Since the beginning of the school year, images have been circulating online and among teachers of content from an online learning platform recently purchased by Ontario’s Ministry of Education. The materials characterize Israel as a guarantor of civil rights and liberties, even as it continues to wage genocide in Palestine.
This fall, a new digital learning platform was launched across Ontario school boards. The platform, Edwin, was developed by the private, for-profit company Nelson Education (partly owned by U.S. affiliate Cengage Learning) and was purchased by the provincial government for $60 million.
Amid cuts to programs and teaching jobs and increased class sizes in elementary, middle, and high schools, the Toronto District School Board says Edwin will “provide curriculum-aligned resources that support the teaching and learning cycle.”
The implementation of digital learning platforms was announced last year along with new standardized assessment policies, mandatory final exams, and grades based solely on attendance. The digitized platform claims to make it “easier for teachers to deliver consistent curriculum,” providing ready-made lesson plans and resources that meet Ontario’s standards.
However, some curriculum documents, particularly those that reference Israel, are raising concerns among educators, parents, and students. This is especially the case with the content of grade 10 courses, such as history and civics. History lessons have, for example, been updated to include criticism of “extreme political and social ideologies” which lumps together socialism and fascism.
One image in particular that has attracted attention is a Venn diagram comparing Israel and Canada’s democratic systems (pictured above). It states that both states share “guaranteed civil rights and liberties, including freedom of speech, the press, assembly and religion.”
Israel has killed more journalists than any nation on record and has perpetrated mass destruction of civilian infrastructure in Palestine.
The content in Edwin is not an isolated issue or a question of a single problematic source. Although Canada does not officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (only seven countries in the world do), the daily planners given to elementary school students across Ontario listed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Zionist influence in education
Several pro-Israel advocacy organizations such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC), and B’nai Brith, have a longstanding history of lobbying governments and school boards on the topic of education. In 2024, Ontario’s Ministry of Education allocated more than $55,000 to CIJA and FSWC to teach about antisemitism.
These organizations have been involved in the surveillance and suppression of anti-Zionism and pro-Palestinian voices within school systems. In December 2023, two employees of FSWC told the CBC that they had been instructed by their employer to “report students who made comments critical of Israel to the organization.”
Canada plays a significant role in the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the destructive crimes Israel continues to wage across the region. Weapons made in Canadian factories are shipped to the Israeli military. Canada has a longstanding free trade agreement with Israel and provides it with military aid, despite international calls for sanctions.
The presence of pro-Israel misinformation in school curricula is perhaps not surprising in this light. Still, the new Ontario materials sparking concern online are a further step in the project to cement of a pro-Israel, anti-Palestine worldview among Canadians.
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