Citizenship, Education and Social Conflict: Israeli Political Education in Global Perspective (original) (raw)
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Citizenship Education in Israel – A Jewish-Democratic State
Israel Affairs, 2005
Our point of departure is that the education of future citizens is afi eld that is greatly sensitive to the macro-political cultures of nations and the micropolitical culture of schools within these nations. To comprehend the enormity of the task of preparing youngsters to become citizens in Israel we discuss the major features of both Israeli society and the schools. Israeli society is characterized by great heterogeneity and wide rifts among segments of the population that hold contesting views concerning the very foundations of the state of Israel. This context makes the emergence of ashared civic identity amission that'shard to accomplish. We trace the major milestones of citizenship education from the pre-state period (Yishuv) until today and conclude that citizenship education progressed from a highly emotional nationalistic focus, centering on civic obligations, to am ore cognitive, discipline-oriented civic education with greater awareness of civil liberties and human rights. We also conclude that citizenship education is still inadequately implemented in the schools.
Journal of Peace Education, 2014
What is wrong with peace education in Israel? In this article I attempt to decipher the cultural codes of Israeli schools in their relation to issues of peace, conflict, and citizenship. It combines findings from two studies in order to understand how ‘school culture’ animates ‘peace education’. My main contention is not that ‘peace’ is or is not being taught in the Israeli schools. Rather, I ask how conflict is being taught, and what underlines the schools’ conception of conflict. Arguably, what Israeli schools are trying to avoid is not ‘peace education’ per se, but the very idea of political education. An adequate approach to peace education, I propose in a more general vein, ought to focus on conflict not as an aberration, but as a part of our cultural mindsets and conceptions of the world. An example from the campaign for the rights of labour migrants’ children is used to demonstrate a different approach to political education.
Civic and Citizenship Education in Israel
Cambridge Journal of Education, 2003
As distinguished from the formal, political science-oriented citizenship curriculum studied exclusively in secondary schools, civic education-learning develops throughout the young-mature citizen's life in Israel. The analysis of the role and learning of two primary civic myths-'Israel is a Jewish and a democratic state' and 'Israelis are Jews'-demonstrates how this learning takes place through 'formations' of hegemony such as the family, the media, civic militarism as well as through schools' statist and social curricula. Successes of civic education enable the civic myths to be vibrant, gestalt worlds of meaning for Jewish Israelis, and sites of resistance for ultra-orthodox Jewish as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel. On the other hand, as an ethnocracy, democracy in civic Israel is not a meaningful world of value but rather a means to manage political processes. Therefore, the Israel case study is insightful for understanding the limitations of civic and citizenship education that seeks to advance democratic-oriented values such as human rights, liberty, justice, tolerance, civility, coexistence, pluralism and an alternative concept of Israel as a civil society.
This study examines citizenship education in Israel from the point of view of Arab teachers, as they rework and negotiate the content and boundaries of their Israeli citizenship. Specifically, the paper studies how teachers of citizenship education in Arab high schools in Israel perceive their sociopolitical reality, how they respond to it in their classrooms, and how they conceptualize Israeli citizenship for their pupils. In doing so, the paper ponders the pedagogical strategies and emphases of these teachers, as they mediate the citizenship education curriculum, with its heavy emphasis on the ethno-national character of Israel, to their Arab pupils.
The Journal of Social Studies Research, 2021
The body of research on civic education points to the importance of teachers creating open democratic environments, leading to what has been termed the political classroom. This yearlong study of an Israeli multicultural and bilingual high school civics course, in which students from different citizenship status participated, presents a case in which teachers were unsuccessful in achieving this goal, raising the question of what limited this class's potential to create an educational environment where democratic discourses could have taken place? The main argument points to Israel's current disputative political environment that led to the enactment of four educational mechanisms that resulted in such a futile reality. These included: conflicting objectives, avoiding discussion of controversial issues, implementing traditional teaching practices, and overlooking language issues. The neo-liberal educational environment and a culture of fear and self-censorship were both identified as a common explanation to these, leading to an educational reality in which there was a detach between the lessons and the students' transcultural lived political experiences. From a methodological perspective, the study illuminates the importance of focusing on such unsuccessful cases, examining their elements, and understanding what influences them.
Navigating Israeli citizenship: how do Arab-Palestinian teachers civicize their pupils?
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2018
This study examines citizenship education in Israel from the point of view of Arab teachers, as they rework and negotiate the content and boundaries of their Israeli citizenship. Specifically, the paper studies how teachers of citizenship education in Arab high schools in Israel perceive their sociopolitical reality, how they respond to it in their classrooms, and how they conceptualize Israeli citizenship for their pupils. In doing so, the paper ponders the pedagogical strategies and emphases of these teachers, as they mediate the citizenship education curriculum, with its heavy emphasis on the ethno-national character of Israel, to their Arab pupils.
This article focuses on the role of the civics teacher against the backdrop of the recent political developments in Israel, where the political elite increasingly seeks to underpin citizenship education with a national-religious ideology. As in previous work on this topic by other academics, we draw on Gramsci's work on cultural hegemony to locate the hegemonic discourse of citizenship education in Israel and focus on the teacher's role along the spectrum of being an agent of the nation-state to acting as a transformative intellectual. We have interviewed Jewish-Israeli civics teachers to gain a better understanding of how they mediate their role between the different demands that the politics of civic education in Israel imposes on them. Our findings outline how teachers sometimes tend to reproduce the hegemonic discourse and how they also find ways to rebel against it, drawing on counter-hegemonic strategies in their classroom practice.
Inclusive Curriculum? Challenges to the Role of Civic Education in a Jewish and Democratic State
Curriculum Inquiry, 2007
Against the backdrop of growing conflicts in Israeli society and concerns about its democratic character, the current curriculum guidelines and official textbook for civic education in Israel were set to offer a more inclusive civic education that would stress ideas such as pluralistic and democratic citizenship. However, this curriculum does not operate in a vacuum, and despite the language of inclusivity implied in the curriculum guidance, a discursive analysis of the curriculum materials and interviews with 13 officials in the Ministry of Education revealed the complexities and the competing messages that emerged from contemporary civic education in Israel. This article explores the ways in which Israeli citizenship and membership in the civic collective are defined by the official curriculum and textbook for civic education. In particular, it is concerned with the tension between inclusion and exclusion and the ways in which civic education acts as a space for both nation building and state formation.