1

Combatting Racial Prejudice in the School Playground: An Australian Case Study Zehavit Gross and Suzanne D. Rutland

Published in: Patterns of Prejudice, London: Taylor & Francis Online, vol 48, no 3, 2014, pp. 309-330.

Dr. Zehavit Gross is a senior lecturer and the head of graduate program of Management and Development in Informal Education Systems in the School of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her main area of specialisation is Socialisation Processes (religious, secular, feminine and civic) among adolescents. Her latest publication, with Lynn Davies and Khansaa Diab, is Gender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic, Post Modern World, (Springer, 2012).

Contact Details E-mail: [email protected] Postal Address: School of Education Bar Ilan University Ramat Gan, Israel

Suzanne D. Rutland (MA (Hons) PhD, Dip Ed, OAM) is Professor in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies, University of Sydney. Her area of specialization is Australian Jewish history, as well as writing on the Holocaust, Israel and Jewish education. Her latest books are The Jews in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and co- author with Sarah Rood of Nationality Stateless: Destination Australia (Melbourne: Jewish Museum of Australia and JDC, 2008). Contact details: Email: [email protected] Postal address: 2

Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia

3

Combatting Racial Prejudice in the School Playground: An Australian Case Study

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the problem of racial bullying in contemporary

Australian government schools by investigating one specific ethnic group, Jewish children in government schools, as a case study. The study is interdisciplinary, drawing on historical data and educational methodology, and employs a qualitative approach through semi- structural interviews conducted in Sydney and Melbourne with all the major stakeholders: students (55), teachers (10), principals (4), parents (13) and Jewish communal leaders (10).

We will argue that the classical anti-Jewish stereotypes are perpetuated in the school playground, transmitted by children from one generation to the next. This finding provides an additional perspective to the general literature, which argues that racial prejudice and stereotypes are acquired primarily through home socialisation, the churches, and the media, but neglects the role of the school playground.

Keywords: Antisemitism, racism, racial stereotypes, prejudice, playground bullying.

Australian Jewry, denial, Religious Education, ethnic groups, classrooms.

Introduction

Educating for multiculturalism is a major challenge for migrant societies across the world. Some politicians, such as the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the

German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, have claimed that efforts to create a multicultural 4 society have failed.1 Whilst these views were also reflected in statements by former

Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, the Australian government still is investing significant resources in multicultural education. Such an approach is needed in order to counter racial bullying in the playground.

In this article we first provide a brief background of the general issue of racism and antisemitism in Australia, and then discuss research undertaken both in regard to the general issue of racial bullying and the exclusion of children from non-English speaking backgrounds in the playground, as well as a more specific study of racial stereotyping and antisemitism in Canberra schools. We then explain the methodology we used to obtain our data, before outlining our findings and discussing their significance. Finally, we suggest areas of further study that are needed in this under-researched field, as well as indicating some educational strategies to combat such incidences. Whilst our study focuses on student data about their experiences of racist stereotypes in the playground, such occurrences can also take place in the classroom between lessons, on the sports field after school, and on school buses. Hence, our findings go beyond the confines of the playground.

Racism in Australia

Racial prejudice has a long history in Australia. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, this expressed itself against three main target groups: indigenous

Australians, Asian migrants and Jews. One of the main factors in Australia’s federation was the fear of the ‘yellow peril’, which led to the introduction of restrictive immigration laws,

1 See David Cameron ‘State Multiculturalism has Failed’, 5 February 2011, BBC News, UK Politics, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994, accessed 17 July 2012, and ‘Merkel says ‘German Multiculturalism has Failed’, BBC News, Europe, October 2010, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451, accessed 17 July 2012. 5 known as ‘the White Australia policy’ and the belief in Anglo-Saxon conformity.2 In the

1970s, under the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, a completely new policy was introduced, with the abolition of the immigration restrictions against coloured migrants and the introduction of multiculturalism. Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, further reinforced the policies of multiculturalism, so that by the 1980s support for the benefits of ethnic, religious and cultural pluralism was endorsed by government policy and embedded in educational philosophy.

However, despite ongoing efforts on the part of both government and non-government bodies, racism continues to be a concern in Australian society, particularly with the emergence of a ‘new racism’. In 2004, Kevin Dunn defined this as ‘cultural racism’, based on the ‘insurmountability of cultural differences’.3 Under this construct, ethnic groups are discriminated against and attacked on the basis of perceived ‘threats to “social cohesion” and national unity, that is threats to the Anglo-Celtic majority.4 In 2008, a further study by

Dunn indicated that racism was still very prevalent in Australia. 27% of respondents had been called names or similarly insulted; 23.4% felt that they were treated less respectfully because of their ethnic origins.5 In a study of social cohesion in Australia, Andrew Markus also found that there was an ongoing problem of racism, but that the migrant groups who

2 Suzanne Rutland and Sol Encel, ‘Australian Multiculturalism: Immigration, Race, and Religion’, Antisemitism International, 5-6 - Special Issue (October 2010), 66-67. 3 K.M. Dunn, J., Forrest, I. Burnley, & A. McDonald, ‘Constructing Racism in Australia, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 39, 4 (2004), 410. 4 Ibid., 411. 5 Kevin Dunn et al, Challenging Racism: the anti-racism research project, 2008 Attitudes to cultural diversity, old racisms and recognition of racism, state level comparisons (opens in new window), 4Rs Conference (University of Technology, Sydney) 30 Sept - 3 Oct 2008. University of Western Sydney, Accessed at http://www.uws.edu.au/ssap/school_of_social_sciences_and_psychology/research/challengi ng_racism/publications 6 had settled in Australia for a longer period experienced lower levels of racism than the more recent arrivals.6

Jews are the oldest ethnic group in Australia, with over a dozen Jews arriving on the First

Fleet in 1788 and Jewish institutions being well established by the mid-nineteenth century.

