When Teaching Turns Toxic

Teaching Genocidal Behaviour

Maybe the child who drew the ‘Save our Planet’ image above, will grow up to be an eco-warrior. It depends on what other ideas are instilled into that young mind.

A lot of subtle messaging is required from an early age to build and perpetuate the apartheid ethnostate of Israel. In this Instagram clip this Israeli father is teaching his child to read Hebrew with a story designed to instil the settler colonial mindset into the child. The story unfolds: This is Lebanon. It is very beautiful. “I would like to go to Lebanon.” Alon says: “I want to picnic there.” Father says: “You can’t go there, it’s dangerous. The enemy is still there.” This is how fear of another community is taught to a toddler; fear that can grow sufficiently powerful to fuel ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Some people who claim to be aware of the climate crisis, justify their decision to have a child with claims like: ‘I will teach the them to understand, they might even solve the crisis’. I have little faith in any parent who claims to understand the climate crisis and still decides to have children, or encourages their offspring to give them grandchildren.

Israelis have long been encouraged to have children with a view to ‘improving’ the demographic ratio between Jews and Arabs in their country. This weaponisation of child-bearing started with Golda Meir. It may also be a factor on the other side of the conflict as well.

Santa Claus teaches Ecocidal Behaviour

In the affluent countries, we are taught ecocidal behaviour from a young age using similarly subtle techniques. Shopping in a supermarket exposes our young children to all sorts of lovely things and encourages them to want things. In modern techno-industrial countries, children learn from an early age the routine coercion to want material things.

Manufacturing comes with ecological costs to us all. Modern manufacturing involves stealing natural resources and stable climate conditions from the next generation. Over the Christmas period this becomes particularly intense and unhelpful. The story of Santa Claus instils the desire to receive material presents. Material playthings, and online games can diminish a child’s natural ability to imagine. There was some research in the 1960s that revealed that a child’s ability to innovate is dramatically inhibited by modern educational methods.

Most of the commodities that we purchase are neither essential for survival nor happiness. Children in affluent countries never get the chance to develop by interacting directly with Nature. In this way, children are prevented from experiencing the indigenous way of thinking. There are marked differences between indigenous thinking and the modern worldview:

Instant Influence

According to an article in the New Scientist, social media algorithms can be exploited to alter opinions within 24 hours. At the start of the COVID pandemic the lockdown in the UK was achieved with astonishing speed and obedience. This implies that humanity could change its behaviour rapidly if there was adequate motivation.

Breaking out of the Box

A huge banner reading ‘YES IT’S A GENOCIDE’ was laid out in Parliament Square on Wednesday 4 December 2024, by an organisation called ‘Led By Donkeys’. An Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies called Amos Goldberg provides the voiceover for this video of the unfurling of the banner. Goldberg confirms the message on the banner; he declares that he is obliged to conclude that the action in Gaza is indeed genocide.

We are seeing hypocrisy from our political and institutional leaders with regards to the live-streamed genocide in Northern Gaza. This is raising awareness to the widespread injustice in our hierarchical, profit oriented modern world. In the UK, both the Oxford and Cambridge Student Unions have had pro-Palestine discussion and debate. It is encouraging that these universities have permitted these discussions. Oxford University has deep financial and academic ties with Israel. In August 2017 Bo Rothstein resigned his position as Professor of Government and Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government Oxford University, in protest at Leonard Blavatnik's support for Donald Trump's Inaugural Committee.

In this interview with Greta Thunberg she explains how the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians intersects with global climate injustice and global politics. Here are some snippets from what she says

4:39 .. we are sacrificing ecosystems as well as current and future generations

5:30 she has lost many friends through pro-Palestinian activism,

5:59 as an activist if you are not meeting resistance you are doing something wrong.. we aren’t here to be people pleasers..

7:34 she talks about being disillusioned by so many people who she had thought believed in human rights

8:41 .. you don’t have to be a genius to see that another Trump presidency will be a catastrophe

9:00 When talking about the climate conferences she says: It is obvious that our current systems are not working in favour of the majority.. therefore, people will be drawn to right-wing populism and fascism

9:32 .. the genocide is happening under the Biden administration with American money and American complicity. Nothing is fundamentally changing, so America will continue to be an imperialist, hypercapitalist, world power that is going to continue to lead the world further into this climate catastrophe and a racist and unequal world.

Activists are Calm and Determined

It was encouraging to see Greta so composed. I imagine that she is aware that human rights activists are beginning to unite into one voice protesting the horrendous injustice upon which our modern world has been constructed. Greta has joined an important subset of the climate activists, who recognise that global injustice lies at the heart of the human malady.

This reveals an underlying hypocrisy within the climate and environmental activist movement that I first experienced within Extinction Rebellion. Bill McKibben is an example of an ‘establishment’ climate activist. These people blame others, they do not see that they are contributors to the problem. They make money from commentating, without challenging the hierarchical mindset that perpetuates the injustice.

The establishment is beginning to crumble under the pressure of public opinion. The fact that Oxford and Cambridge Students are being allowed to debate these issues, puts the UK in a powerful position to lead a mindset shift for the entire world

I feel that it will not be long before we see genuine changes in attitude. Such abhorrent injustice cannot be played out constantly in the public eye and escape retribution much longer.

I wrote a poem recently. It is the first poem that I have written since I wrote my booklet Poems for Parliament that was circulated to UK Members of Parliament in 2020. The poem was inspired by an artistic challenge to design a Tie that in some way told about humanity’s crisis today. I hope you like it:

Barbara Williams is author of Saving Us From Ourselves, her website is called Poems for Parliament.