Parallel Histories: Israel and the West Bank

It was a real privilege this week to contribute to a conference at the House of Lords on "Teaching controversial subjects in schools." The conference was hosted by Lord Turnberg and organised by Michael Davies from LRGS, who is founder of Parallel Histories.

There was an excellent and diverse range of speakers, who faced some challenging questions from the floor!

I was asked to speak about why the school gave permission for a school trip to Israel and the West Bank in 2014. We believe that this is the only UK school trip that has ever involved a residential stay in the West Bank.

This was my text:

Michael came to talk to me about a trip proposal in 2014, which went as follows: eight days, two staff, 22 GCSE and A-level students. So far, so good. 

And the itinerary: 

-     Jerusalem, the classic sites, the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem; a meeting with a senior Israeli government official to discuss challenges for the country. But after that the itinerary became much more challenging: 

-     To Hebron in the southern West Bank: this large Palestinian city with two sectors; hotly disputed: seeing the separation wall, meeting Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers – as well as Palestinian activists campaigning for peaceful resistance

-     And then to Nablus in the northern West Bank that was at the heart of the second intifada – hearing from English and Palestinian academics; visiting a local charity; playing football against a local team; spending time in two refugee camps. 

That’s the skeleton outline of a trip with plenty more besides packed in. Why would you say “Yes” to a trip so apparently fraught with potential risk? Two reasons: 

1.  Because it’s possible

There was a background of staff experience which made it possible. Michael and others had visited almost all those places before, and had personal contacts there. Our History department had successfully run trips to Belfast where pupils had met former paramilitaries from both sides of that conflict. 

The County trips advisors did not say no: In fact, they were helpful, and said: “Like every school trip, it is about the educational purpose, and ensuring that the benefits outweigh the risks.” 

Even the insurers were not obstructive, although some of their replies were a little enigmatic. We asked how they defined their exclusion clause for “political instability”, and AIG replied: “It will be a question of fact in any given situation whether or not the political instability clause has been triggered. I trust that this is satisfactory.” Well sort of, AIG, sort of …

Follow the FCO advice very carefully, make decisions in proportion to your experience – and in principle, why not?  

And importantly the background is a school that runs a lot of trips and whose mantra is high trust – high challenge. Our governors debated the proposal – asking difficult questions, wanting some assurances, about security and the reputational risk, that we weren’t being hijacked politically by particular interest groups – but having a lot of confidence in our staff and wanting to say yes, and they approved it. And yes, I did watch the news very closely and yes, I had some palpitations. 

So firstly: it’s possible. With planning, with experience, with advice, given an appropriate school culture, the scope to run very challenging school trips is huge. 

But secondly, of course … 

2.  Because it’s important

The deepest question is: do we understand that the children we teach really will take on the world? 

We can take schools for granted – but it is a precious thing to be given responsibility for young people in our schools. Education matters. The responsibility is phenomenal. 

Not just on the risk side of the equation, to look after them and bring them home safely – but to open their eyes, because those young people will be entrusted with the future of the world: culture, society, environment, economy, all in their hands. 

Doing our best to make them ready for those things is also our great responsibility, as we send them from our classrooms to the world. 

“On our last day”, wrote one student, “we returned to Ben Gurion Airport, first taking in two well-established Jewish settlements across the Green Line and downtown Tel Aviv and walked along the port front at Jaffa where we dipped our toes in a chilly Med and pondered the extraordinary things we’d seen and the stories we’d heard.”

Why did we say yes? That’s why – and we are very glad that we did.