The largest wave of Jewish migration occurred from 1946 to 1954, when 17,000 Holocaust survivors arrived. They and their descendants are fully integrated into Australian society.

Since 1960, smaller groups of Jewish immigrants have arrived from South Africa, the

Soviet Union and Israel, but the numbers remained small compared with other recent immigrant groups. Today’s Jewish community only numbers around 115,000 – 120,000, accounting for 0.4 percent of the total population. Yet, antisemitism has been on the rise since statistics began to be published in 1989.7

In April 2012, Helen Szoke, Race Discrimination Commissioner, noted that racism does still exist in Australia and that there needed to be more community dialogue as to how it manifested itself and the harm it causes. Relying on the research of the Australian Human

Rights Commission, she pointed out that:

‘visible’ ethnic and religious minorities such as Arabs, Muslims, Africans, Jews,

Palestinian and Turkish people are groups regularly subjected to racism. Members

6 A. Markus, Mapping Social Cohesion 2011: the Scanlon Foundation Survey, Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Monash University, Victoria. Accessed at http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/mapping-population/scanlon-foundation-surveys.php (viewed 1 February 2012), Executive Summary, 1-2. 7 Since 1989 Jeremy Jones has compiled substantial annual reports on antisemitic incidences in Australia for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. 7

of these communities identified that their ‘difference’ in terms of skin colour, dress

or cultural/religious practices singles them out as targets of racism.8

This raises the question of why Jews are listed in the main groups under attack, even though they are a longstanding ‘settled’ community, well integrated into general Australian society. Whilst Helen Szoke analysed a number of factors contributing to contemporary racism, and dealt with various responses, particularly in the legal field, she did not discuss the issue of playground racism and antisemitism.

State of the Research

Extensive research has been carried out in relation to the issues of racism, anti- discrimination legislation, educational approaches and other forms of government intervention in Australia.9 However, there has been relatively little research on racism and antisemitism in the playground in Australia and in other countries.10 This is in spite of the fact that many newspaper articles have been published about the problem of racist bullying in the playground,11 including attacks on Jewish children. In the United Kingdom the

8 Helen Szoke, Race Discrimination Commissioner, ‘Racism exists in Australia – are we doing enough to address it?’, Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Qld 16 February 2012. Australian Human Rights Commission, http://www.humanrights.gov.au/about/media/speeches/race/2012/20120216_Racism_exists. html, Accessed 20 February 2012. 9 Andrew Markus has produced four reports on social cohesion in Australia from 2008- 2011. 10 In general the topic of school violence and bullying has been ‘understudied’. See Nancy Meyer-Adams and Bradley T. Conner, ‘School Violence: Bullying behaviours and the psychosocial school environment in middle schools’, Children& Schools, vol 30, no 4 (October 2008), 220. 11 See for example, ‘Vandals deface Hamilton playground and signs with racial slurs and swastikas’, The Canadian Press, 4 August 2005, n/a-n/a. Retrieved from 8

Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has defined racist bullying as: ‘The term racist bullying refers to a range of hurtful behaviour, both physical and psychological, that makes a person feel unwelcome, marginalized, excluded, powerless or worthless because of their colour, ethnicity, culture, faith, community, national origin or national status.’12

An extensive search of articles dealing with the issues of racism in schools located two academic articles, with only one from Australia, which dealt specifically with playground racism.13 C. Due and D.W. Riggs studied the use of playground space between by

Australian-born children compared with migrants from a non-English speaking background.

They found that the two groups did not play with each other. The latter tended to play on the fringes, with the former dominating the most desirable space. Robin Richardson produced more relevant findings for this study in terms of the use of verbal violence, what he called ‘unkind names’ and bullying in the playground.14 His article dealt with a recent court case in Britain relating to playground bullying, when three white students repeatedly harassed a child of mixed background over a three-month period, with the abuse ending in a

http://search.proquest.com/docview/359869947?accountid=14483; Manfred Gerstenfeld, ‘Anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism in Dutch Schools’, 1 November 2011, Breuerpress International, http://www.breuerpress.com/2011/11/01/anti-semitism-and-anti-israelism-in- dutch-schools/, accessed 2 November 2011; and ‘Jewish teenagers in Belgium quit their schools because of anti-Semitism’, European Jewish Press, 4 December 2011, http://www.jewishresearch.org/quad/12-11/belgium.htm, accessed 29 December 2011. 12 R. Richardson, ‘Playgrounds, the press and preventing racism: A case study. FORUM: For Promoting 3-19’, Comprehensive Education, 48, 2 (2006), 186. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/62012862?accountid=14483; http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/forum.2006.48.2.181 13 C. Due, and D.W. Riggs, ‘Playing at the edges: use of playground spaces in South Australian primary schools with new arrivals programmes’, Social Geography 5. 1 (2010): 25. 14 R. Richardson, ‘Playgrounds, the press and preventing racism: A case study. FORUM: For Promoting 3-19 Comprehensive Education, 48, 2,(2006),181. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/62012862?accountid=14483; http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/forum.2006.48.2.181

9 physical attack on the child. Richardson analyzed the main differences between racial bullying and other forms of bullying, with the former impacting not just on an individual child, but the family and, indeed, the whole ethnic group. He noted that there are four main ways of dealing with the problem: ignoring it, rebuking the instigators, using logical arguments to attack it, and finally a holistic approach. He defined the last as ‘seeing and dealing with racist bullying within a social context that involves bystanders and reinforces as well as ringleaders’, with both a proactive and preventative approach.15

