Students are seen in class at a secondary college in Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 12, 2020. Daniel Pockett/Getty Images
Lessons on Australia’s Jewish history and the Holocaust will form part of a nationwide education overhaul to help eradicate anti-Semitism.
The curriculum revamp is designed to tackle anti-Semitism and will enter classrooms in 2027 after receiving the nod from state and federal education ministers on Nov. 2.
“Kids aren’t born racist, they aren’t born hating anybody—it’s something that’s learnt, that’s taught,” Education Minister Jason Clare said while announcing the changes on Nov. 5.
“In Bondi last year we have seen what that can metastasise into.”
The sprawling reforms were drawn up by Australia’s curriculum authority and are expected to be released fully in the coming days, along with details about AI restrictions in classrooms, compulsory civics and financial literacy lessons.
Traumatic anti-Semitic incidents were routine for Jewish school students, the anti-Semitism and social cohesion royal commission heard when it probed Australia’s education system in July.
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They included kids throwing coins on the ground in front of Jewish pupils and taunting them with abuse like “Hitler should have finished the job”, relayed during hearings by the principal of one of Australia’s largest Jewish schools—Sydney’s Moriah College.
In October, Australia’s anti-Semitism special envoy Jillian Segal said students had boned up well on the Holocaust, but needed deeper understanding of Jewish history before and after World War II.
That should involve museum experiences and be contextualised in Australian values of tolerance and mutual respect, she argued, in a report saying classrooms should not be places for “ideological activism” and scapegoating.
Anti-Semitism learning needed to be baked in from preschool to tertiary level, Segal said during the royal commission’s July hearings.
She testified teachers were sometimes ill-equipped to answer questions about how historic discrimination against Jews had morphed into modern problems.
The newly announced curriculum changes have received the blessing of an anti-Semitism education task force established in the wake of last year’s Bondi massacre and chaired by education reformer David Gonski.
Stamping out prejudice beyond anti-Semitism will also fall to Gonski, who will chair a new social cohesion education advisory council to examine additional curriculum changes.
“Most people would agree that hate is born of fear and fear is born of ignorance,” Clare told ABC Radio.
“We want to make the same sort of changes to the curriculum to tackle racism and hate in all its noxious forms.”
Opposition anti-Semitism spokesman Julian Leeser said the ultimate test of the education overhaul was whether it could respond to emerging issues.
“Will we teach our children to identify ways that anti-Semitism manifests today—through Islamic extremism, neo-Nazis and the far right, and the modern progressive left?” he said.
“Will children learn to recognise that anti-Zionism has increasingly become just a fig-leaf for Jew hate?”
By Will Nicholas in Canberra
