Israeli government cancels prohibition on giving racist answers in civics exam

Israel’s Education Ministry has cancelled a prohibition against giving racist answers on the civics matriculation exam.

According to Haaretz,  the original rule, published shortly before the school year began, stated that “racist or inflammatory statements” would result in the response receiving no credit.

However, the head of the ministry’s pedagogical secretariat – an appointee of Minister Naftali Bennett and West Bank settler – has now rescinded this rule, on the grounds, according to the ministry, that “we need to inculcate the change gradually”.

The original memo “discussed a [mandatory] question on the civics exam that asks students to give their opinion on a controversial public issue and defend it”.

Sample topics included “fluoridating water, allowing different population groups to live in separate neighbourhoods, the size of the government’s child allowances and reserving slots for women on Knesset tickets”.

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Noting that teachers “sometimes encounter inflammatory or racist statements against groups or individuals” on the exam, the circular added, “It’s important to make clear to the students that racist or inflammatory statements in any part of the question will disqualify the entire answer”.

The new updated to civics teachers drops “all mention of the ban on racist statements”.

A teacher told the paper: “Many students write racist things in the matriculation exam: Arabs are a fifth column, there’s no problem with expelling Arabs from Israel, it’s permissible to discriminate against Arabs compared to Jews, and it’s possible to annex territory without giving civil rights”.

They added: “As long as there isn’t an a priori instruction that any racist response will be disqualified, this constitutes official encouragement of racism.”