In response to anecdotal evidence of anti-Jewish incidents in schools, the ACT

(Australian Capital Territory) Jewish Community received a grant from the ACT

Government’s Multicultural Programme and commissioned A/Prof Danny Ben-Moshe to conduct a study of antisemitism in Canberra schools.16 This was a qualitative research project where Ben-Moshe interviewed four key Jewish representatives, two focus groups from children enrolled in the Sunday morning Hebrew School in Canberra and a focus group of parents of children enrolled in the Hebrew School. The seven questions in the questionnaire specifically probed issues relating to antisemitism. The key stakeholders described specific antisemitic incidences that had occurred both in schools and in the general community and analysed four main causal factors: the influence of the media, which is very critical of Israel; the role of the Churches and the accusation of deicide; the problem of ignorance; and Canberra’s more limited ethnic diversity compared with Sydney and

Melbourne so that “multiculturalism is not deeply rooted in day to day life and public

15 Richardson, ‘Playgrounds, the Press and Preventing Racism’, p.187. 16 Danny Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools: Report to the ACT Jewish Community, Inc’, December 2011. 10 culture is more characteristic of a regional centre than a major city”.17 Whilst not all of the children interviewed had personally experienced antisemitism in the playground, they were still aware of it and feared it. Ben-Moshe stressed that the antisemitism was largely verbal, confined to the school playground and reflected ‘deep-seated stereotypes of Jews’, with comments relating to Jews being greedy or stingy. One child was told that ‘the Nazis are going to come and finish the job’18 whilst the presence of swastikas was also commented on. There was also a religious element to the anti-Jewish feelings, which the children experienced, particularly at Christmas time. Whilst some of the children attended government schools, others attended private Christian schools, where they experienced problems of being forced to attend chapel services. Overall, there was a lack of sensitivity to Jewish religious practices, particularly in relation to dietary laws.

The children unanimously opposed reporting these incidences to school authorities and also did not speak to their parents about them. They feared that either no action would be taken or that their reporting would only make the situation worse. One upper primary school child stated:

I didn’t tell mum as she’ll want to be make a big deal of it and I don’t want to be

embarrassed. I’m already not popular (at school) and I don’t want to get others in

trouble. I feel it will get worse if I say something.19

17 Ibid., p.11. 18 Ibid., p.12. 19 Ibid., 14. 11

Some children initiated positive steps. One child shared information about Chanukah, the

Jewish festival of lights, which takes place at the same time as the Christmas period. One of the Jewish traditions for this festival is to eat ‘chocolate money’. The student brought some for all her classmates and ‘everyone liked it’.20

The parent focus group expressed great concern about the whole problem, fearing that their children were “being isolated and excluded”, and that this was creating a “situation

[that] was unsafe and, unless something was done about it, it could get worse”.21 They also commented that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had a negative impact on their children. In one case, a child was confronted about “Israeli oppression of the Palestinians” and, in another case, a child was physically assaulted by a Muslim student.22 In response to these findings the Canberra study came up with a large number of research observations and recommendations, focusing on the problems of stereotypes and bullying and ways in which these can be countered.23

Despite our extensive search for materials, we found that the number of articles dealing with playground racism was very limited, as discussed above. One of the problems in researching this topic is that it is more implicit than explicit. Research into school violence in general and bullying in particular is complicated, because it is often a tacit phenomenon, and it requires an atmosphere of trust to be revealed, as we found in our research.

20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 15. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 16-18. 12

Methodology

The research described here is an ethnographic study using grounded theory methodology, a qualitative research method that aims to investigate the systematic social processes existing within human relations and actions and to conceptualize them.24 This enables us to follow patterns of interaction and behaviours that are grounded in real life events. In qualitative research, the researcher is the main instrument of the study. S/he always starts with initial questions. However, sometimes unexpected data can emerge, leaving the researcher stunned. This is exactly what happened with the current research project, the main focus of which is the interrelationships between organisational structure, power allocation and identity in Jewish education. In order to better understand the uniqueness of the Jewish day schools in Australia, we decided to also include Jewish

SRI/SRE (Special Religious Education/Special Religious Education) in government schools. In our planning, we did not even give any thought to the issue of racial prejudice.

This was especially so for Australia with its multicultural ethos, where we thought stereotypical antisemitism was a phenomenon of the past. To our amazement, both primary and high school students in government schools spontaneously told us that they loved to attend SRE classes because they found them to be a ‘safe place’ in the face of the antisemitism which they were experiencing in the playground.

24 Anselm L. Strauss, and Juliet Corbin, Juliet Grounded Theory In Practice (London: Sage, 1997). 13

Qualitative research derives its data from the natural setting where the research is taking place and the researchers are the principle research instruments.25 Practically speaking this research can be considered as "research from the inside". Sikas and Potts argue that inside research projects "are undertaken by people who before they begin to research, already have an attachment to or involvement with the institutions or social groups in or on, which their investigations are based. In some cases their insider positioning (their insiderness) is primarily important because it gets them access to the particular people that they want to investigate.26 Even though we came from outside the government school system, we were an inside group for the interviewees and we could be more sensitive to the manifested data we heard and collected. The fact that the students felt safe enough to reveal to us explicitly their negative playground experiences was a clear acknowledgement that they saw us as insiders. They felt that they could be honest with us and tell us something that is considered not to be politically correct.

The data presented in this article is based on interviews with all the key players in Jewish

SRE, who provided a detailed description of these problems. An interview is one of the main ways through which we can understand human experience.27 In our research we employed in depth semi structured interviews. We started with specific questions that were supposed to lead to a certain theory we wanted to investigate yet the questions were open enough to enable free conversation where some other issues were naturally raised by the

25 Elliot Eisner and Alan Peshkin, ‘Introduction’, in Qualitative Inquiry in Education: the Continuing Debate (New York and London: Columbia University: Teachers College 1990). 26 Pat Sikes and Anthony Potts, ‘Introduction. What are we talking about and why?’, in Researching Education From the Inside (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 3. 27 A. Fontana and J.H., ‘The interview: From structured questions to negotiated text’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), Handbook of Qualitative research, second edition, (London: Sage Publications 2000), 645. 14 interviewees. Qualitative research is a naturalistic research, which develops where the phenomenon practically occurs. Semi-structured interviews28 are in many cases a reliable source for information as on the one hand they are open so that they can produce a "thick description"29 of the phenomenon under investigation yet they are initially structured so that the discussion will have a designated direction as opposed to open-ended interviews. The aim of the interview in a qualitative study is not to receive answers to questions or to investigate assumptions. The essence of the research lies in the attempt to understand the experience of other people and the significance they give to this experience. The interview opens up access to social and cultural contexts and to the different behaviours of human beings in those contexts, thus enabling the researcher through the interview to understand this behaviour and through it those contexts.30

