Archives for category: International
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Hamas Leaders Tell NY Times: Mission Accomplished!

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2023 //
4

In rare and surprising interviews with the New York Times, leaders of Hamas said that their deadly intrusion into Israel on October 7 had succeeded beyond their expectations. It was intended to provoke a massive military response, and it worked. Saudi Arabia was on the cusp of normalizing relations with Israel, and that’s off. Hamas had to decide whether to be a responsible governing body (it won an election in 2006, and no further elections were held) or a terrorist organization. At great cost in Palestinian and Israeli lives, it chose terrorism.

Today’s New York Times reports:

Thousands have been killed in Gaza, with entire families wiped out. Israeli airstrikes have reduced Palestinian neighborhoods to expanses of rubble, while doctors treat screaming children in darkened hospitals with no anesthesia. Across the Middle East, fear has spread over the possible outbreak of a broader regional war.

But in the bloody arithmetic of Hamas’s leaders, the carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation. Quite the opposite, they say: It is the necessary cost of a great accomplishment — the shattering of the status quo and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel.

It was necessary to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, told The New York Times in Doha, Qatar. “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”

Since the shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which Israel says about 1,400 people were killed — most of them civilians — and more than 240 others dragged back to Gaza as captives, the group’s leaders have praised the operation, with some hoping it will set off a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza and the countries around them.

“I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The Times.

In weeks of interviews, Hamas leaders, along with Arab, Israeli and Western officials who track the group, said the attack had been planned and executed by a tight circle of commanders in Gaza who did not share the details with their own political representatives abroad or with their regional allies like Hezbollah, leaving people outside the enclave surprised by the ferocity, scale and reach of the assault.

The attack ended up being broader and more deadly than even its planners had anticipated, they said, largely because the assailants managed to break through Israel’s vaunted defenses with ease, allowing them to overrun military bases and residential areas with little resistance. As Hamas stormed through a swath of southern Israel, it killed and captured more soldiers and civilians than it expected to, officials said.

The assault was so devastating that it served one of the plotters’ main objectives: It broke a longstanding tension within Hamas about the group’s identity and purpose. Was it mainly a governing body — responsible for managing day-to-day life in the blockaded Gaza Strip — or was it still fundamentally an armed force, unrelentingly committed to destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist Palestinian state?

With the attack, the group’s leaders in Gaza — including Yahya Sinwar, who had spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons, and Mohammed Deif, a shadowy military commander whom Israel had repeatedly tried to assassinate — answered that question. They doubled down on military confrontation.

The weeks since have seen a furious Israeli response that has killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza, according to health officials there. But for Hamas, the attack stemmed from a growing sense that the Palestinian cause was being pushed aside, and that only drastic action could revive it.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, International

Arthur Camins: Choose People Over Their Governments

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2023 //
32

Arthur Camins writes in The Daily Kos about the war in the Middle East:

So many people I speak with are feeling torn and conflicted. They that say they are afraid to criticize either Hamas or Israel for fear of being attacked for taking one side or the other. I say: If you stand for the human rights and dignity of all, the sides to choose between in the latest Middle East conflict are not the Hamas or Israeli governments. Instead, choose their people.

No, the sides to choose between are:

• Accepting the death of innocent civilians as collateral damage as the price of victory of “our side.”

Or

• Finding the path to peace that starts with mutual respect for democracy and human rights for all.

Neither Hamas nor Israel represents that latter choice. Their behavior says the opposite. So, I condemn both without implied approval of either.

If a path to peace, democracy, and human rights for Israelis and Palestinians–and safety for Jews and Palestinians around the world–are the goals, then attempting to determine moral equivalencies between the behavior of Hamas and the Israeli government is a dead-end.

I also see no need for those of us in the United States to promote a one- or two-state solution. That is up to the people of Israel and Palestine, hopefully with a rejection of both Hamas and the Netanyahu governments, rejection of the primacy of any religion over another or none at all.

Anything short of Israeli abandonment of its illegal settlements in the West Bank and assurance of full Palestinian rights is a non-starter.

A lot of digital ink has been spilled over the definitional accuracy of the terms, war crimes and genocide. We can have that debate, but it deflects attention from the necessary condemnations. It abets useless “whataboutism” rather than forging a path forward.

I am not a pacifist, but I explicitly reject two rationalizations for the murder of innocents: Palestinians have a right to resistance by any means necessary, and Israel has a right to defend itself.

I’m not against resistance to oppression, but that does not include murder and hostage-taking of innocent civilians. I am not opposed to defense against attack, but that does not include bombing and depriving innocent civilians of food, fuel, water, and healthcare.

In the current circumstances, both Hamas and Israel claim that the intransigence, crimes, and inhumanity of the other side justifies their actions. They do not.

Condemnation of both Hamas’s and Israel’s actions is the starting point for any moral and political commitments to working across differences to achieve the safety, respect, democracy, and rights that Palestinians and Israelis deserve.

Empathy is a precondition to peace and justice. If we can imagine the pain and grief of Israelis who lost friends, neighbors, and loved ones to the latest Hamas or any terrorist attack, we must also imagine the loss and suffering of Gazans from the Israeli bombing and blockade. We must also imagine being displaced when our land and homes are violently stolen by illegal settlers.

Call your U.S. Senators and House Representatives. Tell them that a ceasefire, a halt to further military aid, and humanitarian aid to Gazans are the necessary first steps.

Arthur taught and led science professional learning and curriculum and assessment development projects for 50 yrs. He writes about education and social justice. He loves spending time with friends and family, hiking, and gardening.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Equity, Evil, Extremism, Failure, International, Justice

Bridge International Academies Embroiled in New Scandal

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2023 //
7

Bridge International Academies was created by two young American entrepreneurs to bring low-cost, for-profit standardized schooling to millions of children in Africa and Asia. It raised money from wealthy people like Bill Gates and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, also Pearson and the World Bank, but it faced many problems, including opposition from African teachers’ unions and sex abuse scandals.

