Once Again, the Teachers Unions Are the Problem

Britain is learning a difficult rule of modern Western politics: Even once you resolve to improve the lives of your students, there is only so much improvement that teachers unions will allow.

Sir David Bell, a former top education official, conducted a government review of anti-Semitism in schools. His report found, as expected, that such anti-Semitism is widespread and the majority of students encounter it. Bell then released a list of recommendations to address the way Judaism and Jews are treated in school lessons.

But in Britain, as in America, the teachers unions are the source of much anti-Semitism all by themselves. Progressive education theory increasingly sees political instruction as more important than helping children build knowledge and skills. And so the UK’s largest such union has flatly rejected the recommendation that they facilitate a reduction in anti-Semitism.

As the Jewish Chronicle reports, the National Education Union has a few objections to the adoption of the consensus definition of anti-Semitism:

“‘Recommending the IHRA definition for schools risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism. It is the wrong approach,’ [NEU’s Daniel] Kebede said.

“He argued that teachers and pupils should be able to examine international events without legitimate political opinions automatically being treated as antisemitic.

“Referring specifically to Gaza, he stated: ‘A young person’s opposition to the Gaza genocide and scrutiny of the Israeli government are not, in themselves, antisemitic.’”

This is highly revealing. Let’s take each claim in order.

First, the NEU believes that addressing anti-Semitism using the Jewish community’s understanding of anti-Semitism risks exacerbating anti-Semitism. This is a threat, and it has nothing to do with the IHRA definition, which manifestly does not require criticism of Israel to be considered anti-Semitic. What Kebede is saying is that his union will rebel against a clampdown by blaming Jews for the rise in British anti-Semitism.

Second, no “legitimate political opinions” are “automatically” treated as anti-Semitic. The point of IHRA is to understand context. That is a key aspect of a proper education, but the unions want context banished from the classroom. His larger point is that “students”—read: teachers and administrators—want a guarantee that nothing they say will be treated as anti-Semitic. Only then will they agree to talk about anti-Semitism.

Remember that they are called teachers unions and not students unions. They represent teachers. They exist for the benefit of teachers. To unions, students are secondary at best, and often are treated as a barrier to union members’ professional attainment. If a majority of students face anti-Semitism in UK schools, then a students-first organization would prioritize the education of all students when it comes to subjects they clearly do not understand, such as Judaism and Jews. That, too, is the purpose of education. And it is education that the unions believe must be prevented at all costs.

Finally, the remark about “a young person’s opposition to the Gaza genocide” is a good one. The “genocide” blood libel is held by a small minority of actual experts. But these experts make up somewhere near 100 percent of the ones that students are exposed to under the NEU. Thus we have not an argument but an admission: The NEU has worked hard to expose students to anti-Semitism, and they do not want that work undone.

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