be perfectly fine with it being shown in classrooms, myself included. I want to leave you with the words of an educator and historian featured in the film whom I admire very much, Dr. Rebecca Erbelding:

• The Holocaust disrupts any idea that we have of good and evil, of right and wrong.
• This is a story in which everyone is challenged all the time.
• We are challenged as Americans.
• We're challenged as parents, as children.
• We're challenged as neighbors and as friends to think about what we would have done, what we could have done, what we should have done, and even though the Holocaust physically took place in Europe, it is a story that Americans have to reckon with, too.

I think the same is true about what happened on October 7, what is happening in Gaza, and what is to come during this presidential administration.

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