FROM THE RIVER TO THE AB‘C ’s
B’klyn 3rd-graders learn from hateful materials
Two Brooklyn public school teachers are plying kids as young as 8 with anti-Israel propaganda, drawing lessons from material that twists the classic “Wheels on the Bus” song into a hateful screed that cheers the eradication of the Jewish state, The Post has learned.
In Giuseppe Rebaudengo and Anna Battaglia’s third-grade classrooms at PS 705 in Prospect Heights, young minds are being molded into “social justice warriors,” learning from materials that morph the beloved 1939 kiddie tune into a Palestinian resistance cry called “The Wheels on the Tank.”
“The wheels on the tanks go round and round, all through the town. The people in the town they hold their ground, and never back down,” the sick new rhyme goes, illustrated with Palestinian kids hurling rocks at Israeli tanks.
“The bombs in the air go whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, all through the skies. From every river to every sea the people cry, cry, cry. Free Palestine till the wheels on the tanks fall off.”
The warped “Wheels on the Tank” was written by Woke Kindergarten founder Akiea Gross, though it is not clear exactly which materials the Brooklyn teachers pulled from Gross’ site or whether they included this rhyme.
“Thank you to @WokeKindergarten for your resources and voice on this matter,” Rebaudengo wrote in a social media post. “Your work has supported us in creating these series of lessons.”
Drawings of watermelons — used as a symbol of resistance by activists — line the hallways at PS 705, according to NYC Public Schools Alliance, which fights bias in schools.
“I want teachers to have leeway but we should also embed teaching with fact, not propaganda,” said Tova Plaut, founder of the educational watchdog organization.
“When we embed this bias inside young children, removing it is nearly impossible,” she added.
And there is little supervision or vetting of the materials that are coming into classrooms, Plaut said.
“What about the Jewish students in the classroom and school?” the group wrote on Instagram in a post where it shared photos of the lessons.
“The students who are worried about the hostages still being held by Hamas? The Israeli students?”
Hannah Meyers, a fellow and director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute, said education should not be indoctrination.
“If you are going to present an issue that’s complex and is appropriate to your class, you have to be able to present both sides of the issue,” said Meyers, who is also an appointed member of the state Domestic Terrorism Task Force.
“The whole point of public education is to train students to be effective, responsible citizens,” she added.
Rebaudengo has not been shy about his agenda.
“It is our duty as educators to ensure that our students, your children, our future, become social justice warriors working towards meaningful change in their community,” Rebaudengo wrote on Facebook in 2020.
Battaglia boasts in her LinkedIn bio that as an educator she begins dialogues that “address the dynamics of oppression and privilege and recognizes that society is the product of historically rooted and socially constructed group lines that include intersections of race, class, and gender.”
The ultra-left-wing site Woke Kindergarten includes lessons that call Israel a “made up place” with “settlers called Zionists who are harming and killing the Palestinian people.”
It is described as an “abolitionist early childhood ecosystem and visionary creative portal supporting
little comrades.”
Gross drew controversy in the past for touting in a kids video, “I feel safe when there are no police” and suggesting that “tree” could be used as a pronoun.
Schools Chancellor David Banks last week unveiled a plan to deal with growing tensions related to the Israel-Hamas war and warned that students would face “tangible consequences,” citing in particular the Hillcrest HS riot that sent a Jewish teacher into hiding.
Employees, he has warned, “should ensure that expressions of their personal political views are kept separate from their NYCPS job.”
Yet next weekend, a group called NYC Educators for Palestine is hosting a one-sided virtual event to give teachers the opportunity to share materials on “Palestinian history, the history of Israeli occupation, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Rebaudengo and Battaglia did not requests for comment.