The Palestinian educational system is subjected to a systematic war of extermination waged by the occupation on all aspects of life and education, aiming to dismantle the educational structure and empty the future of its essence and true value. The danger is compounded by the conditions imposed by donors, which impose restrictions that limit educational sovereignty and hinder the ability to protect time and curricula. The national response has been made within the limits of possibilities and pressures, but it has faced serious challenges that led to the loss of the educational compass, and the emergence of decisions that lead to a gradual collapse of the system, and the reduction of educational time and content, depriving students of their right to comprehensive, dignified learning with depth of knowledge.
The leniency in reducing time and content does not represent a solution to the issue of teachers' rights in regular salaries and preserving their professional and occupational dignity, but rather constitutes a direct threat to the stability and sovereignty of the system, and to the ability of Palestinian generations to build knowledge, awareness, values, and achieve the educational mission. Education is not a privilege that can be relinquished, but rather a national existential pillar and a safety valve for the individual and society, and any tampering with it is tampering with the Palestinian entity and the future of its generations.
First: Educational time as a pillar for building and meaning
The class period in its complete educational structure is 45 minutes long, and the complete school break is an integral part of the school day, so it is not permissible to reduce it or treat it as a superficial transient service. These time frames are not mere formal numbers, but foundational standards on which curricula and their deep structure were built, designed to ensure balanced distribution of content, regulate cognitive load, and organize gradual transitions between concepts, while considering the psychological and cognitive rhythm of learners, and the individual characteristics of each child, their level of comprehension, and their mental and attentional abilities, that is, considering psychometrics in its full educational sense.
Each educational unit, each learning objective, and each classroom activity is designed according to this framework to establish gradual knowledge accumulation and achieve organized methodological continuity that ensures the achievement of national and educational goals, making learning a comprehensive process in which knowledge, skills, values, and awareness are formed, and the physical, psychological, and emotional structure of the student interacts together, achieving balance between mind, body, sentiment, and spirit, and granting the learner the ability to transform knowledge into true meaning, and deep understanding that enables them to consciously interact with their environment and society.
This construction extends over 180 actual days distributed throughout the academic year according to a specific weekly schedule, ensuring the regularity of classes and completion of breaks, forming the time structure that creates understanding and gradually builds knowledge accumulation. Any reduction from this framework is not considered an organizational adjustment, but a direct assault on the educational structure and the curriculum itself, and a gradual demolition of knowledge accumulation and students' skills, transforming learning from meaning to mere formal passing, which cannot be repaired by reduction or forced adaptation.
Second: The gradual collapse and the logic of retreat
The current reality reveals a gradual deterioration in the education system, manifested in reducing the class time from 45 to 40 minutes, deducting 10 minutes from the daily break time, reducing weekly working days from six to five, then four, and finally three days, with simultaneous miniaturization of educational content, while formally maintaining the number of annual working days at 180 days. These measures do not express phased organization or technical crisis management, but rather a cumulative path of reduction that reshapes school time in a lower manner, emptying it of its educational function in building gradual learning and cognitive meaning.
This retreat occurred without any scientific redesign of curricula, or adjustment of their educational structure, or consideration of the necessary knowledge accumulation and methodological continuity to achieve national and educational goals. This has led to a structural flaw that touches the core of the educational process, undermining the official school's ability to perform its mission in building cohesive knowledge, solid skills, and critical values and awareness among students. What is happening, no matter how many justifications it has, does not represent circumstantial management of a sudden financial crisis, but rather gradual normalization with reduction, and a silent path that redefines education as managed time, not a national educational project to be built.
The numbers are shocking: the annual loss of class and break time approaches 27 days, and if the school week is reduced to 4 days without redistributing classes, an additional weekly school day is added, bringing the loss to about 63 days. If attendance is transformed to 3 days, the loss rises to about 99 days, that is, more than half of the complete academic year. The student is asked to deal with a curriculum designed for time that no longer exists.
This is not an educational loss in the narrow sense, but a collapse in methodological continuity and knowledge accumulation. The sequence of concepts is broken, and forced cognitive leaps are imposed on the student without foundation, transforming learning from real building to formal passing. Lessons that are supposed to be built on what preceded them become separate units, understanding becomes fragile, comprehension superficial, and learning incomplete.
The impact extends to the psychological, social, and emotional structure of students. The ability to consider individual differences decreases, support spaces narrow, and the classroom becomes an environment of constant pressure. The child is deprived of time for consolidation, questioning, and organized social interaction. Even the break, as a tool for restoring emotional balance and organizing attention, is fragmented, as if the body and emotions are surplus to the educational process.
Third: The financial crisis and occupation as restrictions on educational rights
Silence on this issue is not neutrality, but conscious relinquishment of one of the pillars of national resilience, and adaptation to the ongoing reduction of educational time is not realism, but hidden normalization with a path that dismantles the educational system from within. Responsibility here is not limited to a ministry or institution, but a collective national responsibility that requires a radical vision and comprehensive mobilization of all expertise: economists and public finance experts, educators, national capital owners, research centers, and unions, to jointly work on fair and sustainable solutions that protect the teacher's dignity, ensure the student's full right to comprehensive and balanced learning, and fortify educational sovereignty and independence away from any external or circumstantial conditions that crises or donors may impose.
The financial crisis facing Palestinian schools is not a mere passing incident, but an extension of a rooted economic and social reality, intertwined with the occupation of Palestinian lands and the piracy of clearance funds, which limits the state's ability to fully and sustainably finance education. Nevertheless, no circumstance, whether resulting from occupation or conditional funding from donors, should turn the fixed educational right into a hostage. These crises cannot be used as a pretext for deducting educational time, reducing classes and breaks, fragmenting the curriculum, or depriving Palestinian generations of their full right to comprehensive and conscious learning.
This ongoing reduction of educational time and content, in the context of the financial crisis, directly harms the role of the official public institution in providing free and equitable education to all students, as it weakens its ability to fulfill its educational responsibilities, leading to the transfer of some students to private schools, which consolidates class differences and creates unfair educational discrimination, weakening the public right to equal and comprehensive education. This reality threatens the stability and sovereignty of the educational system, transforming education from a constitutional and social right into a commodity subject to variation between affluent and non-affluent families, exacerbating social inequality and undermining national educational justice.
Fourth: The stern call for full attendance and protection of school time
Palestinian education constitutes a pillar of the nation's future, and any reduction from it does not affect students and teachers alone, but touches the core of the state and society as a whole. Protecting educational rights is not a choice or luxury, but a national duty imposed by reality, requiring the affirmation of the stability of the educational system and the sustainability of the teacher's dignity, and ensuring the student's right to free, comprehensive, meaningful, and dignified learning. Any financial solutions must be built on the foundations of efficiency and justice, not on depriving future generations of equal and free education that preserves educational values, ensures salary regularity and protection of teachers' professional and occupational rights, and preserves the stability and sovereignty of the system.
The call is clear and decisive: the second semester must be implemented with full attendance, with complete time slots (45 minutes) and complete breaks, and every school day preserved out of 180 actual days, with a comprehensive educational program that includes curricula, classes, breaks, and classroom activities and educational programs, without any reduction or fragmentation. Protecting school time and the complete educational program is not merely organizing time or distributing content, but preserving the future, securing the Palestinian human, and enhancing national sovereignty. Palestinian education cannot tolerate any further retreat, because reducing time or curriculum content constitutes the beginning of dismantling the human, and breaking the human is dismantling the nation in the long term.
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Palestine's Educational Cry… Generations Lost… A System Dismantled