Population

In Sydney, the main government schools offering Jewish SRE are Bellevue Hill

Primary, Rose Bay Primary, Vaucluse Primary, and Rose Bay Secondary College, in the eastern suburbs, and St Ives Primary, St Ives East Primary and Killara High on the North

Shore. In each school, 20-50% of the school population is Jewish. In Melbourne, the situation is the same for Jewish SRI in Elwood, Caulfield, and St Kilda. Over the last four years, the number of Jewish children in Victorian SRI classes has been increasing.

The SRE educators in the government schools consist of three main groups: retired teachers who retain an interest in teaching; university students who are also Jewish youth

28 J.P. Spradley, The ethnographic interview (New York: Holt , Rinhart & Winson 1979). 29 C. Geertz, ‘Thick description: Toward interpretive theory of culture’, in C Geertz (ed.) The interpretation of Culture (New York; Basic Books 1973). 30 I.E. Seidman, Interviewing as Qualitative research (New York: Teachers College Press 1991). 15 leaders; and young mothers who do not wish to take on full time work. The students come from varied backgrounds, both in terms of their home religious observance, and their wider ethnic backgrounds. Most come from secular homes; in some cases from inter-marriages, with one non-Jewish parent. The two most recent Jewish migrant groups to Australia are

Russian and Israeli, and these two groups tend to have a higher proportion of children in government schools.

Tools

Fifty-five student interviews in the classroom were performed in Sydney in two schools

(one primary – 20 children, and one secondary – 8 students); in Melbourne, in three schools

(two primary – 9 students in school 1, 15 students in school 2, and one afterschool group in school 3 – 3 students). Interviews with the educators were conducted: in Sydney with two teachers, the current CEO and the former principal of the Board of Jewish Education (BJE), the Jewish Student Network coordinator, and the principal of a government high school, as well as ten parents; in Melbourne with six teachers, the Jewish Student Network coordinator, the CEO of the United Jewish Education Board (UJEB), the UJEB president and vice-president, as well as three parents. In addition, the CEO of the Australian

Coordinating Committee for Jewish day schools was interviewed and eight interviews were held relating to informal education. In total, 92 interviews were conducted in Sydney and

Melbourne. Whilst we did not specifically ask about playground antisemitism, we have included in our findings all the data that emerged spontaneously from these interviews, not only from the students but also from the other key stakeholders: the teachers, the informal educations and the professional and lay leadership. 16

Procedure

We first received ethics approval for our overall project on Jewish education in Australia from the Human Ethics Committee of the University of Sydney and promised full confidentiality. The Director of the BJE in each city determined which schools, principals, teachers and students were willing to participate in the study and organized our schedule according to the required ethics procedures.

Analysis

Using a grounded theory approach according to the constant comparative method,31 data from the three sources (interviews, observations and documents –official literature from

UJEB and BJE) were analyzed, thus enabling triangulation.32 The analysis consisted of five stages: open coding; axial coding; selective coding (formulating the hierarchy and identifying core categories); creating a category-based theoretical structure linked to the literature; and proposing a theoretical model.

Findings:

Racism in the Playground

As discussed, we did not include a question on antisemitism. The students themselves raised the issue of racial prejudice in the playground. We found the same stories, with the same stereotypes, in both Sydney and Melbourne. From the data we collected, the problems

31 Anselm L. Strauss, Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 32 Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss The discovery of grounded theory; strategies for qualitative research (Chicago, Aldine Publishing, 1967); and Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Grounded Theory In Practice.

17 seemed to increase at the junior high school level. Thus, at one high school in Sydney in

2009, one of the boys said, without any prompting:

… if you are Jewish you are teased. They call you stingy. They throw you five

cents and throw it. Or they throw money on the ground and call out “who is the

Jew?” Or they will say: “That’s a Jew nose”. They say something about payot

(sidelocks). Then they have a brit set (circumcision set). Or they take scissors and go

like this [boy demonstrates scissors cutting with his hands]: “do you want another

brit”.33

In a further interview in Sydney in 2011, the Coordinator of the Jewish Student Network reported:

…they're in an environment where we are, as Jewish people in the world, we are a minority, but they very much stick out in their school as the Jew.

They talk to me often… and have concerns about the Jew jokes and some of them will have a five cent coin… dropped on the floor and a student will be like: “Hey, Jew, you should pick that up”. Their friends say this to them. They say it jokingly, but it hurts them a bit. It does hurt. They say it hurts them, but they know their friend's joking.34

She also reported about the experiences of one child, who shared this story with her during a camp:

33 Interview with high school male student, Sydney, August 2009. 34 Interview, JSN Coordinator, Sydney, February 2011. 18

Respondent: A boy once said to me that in his English [class] - he hated going to English. He hated it and I said to him: “Why do you hate going to English?” He said “Every time I walk into English, two boys stand up and go ‘Heil Hitler’ to me!’”.

Interviewer: They what?

Respondent: Said “Heil Hitler”.