Six years ago, veteran journalist Peg Tyre wrote about the ambitions of Bridge founders to create a company that might return as much as 20% on investment and eventually have a stock offering:

[Bridge] was founded in 2007 by [Shannon] May and her husband, Jay Kimmelman, along with a friend, Phil Frei. From early on, the founders’ plans for the world’s poor were audacious. ‘‘An aggressive start-up company that could figure out how to profitably deliver education at a high quality for less than $5 a month could radically disrupt the status quo in education for these 700 million children and ultimately create what could be a billion-dollar new global education company,’’ Kimmelman said in 2014. Just as titans in Silicon Valley were remaking communication and commerce, Bridge founders promised to revolutionize primary-school education. ‘‘It’s the Tesla of education companies,’’ says Whitney Tilson, a Bridge investor and hedge-fund manager in New York who helped found Teach for America and is a vocal supporter of charter schools.

The Bridge concept — low-cost private schools for the world’s poorest children — has galvanized many of the Western investors and Silicon Valley moguls who learn about the project. Bill Gates, the Omidyar Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the World Bank have all invested in the company; Pearson, the multinational textbook-and-assessment company, has done so through a venture-capital fund. Tilson talked about the company to Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund manager of Pershing Square, which ultimately invested $5.8 million through its foundation. By early 2015, Bridge had secured more than $100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Just a few months ago, The Intercept called Bridge the Uber of education.

Ryan Grim of The Intercept just wrote a troubling update to the evolving story. As Bridge recently sought new funding from the World Bank, the company faced a new World Bank investigation and sought to foil it.

Ryan Grim reported:

FOR SHANNON MAY and her husband Jay Kimmelman, the conference call scheduled with the World Bank on September 12, 2020, was make or break. It had been just over 10 years since the Harvard graduates had launched Bridge International Academies, a chain of for-profit schools that had exploded in Africa and South Asia. With the backing of Silicon Valley’s elite and the support of international financial institutions like the World Bank, the founders were now in negotiations to raise fresh capital that would allow them to move into several new countries.

Rapid expansion was essential to the company’s business model. Bridge had figured out a way to slash the biggest cost drivers of a school budget — teachers’ salaries and traditional school houses — but the business was a low-margin enterprise that couldn’t slow down. The company was aiming for 10 million pupils, and it wasn’t as unreachable as it sounded: Bridge had already taught more than 1 million kids, backed by the for-profit investment arms of some of the world’s most famous philanthropists, including Bill Gates and eBay and Intercept founder Pierre Omidyar. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provided Bridge with $10 million in seed funding; its previous round of financing, the so-called Series E, which closed in 2017.

Bridge was now raising its next round, Series F. May and Kimmelman had a lot to lose: The couple had relocated from Cambridge to Kenya, and had done well enough to helicopter to their vacation home on the coast.

Just days before the call, in early September, May and Kimmelman had gotten bad news. In 2016, there had been a dozen or more cases of serial sexual assault at a Bridge school in Kenya. Several years later, at another Bridge location, a child on school grounds had been fatally electrocuted by a dangling live wire, while another had been badly injured. May and Kimmelman were already aware of the tragedies. Indeed, the company had internally documented many more cases of sexual abuse, but they had not been reported to the World Bank and stayed out of the local press. Now, a World Bank investigation threatened to bring them to light.

In February 2020, an internal World Bank entity that independently reviews bank projects, called the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, had sent an investigative team, led by veteran investigator Daniel Adler, to Nairobi to look into complaints filed by a local human rights organization about workers’ rights and health and safety issues at Bridge schools. The CAO team, while in Nairobi, learned of additional allegations from parents and community members, namely the serial assaults and the electrocution. Adler quickly filed a report recommending a deeper look and asked Bridge for more information.

Bridge spent several months gumming up the process, successfully negotiating a nondisclosure agreement with the World Bank that would make it difficult to publish in full any report that might be completed. The company also pressured the head of the CAO, Osvaldo Gratacós, to ease off. Gratacós was pushed out by the World Bank, but the effort ultimately backfired; before his tenure expired, he formally launched an investigation — known internally as a CAO compliance process — into the sex abuse allegations at Bridge in September 2020. May and Kimmelman were now meeting with the World Bank to discuss how to respond.

With the company actively soliciting Series F financing and close to securing a deal to expand in Rwanda, the timing couldn’t have been worse. So the group — which included William Sonneborn, the World Bank official who oversaw the investment in Bridge, and another World Bank staff member, Shannon Atkeson — hatched a plan to keep the allegations hidden.

With Gratacós already on his way out, the next step was to “neutralize Adler,” the CAO’s lead investigator. Bridge would file a complaint with a World Bank ethics office accusing Adler of violating CAO procedures and of impersonating a Bridge employee. It was right out of the Bridge playbook: The company had previously done the same to a Canadian graduate student writing a report on its schools in Uganda, going so far as to craft a bogus “Wanted” poster and place it in local newspapers. (A subsequent complaint Bridge filed with his university was dismissed.)

Next, Bridge would publish a consultant report favorably comparing its own record on student safety to that of Kenyan public schools — something to point to if the news leaked. The main objective, though, was to keep it quiet for as long as possible. The revelations would “spook investors” and undermine Bridge’s expansion plans in Rwanda. “Time matters,” as one person on the call put it. “Need to delay until Series F.”

There was only one problem: Someone on the call was taking notes.

