Delineating Playground Anti-Semitism in Australian Government Schools

The re-emergence of antisemitism is a major contemporary issue. Jews in Australia were of the country’s founding and there is minimal history of antisemitism. However, as in other parts of the Western world, there has been a recent increase in antisemitic incidents, linked with anti-Israel sentiments. To date there has been little focus on the school playground as a transmitter of classical antisemitic beliefs, interconnected with anti-Zionism at the secondary level. This qualitative study draws on interviews with students in government schools at both the primary and secondary levels, as well as with other stakeholders in the two largest Jewish population centres: Melbourne and Sydney. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 90 participants, and classroom observations were undertaken in both cities, as a case study (according to Stake (2000) and Yin (2004). The study’s initial focus was not on antisemitism but rather on the students’ Jewish educational experiences in Special Religious Education (SRE) classes. The issue of antisemitism emerged spontaneously from the students. 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. We will demonstrate that Jewish SRE classes provide Jewish children with a ‘safe space’, assisting them to negotiate their lives within the broader global context (Zieberts, 2012).