Interviewer: Heil Hitler, oh!35

This JSN Co-ordinator noted that the situation was different in different schools, depending on the ethnic mix. She commented that in schools which were more multi- cultural the antisemitism was more “under the surface, more passive’, but still existed. As a result, she found that she was being welcomed as a ‘celebrity:

When we walk in there, the kids flock to us and sometimes you feel like a

celebrity, you really do. Like its amazing, that they really want to - they want to

know about their Jewish identity, they want to attach to something, they want to

hold onto it. You can still see that there's like, at the same time, they don't want to -

there's a blur and a blank between sometimes it’s cool if no one else is around and

it’s just them in their Jewish environment, but as soon as the other school comes

and the wider school environment comes, they disengage from us.36

In Melbourne, the Coordinator of the informal Jewish Students Network (JSN) for

Jewish children in government schools also highlighted the problem of racial prejudice. She described one school where the youth leaders were close to the Jewish students, and that during one session when the students were asked about their Jewish identity and how they

35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 19 felt, they fitted in, they “let it rip” because they felt comfortable within the group. She reported:

They said that they had one child who had money thrown at his feet and they said

‘Pick it up Jew’. Another child was kind of followed for [a] little bit for a week, and

then hit across the head. Another child was given a note that said you know “F…

you Jew’. So I think they have had a few things like that that make them feel

uncomfortable.37

The situation in lower high school deteriorates because of the impact of the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict. The Jewish students are seen as being Zionist and supporting Israel, and the antisemitism takes on a political connotation, as one of the CEO’s of the Boards of

Jewish education commented:

And anything political in high school is both interesting and, in this case, I think

broadly negative. I don't think that it's an easy job being a high school student in a

non-Jewish school. We hear constantly horrible stories about how kids get treated

for being Jewish. And it’s a consistent and endemic issue.38

Later the same respondent stated:

I would argue that every single child at secondary school, if they identify

themselves as Jewish, is receiving some sort of - or has been bullied because of

37 Interview JSN coordinator, Melbourne, August 2009. 38 Interview, CEO, Melbourne, February 2011. 20

that and has experienced those sorts of experience because of that. I don't think it's

an occasional thing. I don't think it happens here and there. I think it happens

constantly.39

The cultural differences between Jews and non-Jews also resulted in negative comments and teasing in the playground. Thus, one student responded to another student’s question:

ANOTHER GIRL: Do you get teased for being Jewish?

GIRL: Not really, just sometimes they talk about it and say: “You are not

allowed to eat bacon and stuff like that”, and I say “So what?”40

In this particular case, the student was not disturbed by this teasing. She felt proud of her

Jewish heritage and ignored the other students.

The Jewish teachers also commented on the problem of the Jewish children being exposed to racial comments:

TEACHER A: Yes, definitely, very underlying and tends to be verbal… Oh, I

have heard ‘Bloody Jew’, a lot, that is a very common thing kids in the playground

will say, that is about it, or ‘You are a Jew’, or another one I hear a lot, is sort of

39 Ibid. 40 Interview, female student, Melbourne, August 2009. 21

‘Jewboy’… It is said with a harsh tone, like a derogatory term… you know, they run

past, [call out] ‘Jew boy’, and keep going.41

Jewish students can also experience problems in sporting activities. One Melbourne high school student reported:

… sometimes does get quite annoying in general, like sometimes out of school

being Jewish

INTERVIEWER: Why?

BOY: Because like in soccer teams and stuff often I am the only one, not this

year because we has still got two but you sometimes do get bagged a lot for being

Jewish…42

According to one of the lay leaders, such comments are especially prevalent at schools where Jews were a smaller proportion of the overall school population.

In some cases, the issue of verbal abuse became so difficult for the students involved, that they actually changed to a different government school. One high school student commented:

41 Interview, Teacher, Melbourne, August 2009. 42 Interview, male student, Melbourne, August 2009. 22

…like there is one other school that two people have left because for three days

people have been bullying them because they are Jewish and they have come back

to this school.

A Sydney Jewish high school student also related how she decided to change schools after having been ostracised by the other students in her class following her making a complaint to the school management about an inappropriate analogy with the Holocaust.

Responses to Racial Prejudice

The Students

The students whom we interviewed told us that there were two different approaches to the verbal antisemitism they experienced in the playground. One approach was not to admit to being Jewish and to attend either the ‘non-scripture’ classes or even to chose Christian

SRE; the second approach was to want to identify strongly as Jews and to love to go to the

Jewish SRE because it enabled them to meet their friends and to find a ‘safe place’:

• INTERVIEWER: I see, okay, someone else? Would you like to say anything

else?

GIRL: I like Jewish RE because it is a place where I can fit in.

• UJEB Class GIRL: To learn in here with UJEB and it is a safe environment.43

43 Interview, female student, Melbourne primary school, August 2009. 23

In general we found that the students loved to attend their SRI/SRE classes. In some cases they said that they waited all week for these classes. The parents informed us that their children were very disappointed if the classes were cancelled because of other demands from the school curriculum:

Mother: They definitely look forward to that half hour a week… their feeling

that half hour, that coming together once a week, is very important and in fact my

son waits for it every week, it is like ‘Oh we did not have RE again this week,

they said we will start next week’.44

The teachers played a key role in the creation of the positive environment in these classes and the students emphasized that the SRI/SRE provided them with a safe place, with friendship and enhanced their sense of belonging.

Parents and Teachers

Whilst both the parents and teachers spoke about the social networking that occurred through the SRI/SRE classes, unlike the students they did not spontaneously raise the issue of racial prejudice. However, when prodded by the interviewer, they did comment on this problem.