Please open the link.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, International, Scandals

David Ignatius: The Tunnels of Gaza

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2023 //
16

David Ignatius is a columnist for The Washington Post. This column offers an interesting perspective on a seldom-mentioned feature of Gaza: its extensive network of tunnels. Terrorism and war are terrible, bringing death to combatants and innocents alike.

David Ignatius writes:

As analysts map the blood-soaked terrain of battle between Israel and Hamas, they sometimes speak of “two Gazas” — the visible one above ground and a vast network of tunnels below. Israel is preparing to enter the second Gaza in what might be the most dangerous and deadly phase of this war.

Drilled deep under the sandy soil in a honeycomb that Gazans sometimes call the “Metro,” the tunnels are Hamas’s defense in depth, literally. They hide rockets, artillery, ammunition and other war supplies — as well as the fighters themselves. They provide a last redoubt, an underground Alamo. Israel won’t be able to “crush” Hamas, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed, without taking these subterranean command posts.

But the underground maze is also where as many as 200 Israeli and American hostagesmight be hidden. Rescuing the hostages — rooting out the terrorist fighters nearby without killing their captives — will be a supreme test of arms for the Israeli military.

“The capabilities of the tunnelers are limited only by their ingenuity,” says Scott Savitz, a senior engineer for the Rand Corp. who has studied tunnel warfare for decades. He notes that, even with the most advanced technologies, finding all the Hamas tunnels in Gaza will be a “protracted” process and that Israeli soldiers will have to clear them even if robots do the initial surveillance and attack.

“Robots are helpful, but they are not a panacea,” Savitz cautions.

Hamas has long seen this network as a kind of strategic reserve for its terrorism operations. Khaled Meshal, the organization’s former leader, told a Vanity Fair interviewer in 2014: “In light of the balance of power, which is shifted toward Israel, we had to be creative in finding innovative ways. The tunnels were one of our innovations … putting more obstacles in the way of any Israeli attacks and enabling the resistance in Gaza to defend itself.”

The Gaza tunnels have haunted Israel for years because they allow surprise attacks and strategic deception. A 2014 paper for Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies noted a long, frustrating string of attacks dating back nearly two decades: Israeli raids in 2004 destroyed more than 100 tunnels after a June tunnel attack killed one soldier and wounded five, but that December, another booby-trapped tunnel killed five soldiers and wounded six. Then, in June 2006, Hamas used a cross-border tunnel to kidnap Pvt. Gilad Shalit, who was eventually freed in 2011 with the exchange of more than 1,000 Palestinian and Arab prisoners.

Israel continued destroying tunnels — and Hamas kept building more. The culmination came during an assault on Gaza in 2014 called Operation Protective Edge. Thirteen Hamas terrorists were captured emerging from a tunnel near a kibbutz, and Israel launched a campaign to detect and destroy tunnels across Gaza. But the network survived and expanded.

Israel realized after the 2014 campaign that Hamas had big plans for creating mayhem inside Israel. Peter Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman at the time, said in October 2014: “Hamas had a plan. A simultaneous, coordinated, surprise attack within Israel. They planned to send 200 terrorists, armed to the teeth toward civilian populations. … The concept of operations involved 14 offensive tunnels into Israel. With at least 10 men in each tunnel, they would infiltrate and inflict mass casualties.”

The macabre 2014 plan returned in an updated version this month. This time, it involved paragliders, motorcycles and a breakout through the border fence — and the tunnels were the place the terrorists took their captives.

Technology has provided useful tools but not solutions. Radar and other conventional surveillance systems have limited ability to detect tunnels that are as deep as 60 feet underground. But the United States and Israel have both developed ways to measure the magnetic, thermal and acoustic signatures of these underground facilities. The Pentagon has funded exotic techniques such as robot snakes that can carry advanced sensors deep underground and earth-eating robot worms (in a project called Underminer) that can munch their way toward hideaways.

Robots can do some of the fighting, too. When wheeled robots face obstacles, two- or four-legged robots can enter hidden hallways and disable attackers with autonomous guns, missiles or bombs. But Savitz cautions that “human beings will still need to go into tunnels” — where they might encounter ambushes, hidden explosives and mines.

The Israeli military has an elite unit within its engineering corps known as “Samur,” the Hebrew word for “weasel,” which is also an acronym for the phrase “passageways and tunnels.” These are some of Israel’s toughest fighters, and they will likely experience intense combat over the next few weeks. The “weasels” use the latest technology, but they don’t trust it, according to a 2020 study drawing on interviews with 17 former members.

“I’m in favor of entering tunnels,” one officer who served with the unit told researchers, adding dismissively: “To enter a tunnel after a robot has combed through it … the environment becomes more sterile.” Said another: “I think being a warrior in Samur is no less complex than being a pilot.” Explained a third: “Technology is ever present, but somehow it always seems to break down.”

The Israeli military has an elite unit within its engineering corps known as “Samur,” the Hebrew word for “weasel,” which is also an acronym for the phrase “passageways and tunnels.” These are some of Israel’s toughest fighters, and they will likely experience intense combat over the next few weeks. The “weasels” use the latest technology, but they don’t trust it, according to a 2020 study drawing on interviews with 17 former members.

“I’m in favor of entering tunnels,” one officer who served with the unit told researchers, adding dismissively: “To enter a tunnel after a robot has combed through it … the environment becomes more sterile.” Said another: “I think being a warrior in Samur is no less complex than being a pilot.” Explained a third: “Technology is ever present, but somehow it always seems to break down.”

Much of the hardest fighting to come in this war will be out of view, in conditions most of us can barely imagine, with hostages caught in the crosshairs. But the outcome might well hinge on what happens in those cavernous depths.

Categories International

David Ignatius: What Comes Next in the Middle East?

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2023 //
10

David Ignatius is a regular columnist for the Washington Post. In this column, he tries to look beyond the current warfare in the Middle East.

