COOL School Reform - Institute for Jewish and Community Research

http://www.jewishresearch.org/quad/1209_marcus.html
By Kenneth L. Marcus
Director, Initiative to Combat Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism in America's Educational Systems
Last month, IJCR launched its COOL School Reform initiative at a nationwide conference of state
legislators in Dallas. The initiative addresses a significant problem identified in Gary Tobin and Dennis
Ybarras recent book, The Trouble with Textbooks (TwT): foreign-funded supplemental educational
materials (SEMs) which distort childrens perceptions of Israel and the Jewish people. TwT shows that
many of the worst SEMs are funded by foreign governments or organizations that are ideologically
committed to destroying the State of Israel. COOL School Reform would require County Of Origin
Labeling on SEMs that are distributed in the public schools, so that parents will know what foreign
anti-Israel materials are given to their children.
Most Quad readers know that TwT identified a host of problems with American public school
textbooks distributed by major publishers. In some cases, this can include flagrant anti-Jewish
statements. For instance, Wadsworth/Thomsons World Civilizations teaches that There is no record
of any important [early] Jewish contributions to the sciences. Others use skeptical tones to describe
Jewish and Christian views, while presenting Muslim beliefs as fact. One example is Holt, Rinehart
and Winstons World History: Continuity and Change (Teachers Edition 1999), which teaches that the
Ten Commandments are Moral laws Moses claimed to have received from the Hebrew god Yahweh
on Mount Sinai (emphasis added). By contrast, the same textbook instructs that the Quran is the
Holy Book of Islam, which contains revelations received by Muhammad from God (emphasis
added). Similarly, many textbooks uncritically adopt Arab anti-Israel propaganda, such as when
Pearson Scott Foresmans The World teaches that Christianity was started by a young Palestinian
named Jesus. IJCR has urged states, school districts, and nonprofit agencies to monitor textbooks
more carefully in the adoption process in order to eliminate such distortions.
Equally important, however, are similar problems which appear in SEMs which teachers routinely
distribute directly to their students. SEMs may include outside readings, DVDs, exercises, lesson
plans, posters, brochures, and teacher trainings. While textbook content must conform to state and
local standards and curricula, many systems provide no such controls on SEMs. This means that they
are even more likely to contain the same problems as textbooks but elude any form of monitoring. The
Middle East Cultural and Information Center has distributed handouts to teachers which describe
depopulated Arab villages in Al Nakhba [The Catastrophe, i.e. Israels founding] with the title,
The History of the Middle East is Inseparable from Colonialism. Arab World and Islamic Resources,
funded in part by the Saudi oil company ARAMCO, distributes the Arab World Studies Notebook. The
Notebook characterizes Israelis in Jerusalem as colonialists and calls for an end to the colonization
of that city. The Notebook also suggests that teachers ask their students to practice phrases such as
alhamdu-lillah which means the praise belongs to God. The Arab World Studies Notebook blames
Israel alone for the wars in a way that asserts directly what the textbooks simply imply. This is a softpedaled way to say: the Arab armies attacked Israel to destroy the new state. Dennis Ybarra has shown
that some of the worst SEMs are funded by foreign entities. Our analysis of foreign-funded
supplemental materials found that the supplements to textbooks, however problematic the books may
be, are often no better, and in many cases, they are much worse, Ybarra said.
COOL school reform, or country of origin labeling, is a state and federal legislative strategy to
eliminate biased foreign-funded SEMs in social studies classrooms. COOL requires disclosure and

transparency. Thats all. But in many cases, that should be enough. The idea is to require schools that
disseminate foreign-funded social studies materials to label them as such and to provide disclosure
both to parents and to state and federal education departments. Fundamentally, the concept is that
parents have a right to know when their children are indoctrinated with anti-Israel material. COOL
school reform takes a page from agricultural policy. The 2002 and 2008 federal Farm Bills established
mandatory COOL labeling for many fresh meat products, such as chicken, ground beef, pork chops,
and steaks. These requirements have been in effect since last September. The question is whether
parents should not be given as much information about their childrens education as they are getting
about their chicken wings.
IJCR welcomes your suggestions about how COOL School Reform can best be implemented in your
state and locality and at the federal level. Please send your comments or questions to:
info@jewishresearch.org.