One explanation for the antisemitism and anti-Jewish bullying was that the non-Jewish students were just ignorant. As one of our respondents explained:

44 Interview, mother, United Jewish Education Board, Melbourne, August 2009. 24

Whereas I think, for a lot of the kids that are promoting antisemitic activity

through their bullying, [they] are just ignorant and they're just regurgitating

something that they heard their parents say something or they heard someone else

say.45

School Principals

In Sydney, one school principal strongly denied that there was any racial prejudice against the Jewish students in his school (he saw even the suggestion of this as a threat – he could lose the Jewish students, who constitute 20-30% of the student body). Similarly in

Melbourne, the principal of a government school completely denied the situation and was extremely defensive when the Jewish educator broached the subject with her:

JSN COORDINATOR… she said that she does not necessarily believe that

these students are being picked on because they are Jewish. She said she believes

that the bullies are doing that because they are bullies; they are not doing it because

they are racist – they are doing it just because they know they can pick on

somebody. I don’t really agree with her because I think then they will just picking

on anybody, picking on them for a particular reason so it is not just a bully…46

This particular school principal demanded to know the names of all the students involved, but the UJEB personnel were not willing to provide this information without the

45 Interview, Melbourne, 16 February 2012. 46 Interview, JSN Coordinator, Melbourne, August 2009. 25 consent of the individual students involved. Instead, the JSN Coordinator suggested to the principal to consider educational programs offered by the Jewish community such as trips to the Jewish Museum or the Holocaust Centre. She reported:

…as I said to her you know ‘Perhaps that is something you could look at’. I

don’t know how open she was to that. She obviously has an approach where she

wanted to know who these students were so that she could confront them and try to

work out and I said to her: ‘Look, right now without their permission I am not

comfortable giving you that information.’47

Thus, the children who experienced antisemitism in the playground were very reluctant to report it.

Discussion

The Nature of the Playground Antisemitism

Research into antisemitism has identified three major phases in its development. The first phase was religious anti-Judaism, which emerged with Christianity and the accusation of deicide, but which also exists with Islam, since both religions see themselves as replacing

Judaism. The second phase was classical racial antisemitism, which emerged in Europe during the late nineteenth century, and developed the concept of the Jew as evil in an economic and racial sense. This form of racism reached its apogee with the Nazi period.

The third and most recent phase is associated with the Israel/Palestinian conflict and occurs where legitimate criticism of Israel morphs into an irrational hatred of Zionism and all Jews.

What we found in the playground was classical racist antisemitism, which draws on all the

47 Ibid. 26 stereotypical racial elements that portray the Jew as greedy and evil. This was in keeping with the findings of the Canberra study that:

Age-old negative stereotypes about Jews remain deeply entrenched in the mindset

of primary and middle school years children in Canberra. These are being

expressed freely and constantly at the small number of Jewish children attending

Canberra schools.48

The most common story narrated by the students in both Sydney and Melbourne was the coin-throwing story. Similarly the Canberra study reported this story.49 The prevalence of the coin-throwing story has an ongoing history for over a century. In the late nineteenth century the nationalistic Australian newspaper, The Bulletin, regularly published antisemitic cartoons. One of these cartoons featured a non-Jewish boy wanting to fight a Jewish boy, who refused to move because he had his foot on a coin:

48 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 16. 49 Danny Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, p.12. 27

CAPTION: HARD CASH Scene – outside an old clothes shop. Two boys (Jew and gentile) fighting. OLD JEW (from the doorway): “Ikey, my boy, v’y don’t ye go for ‘im – foller ‘im around?” LITTLE IKEY: “I can’t fader. I’ve got my foot on a penny he dropped!” The Bulletin, 25 December 1897. Australian Jewish Historical Society Archives, Sydney, AB204.

28

From evidence of earlier generations, it appears as though the ‘coin story’ has been passed down in the playground from generation to generation. This reinforces the stereotype that

Jews are greedy and only concerned with money, as seen through the well known saying

‘Don’t be a Jew’, and earlier dictionary definitions of the word ‘Jew’ as ‘miser’. In his study of Jews and Capitalism, Muller noted that Jewish involvement in trade and money-lending during the middle ages contributed to their economic development and is a key factor in understanding Jewish financial success in the modern era, but this has also had ongoing negative effects for the Jewish people. He argues that ‘the association of money with a theologically stigmatized minority cast an aura of suspicion around money and money- making’.50 In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Bulletin and other

Australian publications of the day highlighted Jews as usurers, with many anti-Jewish cartoons featuring the three balls, representing pawnbrokers, as in the cartoon above. The

Bulletin summed up these attitudes with the following comment relating to threat of Jewish refugees from Tsarist Russia coming to Australia at the turn of the century:

Even the Chinaman is cheaper in the end than the Hebrew,… the one with the

tail is preferable to the one with the Talmud every time. We owe much to the Jew –

in more sense than one – but until he works, until a fair percentage of him

produces, he must always be against democracy.51

50 Jersy Z. Muller, Capitalism and the Jews, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2010), 9. 51 As cited in Frank Fletcher, ‘The Victorian Jewish Community, 1891-1901: Its Interrelationship with the Majority Gentile Community’, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, vol 8, part 5, 250. 29

The negative connotations of usury led to an ongoing condemnation of money-lending and, as can be seen from this quote, the strong belief that economic gain should only be from physical work, which Jews were largely not involved in, either as farmers or as blue- collar workers.52 These age-old stereotypes persist to some extent, as seen from the contemporary prejudices towards Jews expressed by Australian school children in the playground.

The typical accusations made against the Jewish students clearly related to racial antisemitism, magnified during the Nazi period. The influence of Nazi symbols can be seen in the common phenomenon of graffiti, with swastika being drawn on school desks and in the playground, and students even reporting that they were greeted with ‘Heil Hitler’.

However, there were some religious elements in the anti-Jewish sentiments based on religious practice expressed by the students in the playground, such as the ‘brit’ set, with non-Jewish students making fun of Jewish circumcision, and also of Jewish dietary laws, in particular not eating pork, or other specific Jewish customs. The Canberra study also noted that children were asked why they did not attend church.53 These actions by the non-Jewish students reflect the traditional fear of difference – the fear of the ‘other’. The students focused on the elements in Jewish tradition, which differentiate Jewish practice from the non-Jewish world, such as circumcision.