He wrote:

A paradox of war is that it can open the way, after tragic suffering, to the kind of fundamental realignment that can bring a durable peace. That was apparent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his January 1943 meeting in Casablanca to plan strategy for a conflict whose savage bloodletting was only beginning.


Roosevelt told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that to eliminate the power of their adversaries, the Allies must seek their unconditional surrender. “It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan,” Roosevelt said, “but it does mean the destruction of [their] philosophies … based on conquest and subjugation.”


Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at a similar moment as Israeli tanks roll toward Gaza. He has demanded, in effect, the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the end of its terrorist control of the crowded enclave. “We will crush and destroy it,” he told Israelis Wednesday night. He seeks to make it impossible for Hamas to carry out such horrors again.


But Netanyahu must be wise, as Roosevelt was, to wage war in a way that allows for a stable peace after his adversary’s defeat. If he waits until the conflict is over to think about “the day after,” it might be too late. And if he conducts a war that punishes Palestinian civilians, rather than Hamas, he might lose global support and undermine his mission.


Netanyahu has one wild card that, if he plays it well, could reorder the Middle East. That’s the growing willingness of Saudi Arabia, the dominant Arab power, to form an open partnership with Israel — so long as Israel seeks a stable and lasting peace with the Palestinians.

It’s a historical fact that opportunities for peace in the Middle East follow conflict. The 1973 Yom Kippur war, a strategic shock much like last Saturday’s Hamas attack, was followed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem and, eventually, the Camp David peace accords. The 1993 Oslo Accords that led eventually to creation of the Palestinian Authority were championed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after the carnage of the First Intifada.


“Who will be the Sadat to take the Palestinians under his wing and lead them to peace? My candidate is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” said Martin Indyk, who served Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and might be the United States’ wisest veteran of the peace process. Indyk believes that MBS, as the crown prince is known, was working to build a security structure for his massive “Vision 2030” investment in Saudi Arabia based on a defense treaty with the United States and a strategic peace with Israel. “But Hamas, backed by Iran, punched a hole in Israeli deterrence, and it has resurrected the idea of defeating Israel by force,” Indyk said. He thinks this also threatens all the Arab leaders who have made peace with Israel.


Normal Saudi behavior would be to head for the sidelines, but Indyk thinks MBS might have too much at stake this time. He imagines that in the devastation that will follow the Gaza war, the crown prince, in coordination with other pro-Western Arabs, could invite Netanyahu and Palestinian leaders to Riyadh for a “peace summit” that would establish a new path to an Arab-Israeli accord.


This vision of a Saudi-Israeli compact might sound like an unrealistic dream, betting on a Saudi leader with a dark past. Along with my colleagues at The Post, I blame MBS for the murder of contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018. But Saudis who know the crown prince well tell me that he is ready for transformative policy unless Israel pursues a reckless war that shatters any chance for reconciliation.

“We have an opportunity that we haven’t seen in 20 years to create something different,” said Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi columnist and chairman of the editorial board of Al Arabiya, the kingdom’s flagship television network, in an interview on Wednesday.


Al-Rashed elaborated on how change might evolve: “We have a frame in the Palestinian Authority, which was created by the Oslo Accords. It has legal institutions. The United States, the European Union and the Arab League all recognize the PA.” A revitalized authority, backed by the Saudis and other key Arab states, could purge the corruption and incompetence that have enfeebled it since birth. With Arab money and support — and new leadership — the PA could perhaps gradually rebuild Gaza.


“The Palestinian Authority needs to be restructured. It needs young, dynamic leadership. I believe Saudi Arabia and MBS would support that,” Ali Shihabi, a prominent supporter of MBS, told me during an interview. But he also warned: “If the Israelis want a Palestinian partner that can create a peaceful solution, then they have to empower that partner.”


Jordan’s King Abdullah II had been working closely with the United States since the summer to prepare the Palestinian Authority for the era that will follow President Mahmoud Abbas, who at 87 is widely seen as ineffective. The Jordanian monarch feared that Hamas was gaining ground in Gaza and in the West Bank and urged change, so that extremists wouldn’t exploit popular frustration. But it didn’t come in time. “Now, we have to think of ‘the day after,’ when the guns go silent,” said one senior Jordanian official.

The fear in the region is that, as Arabs watch civilian casualties, they will feel a rage similar to what Israelis felt last week after the slaughter of civilians by Hamas terrorists. “We need to turn this around,” said Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, in an interview on Thursday. “Any new thinking about the region must recognize that unless we solve the Palestinian problem, lasting peace is an illusion.”


Anwar Gargash, the former foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, is focusing on the need to minimize horrific casualties such as those of the past week. “The UAE has stressed that civilians should not be targeted on either side, no matter how you feel about historic rights or injustice,” he told me on Thursday.


The United States has so far managed the difficult trick of keeping faith with both Israel, whose pain President Biden seemed to share viscerally in his televised remarks this week, and with key Arab allies. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been shuttling through the region this week to meet top officials in Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.


In Israel on Thursday, Blinken offered a shorthand of his vision of the Middle East, post-conflict: “A region that comes together, integrated, normalized relations among its countries, people working in common purpose to common benefit. More peaceful, more stable.”


Shihabi cites an Arab proverb to illustrate how much depends on good judgment by Israel and the United States in managing this darkening crisis: “The mistake of a smart person is equivalent to the mistakes of 10 idiots.”


As Israel pursues the destruction of Hamas, the coming days will bring more shattering scenes of violence and suffering. Many Arabs would like to see Hamas vanquished, too, but they hope Netanyahu will be wise in how he uses force — with an eye, always, on what will follow.

