Lesson in tolerance drawn from welcoming Wales

VCHILDREN AT a primary school in Anglesey have been learning to celebrate diversity in an art project inspired by two Jewish families who used to live on the North Welsh island.

Pupils from Ysgol Gynradd Amlwch followed the story of the Pollecoffs and Steins, who came from Russia in the late 19th century and flourished after opening drapery stores in Holyhead and Amlwch.

Using archive documents and museum artefacts, pupils were helped on their journey into the past by Anglesey Archives, the Oriel Môn arts centre and prominent North Wales artist Jwls Williams.

Anglesey’s senior archivist, Hayden Burns, said, “They also created original bilingual artwork based on their own experiences and inspired by the archives.”

At the opening of an exhibition of their work at the archives building in Llangefni, Councillor Margaret Roberts, chair of Anglesey Council, said the project “not only celebrates our local history, but also teaches the importance of tolerance, diversity and embracing people from all backgrounds”.

Both families, she said, became “an important part of their respective communities, they learnt Welsh, and were weclomed by their new neighbours.”

Pupils from Anglesey school with some of their art inspired by a project on Jewish families

The project was supported by a grant from the Welsh government’s Archive and Records Council Wales.

According to the local archives, there was no synagogue on the island but a rabbi from Bangor, 20 miles away, visited weekly to give children lessons.

While there is no organised Jewish community in Anglesey, the 2011 Census recorded 40 Jews living there.

VTHE BOARD of Deputies has called for the “substantial rewrite” of a school history textbook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Its publishers Pearson are already carrying out a review into the book,

which covers an option in the Edexcel international GCSE history course, following a critical report by the pro-Israel blogger and researcher David Collier.

Mr Collier, whose analysis was commissioned by the Zionist Federation, described the book as “poisonous… hard-core anti-Zionist revisionist material”.

In a letter to Pearson, which owns the Edexcel exam board, the Board’s chief executive Gillian Merron said there were “serious concerns regarding inaccurate content, selectivity around historical events… imbalanced imagery and problematic terminology”.

Taken together, it gave the book “an unacceptable slant, which amounts to bias,” she said.

Among issues highlighted by the Board was “one-sided” coverage of the perpetrators of violence, with “insufficient reference to terrorist organisations” such as Hamas which killed Israelis.

The exodus of Jews from Arab lands after the creation of the state of Israel had been ignored, the Board said.

Pearson’s review also covers a similar textbook, written by the same author Hilary Brash, which is used for its domestic GCSE history unit on the conflict.

A spokesman for Pearson said they did “not follow any ideological agenda and always aim to present impartial, objective content. Inevitably when difficult issues such as this are addressed, it is likely to generate debate.”

Edexcel, he noted, was “the only awarding body that tackles this subject matter and we do it as we think it is an important topic, even though it is likely to provoke emotive responses”.

The Middle East option was taken by 1,509 iGCSE students and 2,341 GCSE students in this year’s exams.

The domestic GCSE unit on the Middle East covers a narrower period than its international equivalent, spanning the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the second Oslo peace accord in 1995.

In the UK, iGCSEs are mainly taken in public schools because they are not recognised for the purpose of official league tables.