None of our student respondents mentioned the religious accusation that Jews killed

Jesus. This was in contradistinction to the Canberra study, where the community leadership included traditional Christian antisemitism, and particularly the crime of deicide, as a casual factor in the ongoing bullying of the school children in the playground. The children

52 Muller, Jews and Capitalism, 18. 53 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 12. 30 themselves also raised the issue.54 Ben-Moshe’s research observations stressed that in general “faith based antisemitism was widespread” in Canberra. We did not find evidence of this in our study, possibly because Canberra is a regional city, rather than the larger urban complexes of Sydney and Melbourne. Another reason could be because our sample only comprised of students from government schools, whilst the Canberra focus groups consisted of students from both government schools and faith-based non-government schools.

Similarly, whilst antisemitic attacks appear to increase significantly within the general community, in particular but not limited to Australian university campuses, during periods of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as the Lebanon War of 2006 and the Gaza Campaign of

2008-9, the form of attack on the primary and secondary students was largely in a racial context. Our findings did not indicate many references to Zionism or Israel. This further reinforces our assertion that playground antisemitism was mainly motivated by classical racial antisemitism, so clearly portrayed in The Bulletin cartoon. These findings were reinforced by the data from the children in the Canberra who ‘reflected deep seated stereotypes of Jews’ with some also experiencing swastikas and references to Nazis.55

In contrast, Muslim students, who hold negative views towards Jews, are influenced by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They believed that Jews are ‘land grabbing’ and want to take over the world. The Muslim world has incorporated many of the classical Christian

European stereotypes in its attack on Jews and Israel.56 An earlier study by Rutland on the attitudes of Muslim school children in Sydney found that their anti-Jewish feelings were also based on racial characteristics, adding an additional layer to the political context.

54 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 11 and 13. 55 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 11. 56 Meir Litvak, and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 31

Veneration of Hitler and Nazism was prevalent amongst this student population group, with the belief expressed that Hitler did a good job, but he should have killed more Jews. As one

Muslim student commented to a teacher: ‘Sir. Why do all the teachers hate Hitler? After all, he only killed Jews’.57

Another key element of classical racial antisemitism is the belief in conspiracy theories that Jews control the world, so strongly reinforced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The students in our sample referred mainly to the accusation that Jews are greedy and money-grabbing – the typical racial stereotyping of Jews. The Muslim school children in government schools believed strongly in Jewish control and conspiracy theories.58 This manifested itself in the belief that the either the Mossad or the Jewish community was responsible for September 11. The study of Canberra government schools found similar beliefs.

The Jewish children in this study attended government schools in the eastern suburbs of

Sydney and the south-eastern suburbs in Melbourne. These schools have very few Muslim students, whilst the Christian students would be more likely to be secular. Many more religious Christian families send their children to non-government church schools, particularly in the Roman Catholic community. Thus, the results of this study relating to the powerful and enduring transmission of racial stereotypes in the playground reflect attitudes of the established Anglo-Celtic population and the European Christians, the significant population concentrations in those areas. Given the fact that most of the Jewish children

57 Rutland, Suzanne D. ‘Creating effective Holocaust education programmes for government schools with large Muslim populations in Sydney’, in Zehavit Gross and E. Doyle Stevick (eds), ‘Policies and Practices of Holocaust Education: International Perspectives’, Vol 1, PROSPECTS: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, Vol 40, Issue 1 (2010), 75-91. 58 Litvak, and Webman, From Empathy to Denial, 6-7. 32 who were interviewed for this study were assimilated, in a number of cases children from inter-married families, the cultural differences between the bullies and the bullied are minimal. Consequently, this bullying appears to result from classical antisemitism (the old racism) rather than the new racism defined by Dunn.

Denial and problem of acting on the information:

Our findings have shown that there is a strong disconnect between the official levels of classroom practice and what is happening in the playgrounds. As Shollenberger (2007) noted in her study:

Because the age is a difficult one, the adult vision of change can vary: a school

without bullies, without homophobia or sexism or racism, a school in which

students take the lead, a school which functions as a genuine community. This is an

important conversation, but the author states that she has often been frustrated by

the lack of concrete success, whatever the reason--student or adult resistance, an

already jam-packed plate of activities and missions, or lack of follow-through.59

We found that the disconnection was due to both student and adult resistance. On the one hand, the students were reluctant to take action and report these incidences. Many preferred to deny their Jewish identity and even attend non-Jewish SRI/SRE classes, so that other students would not know that they were Jewish. Similarly, the Canberra study found that the

59 Kathy Shollenberger, Student Theater Confronts Controversy to Create Safer Middle School Communities, Middle School Journal, v38, n5 (May 2007), 32-40. 33 children declined to report such incidents.60 They also tended to accept the antisemitism as a normal part of life and to just focus on those friendships that were accepting of their Jewish backgrounds.61 In Canberra they only shared their experiences with their Hebrew School teacher, after one of the students volunteered the information in 2010.62 In Sydney and

Melbourne, they confided in the problems during the JSN sessions, when they felt they could tell the young student educators within an environment of trust.

Most adults in Sydney and Melbourne simply denied that there were any specific problems of antisemitism. There could be two reasons for the parents’ reticence in talking about this issue: it could be a matter of repression and/or the fact that they accepted the existence of such racial prejudice as normal and did not feel the need to comment on it.

In Canberra, there was a more honest appraisal of the situation, with an unexpectedly high level of participation in the parent focus group,63 possibly because of the smaller size of the community. However, whilst they did admit to the problem, the research observations stressed that they commented that it was just due to bullying and was not related to anti-

Jewish feelings. Thus, the study specifically commissioned by the ACT Jewish community claimed that:

A child was more likely to experience antisemitism if they were generally less

popular and were being bullied anyway. The antisemitism being expressed did not

appear to be based on religious or ethnic hatred per se, but was rather another tool

60 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 16. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid, 3. 63 Ibid., 4. 34

to intimidate someone who is already being intimated and being bullied in multiple

ways.64

Whilst there may be some truth in this statement, the widespread nature of these attacks, reported by Jewish children across three Australian states, indicates that they are rooted in classical racist antisemitism.