Categories Accountability, International

My Visit to a Transformed Germany, Which Faces Its Past with Truth

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
35

As a young person and a Jew, I swore I would never visit Germany. Growing up in Houston in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I occasionally met people who had a blue number tattooed on their arm, a legacy of their time in a Nazi concentration camp. I learned about the Holocaust at religious school, not public school. With my knowledge of the Holocaust, I was determined to avoid the nation that sought to eliminate the Jews of Europe. I was fortunate that my father’s parents came to America from Poland in the 19th century, and my mother arrived from Bessarabia after World War 1. Every member of their families who remained in Europe was slaughtered. Not one survived.

In 1984, I received an invitation from the State Department to visit West Germany and Yugoslavia to speak about education. I decided to go. It was a fascinating trip, and I overcame my phobia about visiting Germany.

Years later, after the Wall had come down, I went to Germany as a tourist with my partner and our Brooklyn neighbors. The wife, an emergency room nurse, was born in Germany, and is one of the kindest people I know. For the first time, I saw Germany as a vibrant and thriving nation. I visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and saw the honesty with which Germany was confronting its past. Every town we visited had its memorials to those who had perished because of Hitler’s genocide.

A few days ago, I was again in Berlin. Frankly, I fell in love with Berlin. The German people acknowledge the horrors of their past. They don’t sugar coat it. Their contrition is impossible to ignore. There are memorials scattered across the city to those who were unjustly murdered—Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others.

Right near our hotel was a field of 2,711 stelae of different sizes that looked like coffins. We stopped to view the site where Hitler’s bunker once existed. It’s now just blank ground with a large marker explaining what it was. It was where Hitler and Eva Braun married, knowing all was lost. She killed herself. Hitler killed himself. When the Soviets entered Berlin, they totally destroyed the bunker.

Several readers corrected my statement that Hermann Göring and his wife and children died in the bunker. They are right. It was Joseph Goebbels and his family who committed suicide in the bunker. Göring committed suicide in Nuremberg the night before he was to be executed by hanging.

As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined Hitler in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker, part of Hitler’s underground bunker complex, on 22 April 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler’s will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany; he served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after having poisoned their six children with a cyanide compound. (Wikipedia)

On our last day in Berlin, we intended to go to the museum of the Stasi, the secret police that monitored every East German’s life. But we decided instead to visit the memorial center of the German resistance.

The museum tells the story of Germans who opposed the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, who worked against him during the war years, who anticipated that he would destroy Germany’s struggling democracy, and who worked to end his brutal tyranny. There were stories of opposition to Hitler by trade unionists and Communists, by Jews and Catholics and Protestants. The museum identified religious leaders, scholars, scientists, educators, students, social workers, and others who worked against Hitler. Most were killed. It went into great detail about the failed assassination attempt by leading German officers on July 20, 1944. All of them were murdered.

My partner, a former teacher of history and social studies, wondered why Holocaust studies in the schools do not tell their stories. In some sick way, the constant focus on bodies and atrocities was not having its intended effect; it was desensitizing the students to cruelty and inhumanity.

Of course, the brutality must be shown and remembered. But why not make resistance to evil the centerpiece? Why not focus on courage and heroism in the face of overwhelming force? Why not tell the story of Georg Esler, the German carpenter who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1939? Or the story of the White Rose Society, the college students who bravely distributed flyers about Nazi atrocities in 1942-43, who were captured and executed? They should be celebrated for their courage and conviction.

Meanwhile, back home, our own nation is convulsed by battles about teaching the past. Some insist on whitewashing history because the truth might make young people “uncomfortable.”We see the rising influence of groups like “Moms for Liberty,” who demand censorship and oppose honest teaching of the past and the present. They have a right to speak, but they should not have the right to impose their bigotry and intolerance on others. Moms for Liberty should learn from Germany about the importance of teaching truth.

If you visit Berlin, don’t miss this tribute to the resistance.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, Fascism, History, International

A Visit to Terezin, a Nazi Concentration Camp

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2023 //
49

While in Prague, I went with a group of about 25 people to visit Terezin. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had seen a book of drawings created by the children of Terezin. Years ago, I had visited Auschwitz, which was an extermination camp, with gas chambers and huge ovens for incinerating bodies. The displays of luggage, hair, and other reminders of those who were gassed were gruesome and horrifying.

Terezin was not an extermination camp, though thousands of people died there. Most people sent to Terezin were later shipped to Auschwitz to be killed. I recalled reading that the Nazis used it as a propaganda showplace, where they demonstrated to Red Cross officials that the Jews there were living in a place similar to a resort, under idyllic conditions.

Terezin is one hour outside Prague. There were two parts to it. First was an all-male prison where members of the Czech resistance were held, as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and others whom the Nazis hated. This facility was a centuries-old fort with high walls and abysmal living conditions. Many prisoners died of malnutrition or disease.

Then we went to the other part of Terezin, about a mile away. Also known as Terezinstadt, it is a picture-perfect town of colorful houses surrounding a park. The Nazis evicted all its inhabitants and used the town to house Jewish families from Czechoslovakia and Germany and eventually from other countries. There was no barbed wire, though every entrance into the town was guarded.

The town originally had 3,000-5,000 inhabitants. After it was turned into an internment camp for Jews, as many as 60,000 people were crammed into the same buildings. Nazis sent out flyers in Germany and Czechoslovakia portraying Terezin as an idyllic town. Wealthy Jews from Germany paid to go there and were allowed to bring a few pieces of luggage.

Once there, all their possessions were taken away, and they were assigned to a crowded dormitory. Men and women lived in separate dormitories, as did children. Families, of course, were separated. Adults were required to work, and children were mostly confined to their dormitories. Workers were paid in scrip, which they could use to buy clothing that had been confiscated from new arrivals.

