Bilingual Education as a Platform for Social Change: TEDxBeit Berl College | Mohammad Kundos

What do music, theater, and bilingual education have in common?

They can all serve as tools for social change, according to HIH Kfar Saba Principal Mohammad Kundos. Mohammad wears many hats—educator, artist, musician, and theater actor—and he has long studied how art and education can support the creation of a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.

If you like Shakespearean references, philosophy, and deep-dives into musical scales, then you’re sure to not only enjoy this TEDx talk, but feel called to action by it.

Below is a transcription of the TEDx Talk, edited for clarity:

“[Mohammad recites a prayer in Arabic, Hebrew, and then English] In the name of the Lord, the most compassionate, the most merciful. What do we feel when we hear a language we don’t understand, or a story that contradicts our own, or a foreign sound that pulls us out of our comfort zone?

My name is Mohammed. It’s a rare name (laughing). I don’t like Arabic coffee, and I don’t play backgammon.

And I’m on the long journey of searching for an answer to the question, how can we end the bloody Palestinian-Israeli conflict? We’re all living through a cruel war right now. Some of us have lost someone or know someone who has lost someone. We’re all living in the same reality, and experiencing the same pain. I’m honored to be on this stage to share my journey with you.

Before we start, I invite you to open your eyes. Picture two girls speaking fluent Arabic. Fluent Hebrew. They are playing chess, talking about their dreams, talking about their homework. Planning a beach party on a sunny Saturday. Talking about how complicated it is for them to live in this reality. At the end of the game, they shake hands, and go back to class.

“It’s very simple—if we want peace, we have to educate for peace.“

This chess game is a zero sum game like our reality—the way it looks today. Can we change that? Stay tuned. Now take a second. Close your eyes and breathe in. The journey is about to start. We’re going to travel to three different destinations. Three different challenges, three different dilemmas. Please fasten your heart-belts with compassion and tolerance.

First stop—music. As a musician and an ‘oud’ player, I had the privilege and the honor of playing with musicians around the world that come from different cultures and genres—musicians who play jazz, Arabic music, classical music, Indian music, African music, Jewish, Arabic, Muslim, etc. And I was amazed by the world of harmony. A magical world where a number of voices can be played together at the same time without interfering one with the other.

And I thought to myself, that’s the answer—let’s turn to music to solve our conflict. Let’s learn how to create harmony out of conflicting voices. Back then I didn’t know how to read and write music, and I thought to myself, if I really want to dig into it, I have to learn it professionally. I did, and I realized that it’s more complicated than what I had thought.

You see, in Western music, you can create harmonies out of the Western musical scales, and the Western musical sounds. Arabic sounds, my identity, are not welcome. You see, quarter tones in Arabic music do not fit in Western classical music. Quarter tones like the ones that I’m going to play right now. [Mohammad plays his oud briefly]

When I realized that my own music does not fit within Western music, that made me search even harder for an answer to the question, how how can we really create harmonies out of conflicting voices? I realized that some voices, some narratives cannot be played together. Some voices must be played one after the other. The challenge is, how do we really listen to these voices? How can we treat each voice as important and worthy of respect?

With what I learned in music, let’s move on to the next station—theater. Over the last 14 years, I’ve been part of the Jaffa Theater, the Arab Hebrew Jaffa Theater. I was part of a multicultural, bilingual production that brought Palestinians and Israelis together on one stage. I learned that the essence of theater is good conflict.

“It’s time to end the cycle of fear which leads to hatred and violence, and replace it with a different cycle—a cycle of listening, which leads to understanding and love, and ultimately, change.”

I was part of a production similar to Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo was Palestinian and Juliet was Jewish. I learned that in order to really solve the conflict, we have to work together. And like this unity of opposites, the world that we live in is created out of opposite, contradicting forces. And these contradictions raise hard questions.

Do we really need to witness death in order to appreciate life? Do we have to get sick in order to appreciate our health? These questions taught me that conflicts are great teachers. I mean, if Romeo and Juliet didn’t have a conflict that stood between them and their love, they would have gotten married on the second page of the play, and Shakespeare would not have become the Shakespeare that we know today.

‘Feather of lead. Bright smoke, cold fire, sick health’—these are all beautiful contradictions. Shakespeare brought the beauty of conflict and contradictions to the stage. But our reality is not Shakespearean. There is no joy in watching a bloody conflict take people’s life. War after war. In real life, we only appreciate peace when we see the horrors of war. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a cruel teacher.

Let’s go to the next station. Education. With music and theater in my backpack, I entered the field of education. I focused my research on the ethics and morality of the educational act. I learned that in order to try and solve the conflict, we need to take three major steps.

First, we need to agree on some basic values. Let’s say freedom, equity and justice. Easy ones. And you may wonder, what do we do with people who don’t agree with these values? That’s where democracy comes in—a real democracy that knows how to respect these voices, and create a “harmony” out of them. Then, we need to make sure that most of us really believe in these values. How can we measure values, according to the philosophy of human morality and ethics?

We measure this through our ability to fight for these values for every human being. So if we believe in freedom, equity, and justice, we have to fight for freedom, equity, and justice for all. That means for a child in Gaza, in Sderot, in Jerusalem, in Be’er Sheva, in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, in Haifa, in Tira, in Taybeh, and Kfar Saba. They all deserve the same freedom, same justice, and same equity. That’s the only way we can create a reality where the freedom of one does not threaten the freedom of the other. The third and most practical step is to create a bilingual, multicultural educational system. It’s very simple—if we want peace, we have to educate for peace.

Do you realize that there are more than 5,000 schools in our country, and nearly 2 million students? And how many of these schools are bilingual, you ask? Only nine. Only nine bilingual schools that bring Israelis and Palestinians together to learn from kindergarten to high school. The rest are separated. Two separated systems: a Jewish system, and an Arab system. This segregation creates a reality where we don’t meet.

Some of us first meet Jewish or Arab people at the age of 18. That’s too late. We live in fear that if we learn together, we might lose our identity and our culture. But the opposite is true. Kids in bilingual schools learn about their own identity, and about the identity of ‘the other.’

They learn to be proud of their own identity, and respect the other identity. Do you remember the two girls playing chess? This scenario didn’t come out of nowhere. These girls come from two families, one Arab and one Jewish, that decided to send their dear ones to a bilingual school to change their life. And who’s waiting for them in the class?

Two teachers that decided to work and teach together, and prove that us adults can do it, too. Students learn about the story of Noah’s Ark in the Quran, and the Torah, and the Bible, and Greek mythology. These kids develop critical thinking skills. They develop awareness; they ask hard questions, and they answer them. These kids start learning about each other. They can have a conversation about their political identities without the need to turn to violence.

I’m honored, and I have the privilege of being principal of one of these nine bilingual schools—the “Alif-Beit” Hand in Hand school right here in Beit Berl. It’s our duty to create the change that we all want to see in the future. It’s time to break down the walls of fear that separates us.

When these kids grow up, they will become the next leaders that will change our reality. And they will lead with courage, and passion, and acceptance, and humanistic values. They will change the future. It’s time to change the cycle of bloodshed and fear which leads to hatred and violence, and replace it with a different cycle. A cycle of listening, which leads to understanding and love, and ultimately, change.

We all have to make changes, even small ones, towards a better life. Shukran. Toda. Thank you.”