Humanising Language Teaching
Year 6; Issue 1; January 2004

Disempowerment in Palestine

Eleanor Watts, UK

It would be uncontentious to say that part of a teacher's function is to empower students. Language teachers, for example, empower their students to access ideas in a second language, to express their own ideas, to be able to travel to other countries, to pass exams that will enable them to get good jobs. Most readers of HLT would also think it important to empower their students to feel that their ideas matter, to enjoy their time in the classroom and to grow as human beings.

As a teacher of children and as a teacher trainer, part of my concern is to identify and try to remove obstacles to the empowerment of my students. So I think about the reasons why students find it difficult to read and understand a second language, to express ideas, pass exams, feel their ideas matter and so on. I guess most readers would regard themselves as unprofessional if they did not do the same.

Yet most of us are reluctant to bring political empowerment into an understanding of our work. Very properly, we do not want to impose our views on our students and feel that would be an abuse of our power as teachers. Yet in this article I want to suggest there may be times when it is as irresponsible to ignore political obstacles to learning as to ignore the other pedagogical problems.

I have just come back from Palestine. I had been invited by the British Council and the Islamic University of Gaza to work as a trainer in a three-day workshop for primary school English teachers. I had spent a week preparing materials for the training and was to attend a preparatory meeting on Monday 12^th January. However, several hours before setting out for Gaza from Jerusalem, it appeared that there was a problem in getting my permit, which had been requested, as required, the previous Monday.

I spent the next twenty-four hours waiting for a pass that was never given, despite the best efforts of the British Consul. A hundred primary school teachers and my colleagues at the university in Gaza were left without their trainer and the British tax-payer had paid more than £1,500 for my air fare, hotel accommodation and professional fees. No reason or apology was given and as I had had no previous connection with either Israel or Palestine, I can only surmise that the authorities responsible for the checkpoint in Gaza were deliberately trying to obstruct the Palestinians' right to professional development.

The British Council then offered my services to the Ministry of Education in Ramallah. Thanks to their quick response, a two-day training for primary English supervisors in the West Bank was arranged – though the participants had barely twelve hours' notice. The organisation of this instant workshop was impressive, especially in view of the fact that when the Israeli Army invaded Ramallah in 2002, the Ministry of Education had been trashed and the computer records smashed up.

My frustration at the disruption to my week's plans can be nothing to the on-going fury felt by my Palestinian participants, who are denied freedom of movement in every day of their working lives. As primary supervisors, they have to travel from school to school and, in the process, suffer routine humiliation waiting for hours at checkpoints, sometimes forced to wade in mud up to their knees only to be turned back. Short journeys have become nightmares as they now have to circumvent the new barrier at present creating ghettos in occupied Palestine. It is a measure of their thirst for professional development that of the twenty-five primary English supervisors in the West Bank, twenty-two made it to the workshop, some starting at three in the morning to allow time to wait at checkpoints (inside Palestinian territory) or to climb nearby hills to avoid them, thus risking being shot by Israeli soldiers.

The English teachers with whom these supervisors work encounter similar obstacles. In addition they have to deal with the trauma of pupils who come to school and find an empty desk because one of their classmates has been killed. Many have lost fathers, brothers and sisters – shot by border guards because they put their hands in their pockets or locked up without trial in prison camps. I would deplore the actions of relatives who have become suicide bombers, but I cannot be surprised if this is the only way they have found to fight against their disempowerment within their own country.

Under such circumstances, I suggest, it is impossible for language teachers – or those who work with them – to ignore politics. The political obstacles to effective learning are as great as mother tongue interference, lack of materials, the quality of reading materials or any other problems language teachers need to consider. In Palestine, the attempts of teachers to empower their students are routinely impaired because they are being systematically disempowered by the state.

Eleanor Watts