It has dominated the news agenda for the past 14 months, but inside most British classrooms, it’s as if 7 October never happened. Half a million pupils studied history at GCSE or A-level last year, but just 2,000 tackled the origins of the Middle East’s most contentious war: why Israel was born, what that meant for the Palestinians, and the decades of occupation and violence that followed.
It’s not that children aren’t interested. They hear about it at home, in their communities and of course on social media, where a bitter and bloody 100-year-old schism is boiled down to 15-second clips. But inside school, it’s all just too difficult. Too dangerous, even.
All of which made the scene in the hall at Lancaster Royal grammar school (LRGS) this month even more remarkable as pupils from the selective Lancashire state school came together with boys from an Islamic school to explore and debate key elements of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
About 50 students aged 13 to 18 took part in the session, organised by Parallel Histories, an educational charity working with more than 1,000 schools across the UK and a further 400 worldwide.
It is one of three charities we are raising money for through the 2024 Guardian and Observer appeal, alongside War Child and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Some of the children looked nervous (“I was worried about saying the wrong thing,” one boy admitted afterwards, relieved that his fears had been unfounded.) The older pupils, veterans of the Parallel Histories method – which also has courses on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, as well as Putin and Ukraine, and “great” leaders including Churchill and Thatcher – were chomping at the bit.
Layla, 18, used to be at a school that was too scared to tackle contested histories. “We did the Vikings, Elizabeth I, British crime and punishment and the Nazis. So all very typical stuff. And then I came here and suddenly a whole new world was opened up to me.”
The Parallel Histories method – developed by the late LRGS history teacher Michael Davies after he took pupils on what now seems an unimaginable school trip to Israel and the West Bank in 2014 – encourages children not to shy away from competing narratives but to lay them out, side by side. They are taught to examine the source evidence and debate alternative interpretations before coming to their own view. The curriculum and all teaching materials are available on the Parallel Histories website for parents – or indeed anyone – to examine.
“You can understand both sides of the story without just seeing a post on Twitter that says one side and it’s very populist, whereas this lets you see the evidence and make your own mind up about that argument,” said Layla.
Even before the 7 October attacks, teaching Israel-Palestine was difficult: in 2021, the only exam board to offer curriculum material and a GCSE history option on the region withdrew its two textbooks after being accused of favouring the case for Israel.
On the day we visited, the youngest students, from year 9, were tackling the Balfour declaration, the 1917 memo in which the UK declared its support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The year 10s were doing the 1967 six-day war, or Naksa, which resulted in an Israeli victory over the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria – and the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. And the year 12s were examining who was responsible for the failure of the peace process right up to the present day.
Each group was split into two, with half told they would be arguing the Israeli perspective and half the Palestinian view, with each using primary sources (letters, memos, speeches, etc) to make their case.
Key to Parallel Histories is that the groups then swap sides – in this case after a much-anticipated pizza lunch – and are forced to counter the arguments they have just been making.
During the first session, Zain, 17, could be heard arguing that “deep divisions between the Palestinian political parties Fatah and Hamas helped to derail any prospect of a peace deal”. He was countered by Sol, 16, using a UN security council briefing to make the Palestinian case that Israelis have ignored repeated resolutions to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.
Arguing for Israel did not come naturally to Zain: “I’m very pro-Palestine. I have family working there,” he said. “But it is interesting to see from another perspective how other people think, and it is valuable.”
It was important for schools to teach Israel-Palestine, said Sol, otherwise “you have these two extreme sides who won’t really listen to each other, and therefore you can’t achieve peace, because neither side will hear out what’s going on”.
Emma, 16, said the session had helped her “gain empathy for both sides, with more nuance. It’s not just black and white. Both sides have good arguments.”
Hassaan, 14, said schools shouldn’t fear teaching the subject. “We should learn about this, especially since it’s on the news so much and most of us don’t know the history.”
Learning about the Balfour declaration, which followed decades of Jewish persecution in Russia, helped him better understand the conflict, he added: “By looking at these sources, by learning this much, you understand how simple things like this can lead in the future to a big conflict like the one that’s occurring right now.”
Al-Yasa, an LRGS old boy who now teaches history at the Islamic boys’ school, said: “I think it’s really important that we talk about contentious topics, because if we don’t, other people do in their own echo chamber. And where best to teach contentious topics than in school, where we can teach the kids to articulate their views in a controlled and safe manner?”
Nonetheless, teaching like this comes with risks, which is one reason his school asked to not be named in this piece. But Al-Yasa thinks Parallel Histories is the best way of countering extremism – far better than the government’s controversial Prevent strategy, which turns teachers into informants.
“My previous head, when I introduced him to Parallel Histories, said: ‘This is what prevention looks like. This is Prevent, when they’re able to look at sources, able to articulate it in a safe environment.’”
The charity hopes to extend its work to 3,000 schools with money from our annual appeal, and expand its staff of five.
Bill Rammell, a former Labour minister who took over as Parallel Histories’ chief executive this year, said the methodology had never been more important.
“Society is more divided than ever before. We live with social media, where the algorithms just feed us the news and the views that accord with what we believe. And there’s a real sense of schism. And I think Parallel Histories and the way we teach, the debates we organise, enables young people to cut through that, to have empathy and understanding for both sides of the arguments, and, in a sense, builds their capacity to reach out across the divides. And I think it genuinely does contribute to social cohesion.”
