Educational talks about Palestine/Israel

We are two teachers, recently retired, with an interest in the Middle East. We formerly worked in post-sixteen education and have a considerable number of years of experience. We have visited the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel, making contacts and learning a great deal about the situation from eye-witness accounts and experts: subsequently, we developed a number of educational talks, suitable for students at AS and A level.

So far, we have delivered these in a range of contexts: as part of Religious Studies and Government and Politics lessons; within the General Studies curriculum; as voluntary lunch-time enrichment activities; on a joint  platform with a speaker from Friends of Israel and in assemblies. We are able to devise presentations/workshops to fit colleges’ requirements. The colleges we have visited to date are in North West England and are as follows:

• Loreto College, Manchester;
  
• Greenhead College, Huddersfield;
  
• Hopwood Hall College, Rochdale;
  
• Carmel College, St. Helens;
  
• Bolton Sixth Form College;
  
• Holy Cross College, Bury. 

We have made repeat visits to a number of these colleges.

We do not believe a position of complete impartiality is possible on any topic, let alone one such as this, but we do strive to be fair and to encourage students to develop their own views. Many of our facts and statistics, as well as some of our analyses, are drawn from Jewish sources, some of them Israeli Jewish e.g. B’tselem, the Israeli Human Rights group and the historian, Ilan Pappe. Consequently, nothing we say is anti-Semitic, being concordant with a significant strand of Jewish opinion, a strand committed to justice – a point we make in our presentations.

Should you be interested in discussing a visit to your college, please get in touch.

Annie O’Gara and Paul Wimpeney:   01422 844261 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

(We do not charge for our visits. Any voluntary donations which colleges may wish to give will go to Medical Aid for Palestinians.)

Exploring Palestine through Citizenship

An online educational resource designed to introduce students

to the key issues of the Palestine/Israel question

The pack is sponsored jointly by the Council for Arab-British Understanding and Palestine SolidarityCampaign and was written collaboratively by Naira Antoun, the CAABU Education Officer from 2007 to 2009 and PSC member Monica Brady who is a retired teacher.

The lessons are mainly geared towards the Citizenship Curriculum although some are suitable for English and Media lessons and others may be applicable to History and Geography.

They range from the analysis of cartoons, through to lessons on fair trade, the history, problems of daily life for Palestinians and links with supporters in Israel.  All lessons are activity based and designed to interest and challenge whilst being accessible to a wide range of abilities.  All have excellent visual and written materials to support learning.

Lessons can be easily downloaded from the PSC or CAABU website and there are many links to other useful websites which can be used by teachers to source additional material or by students to extend knowledge.  All lessons are referenced to the National Curriculum and with teaching objectives and detailed lesson plans.

It can be downloaded here: http://www.caabu.org/education/lesson_plans/ or

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/Index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=5&l2_id=27&Content_ID=738