Food was scarce, and many died of malnutrition and disease. There were regular transports from Terezin to Auschwitz. Somehow the Jews in Terezin knew that it was very bad to be shipped East, so the Nazis compelled some of those who arrived at Auschwitz to write their friends in Terezin to assure them that Auschwitz was a swell place.

In 1944, the King of Denmark asked the International Red Cross to inspect Terezin because Danish Jews had been sent there. The IRC let the Nazis know that there were coming, and the Nazis selected a date that gave them time to clean up the camp and stage a performance. The chiildren played soccer before an enthusiastic audience. A well-known Czech conductor led an orchestra of imprisoned musicians. The Red Cross issued a report praising conditions at the camp.

A few days after the Red Cross inspection, the orchestra conductor was deported to Auschwitz, along with many of the musicians.

The Terezin museum was fascinating, and I regretted that we had only an hour there. One room was filled with names of children who passed through Terezin. There were 15,000, but only 8,000 names. Names are added whenever anyone is identified. There was a wall of children’s drawings. And there were beautiful poems written by children who knew they were doomed.

The museum also contained a graphic chronology of anti-Semitism in Hitler’s time—such as the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders agreed on the necessity of a “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem: to kill every one of the 11 million Jews then living in Europe.

The architect of the Final Solution was Rudolph Heydrich, who was the deputy head of the Nazi “Protectorate” that included Czechoslovakia. He was assassinated by partisans in 1942.

In retaliation, the Nazis made an example of the towns of Lidice and Lezaky, believing the assassins came from there. The Nazis murdered every man in Lidice and sent the women to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where most died. Lezaky was totally destroyed, and its inhabitants killed.

In the midst of great beauty and art that we see today in Central Europe, it’s hard to imagine these horrific events. So much death and destruction. Unthinkable. Unimaginable. But true.

As I left the Terezin museum, I saw a copy of a diary written by one of the children who survived both Terezin and Auschwitz: Helga’s Diary. But the shop was closed. I was the last person to exit. I got on the bus and ordered a copy online.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, International, Propaganda

PEN Celebrates Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Freedom Fighter Narges Mohammadi

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2023 //
6

As I travel through Germany, I am often reminded of the courage of those who stood up against an oppressive regime. Would you have the same courage? Would I? The Nobel Committee awarded its most prestigious honor to an Iranian woman who has demonstrated that she has that courage, that determination to speak out for freedom and human rights, regardless of the danger that faces her. In honoring her, the Nobel Committee also honors the hundreds and thousands of Iranian women who have publicly opposed a repressive, woman-hating regime, some at the cost of their lives. PEN issued the following press release to celebrate the award. To see videos of Narges Mohammadi, please open the link.

Nobel Committee recognizes the immense courage and dedication of PEN America Honoree Narges Mohammadi and all the writers and cultural workers like her in Iran 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 6, 2023

(NEW YORK)— The Nobel Peace Prize awarded today to imprisoned Iranian writer, human rights activist, and 2023 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award honoree Narges Mohammadi recognizes her singular courage in standing against government repression of women, writers, activists, intellectuals, and cultural figures who face unspeakable consequences for daring to speak out or write, PEN America said.

Commenting on the award, PEN America CEOSuzanne Nossel said, “The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian writer and activist Narges Mohammadi is a tribute to her courage and that of countless women and girls who have poured out into the streets of Iran and faced down one of the world’s most brutal and stubborn regimes, risking their lives to demand their rights. For those of us at PEN America, Narges is an inspiration and also a personal friend, a woman whose story of unyielding defiance at crushing personal costs awakens the righteous indignation within each of us. We applaud the Nobel Committee for putting the weight of its Prize behind the struggle of Narges and all Iranian women for their freedom to dress, behave, think, and write as they wish.”

“Narges’ indefatigable will to be heard, even from the darkest, coldest, and most isolated corners of an Iranian prison, is astounding. Shechampioned change in Iran from her jail cell with a passion and bravery that can truly be described as heroic. As a witness to decades of atrocities, she has used her voice as a catalyst to awaken a new generation to understand that their words are one of humanity’s greatest tools. PEN America enthusiastically congratulates Narges Mohammadi and calls for her immediate release.”

PEN America honored Narges Mohammadi with the 2023 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, which her husband, Taghi Rahmani, accepted on her behalf at the PEN America Literary Gala in New York City in May. Conferred annually, the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award recognizes writers who have been jailed for their expression. PEN America galvanized celebrities including John Mullaney, Colin Jost, Candice Bergen, Diane Sawyer, Alec Baldwin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and others to rally to Mohammadi’s cause, drawing international media coverage and global recognition of her plight. Of the 53 jailed writers who have been honored with the PEN America Freedom to Write Award since its establishment in 1987, 46 have been released from prison within an average of about 18 months due in part to the global attention and pressure generated by PEN America’s recognition. This is not the first time PEN America’s Award has led directly to the conferral of a Nobel Peace Prize. PEN’s 2009 Freedom to Write honoree Liu Xiaobo, the President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, the culmination of a campaign set in motion by PEN America.

Narges Mohammadi has been forced to make unimaginable sacrifices for her work, including currently serving multiple sentences totaling more than 10 years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, where she has been threatened, beaten, and kept in periods of solitary confinement, a practice she has termed ‘white torture’ in her books and writings. Additionally, it has been almost nine years since Mohammadi last saw her husband and two children, who are now in exile in France. And yet, despite these arduous circumstances, Mohammadi continues to defend human rights and speak out against authoritarianism from within prison, drawing attention both to ongoing political events and to abuses against her fellow prisoners. “They will put me in jail again,” she wrote in her book, White Torture. “But I will not stop campaigning until human rights and justice prevail in my country.”