This denial is a defence mechanism. Obviously, if the existence of a problem is not even recognised, it is not possible to develop teaching strategies to resolve the problem. The denial by educators of Jewish children being attacked in the playground on the basis of their ethnic identity is, therefore, very problematic. Playground spaces ‘remain important sites in which children learn about social hierarchies, and encounter cross-sections of society’.65 In the South Australian study the teachers denied that there was no interaction between the

NSB and non-NSB children in the playground, claiming that this occurred frequently. This claim did not match with the researcher’s observations.66

The Jewish students in the government schools are situated in an antisemitic climate, which they take for granted and believe that they have to adjust to it, as if it were normal behaviour. The reason for this reaction is that the undercurrent of antisemitism in the playground is so endemic and has been going for so long, that Jews feel as long as it does not manifest itself in violence, they need to cope with it. This reaction is typical of the way people cope with bullying. Only recently has verbal bullying been classified as violent behaviour because previously community attitudes only focused on physical violence. It is

64 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 16. 65 Due and Riggs, ‘Playing at the Edges’, 26. 66 Due and Riggs, ‘Playing at the Edges’, 33 35 recognised that incitement to hate is a form of ‘low-level violence’ that can eventuate in physical as well as verbal attacks.67

In terms of the students’ reactions to antisemitism, there are two different poles. On the one hand, as was said before, some children simply deny their Judaism and seek to distance themselves from any Jewish practice. On the other hand, others demonstrate resilience to the hatred, seek to explain their Jewish practices to the other children and, as shown by the findings in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, wear their Judaism with pride.68

Recently there has been significant debate in Australia about the place of education about religions in Australian government schools. In 2010 the Religion, Ethics and Education

Network of Australia (REENA) was formed as a conduit for this debate. As discussed above, in order to meet the needs of specific cultures and religions, the government allows the separate study of a specific in-faith education or, in some states, a course in ethics, with a compulsory weekly half hour lesson allocated for this purpose in Australian primary schools. Opponents to this system argue that it contravenes the Toledo Principles, which created an international framework for teaching about religion in government schools.69

This article argues that the SRI/SRE program provides a safe place for students who choose to attend these classes and allows small religions to preserve their unique cultural and religious heritage.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The issue of antisemitic bullying in the playground is a case study of the more general phenomenon of exclusion/inclusion or out group/in group of minorities in the schoolyard.

67 Meyer and Connor, 68 Ben-Moshe, ‘Antisemitism in Canberra Schools’, 16. 69 See reena.net.au/images/REENAPRINCIPLES.pdf. 36

This era of globalisation when there is much greater mobility, many different migrant groups have created multi-ethnic societies. This has magnified the importance of the issue of racist bullying.

Teachers need to be educated about this problem and to develop strategies for their students through simulation games, group discussions, creative drama, and other informal education approaches. In addition, it is important to bring different ethnic groups together, so that the children can learn to understand different cultures and not fear ethnic and religious differences.

In terms of teacher education there are two important issues to explore. Firstly, there is a need for teachers to better understand cultural diversity, and any specific cultural and religious issues facing their school population, Secondly, it is important for students from a minority culture that is discriminated against to be able to experience a safe environment – in our case study the SRI/SRE classes. One of the main aims of teaching is to provide a secure zone. The teaching-learning experience can be seen as an act of security and protection, as a moment of wearing a shield of hope to be better equipped against the possible storms in the outside world.70 Thus, teachers need to be informed about this need.

Those members in REENA, who were strongly opposed to separate religious classes, needed to be exposed to this different narrative so that the needs of the small minority groups such as Bahais, Hindus and other Eastern faiths, as well as Abrahamic faiths, will be catered for, as suggested in the statement of principles.71

70 Grace Feuerverger, Teaching, Learning and Other Miracles (Rotterdam, Sense Publishers, 2007). 71 See reena.net.au/images/REENAPRINCIPLES.pdf. 37

Secondly, it is important to educate not only classroom teachers but also school principals and administrators in how to respond in a positive fashion to problems of racial discrimination that occur in the playground, despite the best efforts of official government policies and the care taken by teachers in the classroom. Our findings showed that the principals involved responded with denial. Hence, better strategies needs to be developed to enable principals to acknowledge racial problems in the playground, establish better policies for handling complaints and to assist both principals and teachers to deal with these problems.

Through creative and inspiring educational programming, schools need to break the cycle of stereotypical views about Jews being passed down in the playground,72 and the same principle applies to other religious and ethnic groups. Thus, schools need to educate the children explicitly about the problem of stereotypes and initiate systematic intervention programs to combat it.

Bullying is first and foremost a violation of human rights, and understanding this phenomenon should be an integral part of the school curriculum and teacher education agendas. There has been insufficient research as to how this phenomenon manifests itself in the playground and to what extent the children are influenced by their school peers and to what extent by their home background and other factors in society. The prevalence of racial stereotypes in Australia could also apply to Asians and the indigenous population, both of whom have long-standing negative images dating back to nineteenth Australia. Racist bullying has been denied or minimised, by claiming that such attacks are just part of normal

72 Z. Gross, ‘Combatting stereotypes and prejudice as a moral endeavour’, in F.K. Oser & W. Veugelers (eds), Getting Involved: Global Citizenship Development and Sources of Moral Values (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008), 293-306. 38 children’s behaviour in the playground. Through our research, we have shown that Jewish children are being bullied on a racist basis and that this is an ongoing phenomenon that has occurred over generations. However, more research is needed on playground racism, including the reasons why children need to display racial prejudice and the ways other ethnic groups are affected by racial stereotyping. This will contribute to developing strategies to break this vicious generational cycle.

Acknowledgement

Our thanks to The Pratt Foundation, Melbourne, for supporting this study.