by Jim Chimirie on X
Every civilisation decides, sooner or later, what its schools are for. Are they places where the young are inducted into a political creed, or places where they are trained to question all creeds? That distinction sounds abstract. It is not. It is the line between a republic of citizens and a culture of factions.
Last year the National Education Union, under its general secretary Daniel Kebede, ran a workshop coaching teachers on how to “advocate for Palestine in our schools”. The session was delivered with Makan, an organisation committed to strengthening what it calls the “movement for Palestinian liberation” and embedding teaching on the Nakba, settler colonialism, imperialism and apartheid. The terminology belongs to a cause. Yet it was presented as professional development.
The question is not whether teachers may hold convictions. They are citizens before they are employees. The question is whether the authority of the classroom should be used to advance a political struggle. When advocacy enters through the staffroom door, something fundamental shifts. Education ceases to be the disciplined search for truth and becomes the transmission of a moral script.
Schools exist because children are not yet fully formed. They come to the classroom to acquire the habits of mind that allow them to weigh evidence, test claims and separate passion from proof. That formation requires distance from movements and slogans. It requires intellectual restraint. When a teacher’s authority is fused with the language of protest, restraint gives way to persuasion.