Mohammadi’s case is among dozens of cases of writers and activists who have faced political repression in Iran in the last year alone. Starting in September 2022, the country was swept by a widespread protest movement in favor of democracy and women’s rights following the state’s killing of Mahsa (Jina) Amini. In response, the Iranian regime further cracked down on free speech and arrested thousands for their participation in, or support of, the demonstrations. Iran’s literary and creative communities continue to use writing, art, and music as vehicles to express political dissent, even in the face of the brutal government crackdown.

About PEN America

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. To learn more, visit PEN.org.

Categories Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Gender, International

UNESCO Report: The Dangers of Ed-Technology!

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2023 //
33

This is the only post today. Read as much of it as you have time for. The report is a valuable reminder that Ed-tech is oversold and even dangerous. It has its uses, for sure. But it should never replace teachers or parents.

UNESCO released a major blockbuster report warning about the dangers of relying too much on education technology. The author of the report was Mark West. The title of the report is An Ed-Tech Tragedy? Educational Technologies and School Closures in the Time of COVID-19.

An alternate link: https://teachertaskforce.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/2023_UNESCO_An-ed-tech-tragedy_Educational-technologies-and-school-closures-in-the-time-of-COVID19_EN_.pdf

The puzzle at the heart of the document is the clash between learned experience and the imperatives of greed. We learned during the pandemic about the risks of becoming dependent on ed-technology as the main driver of instruction. As we reflect on the period from March 2020 to now, we can discern the damage that occurred to students when their teachers were replaced by virtual instruction: boredom, learning loss, mental health issues, loneliness, lack of socialization with their peers, lack of personal interaction with teachers.

Yet with most people believing that the pandemic (or the worst of it) lies in the past, ed-tech corporations are focused on selling more of what has already failed. Why would we want to expand what has demonstrably proved inadequate and harmful to students?

You probably will take a long while to read the full report, but do read the summary and conclusions to whet your appetite. The overview concludes that the global reliance on ed-tech was necessary in the circumstances, but was a tragedy. Children need human teachers. They need people who look them in the eye and encourage them. Education is not a mechanical process; people are not widgets.

The UNESCO report reviews the global evidence of the harm caused by dependence on ed-tech:

[The report] exposes the ways unprecedented educational dependence on technology often resulted in unchecked exclusion, staggering inequality, inadvertent harm and the elevation of learning models that place machines and profit before people.

The summary says:

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? documents how widespread school closures and the hard pivot to remote learning with connected technology during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in numerous unintended and undesirable consequences.

Although connected technology supported the continuation of education for many learners, many more were left behind. Exclusion soared and inequities widened. Achievement levels fell, even for those with access to distance learning. Educational experiences narrowed. Physical and mental health declined. Privatization accelerated, threatening education’s unique standing as a public good and human right. Invasive surveillance endangered the free and open exchange of ideas and undermined trust. Automation replaced human interactions with machine-mediated experiences. And technology production and disposal placed new strains on the environment.

Visions that technology could form the backbone of education and supplant school-based learning – in wide circulation at the outset of the health crisis – had promised better outcomes. Ed-tech proponents held that the immense challenges of school closures could be met with technology and that deeper technology integration would transform education for the better. But these high hopes and expectations unraveled when ed-tech was hurriedly deployed to maintain formal education as COVID-19 tore across countries.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? recounts this tumultuous period, documenting the actions and decisions taken by governments, schools and technology companies. The publication contrasts the promises of ed-tech with the realities of what ed-tech delivered as a response to school closures that impacted over 1.6 billion learners and stretched intermittently from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2022. The evidence and analysis highlight trends observed across countries and zoom in on the specificities of local experiences, creating a global mosaic of what students, teachers and families experienced when connected technology was elevated as a singular portal to teaching and learning.

Aimed at general and specialist audiences alike, this publication shows how the abrupt and deep changes brought about by the recourse to remote digital learning during the pandemic continue to ripple through the education sector even as schools have fully reopened. It questions whether more and faster integration of technology is desirable for learners, teachers and schools and if ed-tech is, as it is often billed, a key ingredient of educational resilience.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? posits that new principles are needed to forge more humanistic directions for ed-tech development and use. In-person schooling and teaching should be guaranteed even as technologies improve and connectivity becomes more ubiquitous. Governments need to anchor this guarantee in the legal architecture upholding the right to education, especially for young learners. Moreover, future applications of ed-tech must show greater concern for holistic student well-being. While academic learning is central to education, it is not the only component. Ed-tech needs to support the multiple individual and collective purposes of education, from socio-emotional and personal development, to learning to live together, with the planet, as well as with technology.

In detailing what happened when ed-tech was deployed in response to pandemic school closures, as well as questioning why ed-tech was often elevated as a singular solution, this publication clarifies how the education community can move beyond merely reacting to technological change and instead play a more assertive role steering the digitalization of education towards the more holistic goals of education to shape inclusive, just and sustainable futures.

The future of education needs to be a humanistic one. The lessons extracted from what is premised here as an ed-tech tragedy illuminate the ways technology can better foster education that teaches and revitalizes human values, strengthens human relationships and upholds human rights.…

Ed-tech was supposed to solve a problem but it created other problems.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? examines the many ways that the hurried embrace of technology solutionism steered responses to a global education challenge directly towards ed-tech. Along the way, the logic of technology solutionism changed understandings of educational problems to be solved. The analysis presented here helps reveal, for example, how technological solutions deployed during school closures took a narrow view of education and focused almost exclusively on furthering the academic progress of students in pared-down curricular subjects. This meant that little attention was paid to other education goals, such as fostering curiosity and inquiry and supporting physical health, mental well-being and social and emotional learning. This analysis also shows how ed-tech, originally cast as a solution to maintain learning continuity in the face of widespread disruptions to schooling, has more recently been positioned as a tool to help reverse learning loss. This ‘loss’, however, grew out of the deficiencies of technology-dependent remote learning to preserve the pace of academic learning that would have been typical without school closures stemming from the pandemic. The problem that ed-tech initially set out to solve morphed from assuring the continuity of learning to remedying lost learning. The way the problem was reframed while maintaining connected technology as the centrepiece of the solution is an example of technology solutionism at work.…

Recognizing the chaotic pivot from in-school learning to technology-facilitated distance learning as having a tragic arc provides a forceful rebuttal to a growing consensus that the education sector somehow ‘advanced’, ‘leapfrogged’, ‘catapulted’ or ‘disrupted’ itself to a better future when it deployed technology on a massive scale as an interim measure to confront a crisis. The evidence overwhelmingly points in the opposite direction: education became less accessible, less effective and less engaging when it pivoted away from physical schools and teachers and towards technology exclusively. ‘Tragedy’ in this sense signals regression – a denigration of the status quo,rather than a desired evolution. The narrative that ed-tech should be or must be a central component of ‘building education back better’ warrants new scrutiny after a careful examination of the experiences during the pandemic.

The invocation of tragedy also facilitates awareness that connected technologies, despite their growing reach, power and potential, remain tools in a repertoire of many others to construct stronger, more agile and more flexible education systems that can respond and adapt to disruption. Other tools include strengthened teacher training and support; enhanced school leadership and pedagogical management of schools; curricular renewal; smaller class sizes; and improved physical resources and infrastructure for schools and classrooms. Crises that necessitate the prolonged closure of schools and demand heavy or total reliance on technology have been exceedingly rare historically. Future crises may present entirely different challenges. The trauma of the pandemic has, in many circles, functioned to elevate technology as an almost singular solution to assure educational resilience by providing flexibility in times of disruption. Investments to protect education wrongly shifted away from people and towards machines, digital connections and platforms. This elevation of the technical over the human is contradictory to education’s aim to further human development and cultivate humanistic values. It is human capacity, rather than technological capacity, that is central to ensuring greater resilience of education systems to withstand shocks and manage crises.

Overall, the pandemic is a case study in how technology in its current iterations is not yet a suitable foundation for actualizing the diverse goals that communities assign to education. Expectations that technology may, in time, help further increase the reach, improve the quality and strengthen the agility of education are valid. For now, though, the experiences since early 2020 have shown it to be an alarmingly brittle solution – one incapable of effectively responding to widespread and extended school shutdowns. For far too many students, it was a solution that either never started in earnest or quickly broke down. The sudden shift to ed-tech also accelerated a concerning transfer of authority away from teachers, schools and communities and towards private, for-profit interests. Additionally, the censorship, data extraction, advertising, top-down control, intimidation and surveillance that so often characterize current models of digital transformation have made education less free and, arguably, less capable of facilitating critiques of and positive changes to the status quo. [emphasis added by DR.]

Countries made massive investments to digitalize education through much of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it remains far from clear whether these investments will improve education over the longer term and make it an engine of just, inclusive and sustainable development, especially when compared with conventional school-based and teacher-facilitated education. The digital transformation of education may yet be a force for beneficial change. But the logic of technological solutionism and its associated business models currently steering this transformation, led largely by the commercial technology entities that are remaking so many aspects of society, tend to treat education and knowledge as private commodities and not as global public goods that provide collective as well as individual benefits.

It is hoped that this analysis and its use of tragedy as a metaphor might moderate the discourse and popular view that the pandemic has ‘unshackled’ education systems and ‘launched’ them into desirable futures characterized by greater technology use. Documenting the severity and scope of the many negative consequences of ed-tech responses during the health crisis inverts the triumphalist narratives that accompany many descriptions of technology deployments to address the educational disruption caused by school closures. A critical examination of the assumptions of technology solutionism and a review of the existing evidence provide a corrective and a counterargument to notions that more, deeper and accelerated use of technology is uniformly positive for education…

Throughout the review that follows, considerable evidence illustrates how the rush to distance and remote learning with ed-tech accelerated the privatization of education in many contexts. While some countries and localities managed a shift to digital learning with limited privatization of the educational experience, a defining characteristic of the technology-centric response to the educational disruptions of the pandemic tended to be the elevation of for-profit, private ed-tech companies. In addition to considering the ways reliance on ed-tech impacted educational inclusion, equity and quality, this publication also explores the complex and often symbiotic links between ed-tech and the privatization of education during the pandemic.The rush to distance and remote learning with ed-tech accelerated the privatization of education.

Most such reports tend to summarize the status quo. This one challenges it. It’s time to take stock before the Ed-tech industry takes control of our most precious asset: our children.

Categories Childhood, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Hoax, Inequity, International, Online Learning, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Privatization, Propaganda, Technology

Free! A Journal About Education and Democracy

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2023 //
12

Take advantage of an offer of a free publication about education.

A special issue of Education Policy Analysis Archive (EPAA) just came out, featuring articles by members of the International Academy of Education (IAE). EPAA is a free, on-line journal, published simultaneously in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Access is at https://epaa.asu.edu/index.php/epaa

This special issue was edited by Fernando Reimers of Harvard and features the following articles: Critical thinking and the conditions of democracy by Nicholas C. Burbules; Education and the challenges for democracy by Fernando Reimers; Race, class, and the democratic project in contemporary South African education: Working and reworking the law by Craig Soudien;Speculations on experiences in public education and the health of the nation’s democracy by David C. Berliner; Challenges in fostering democratic participation in Japanese educationby Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi; Civic education, citizenship, and democracy by Lorin W. Anderson; and Education in a democratic and meritocratic society: Moving beyond thriving to flourishing by Ee-Ling Low.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »