Public Education A Route into Lebanon’s Middle Class in the 1960s and Early 1970s (original) (raw)
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This paper presents a comparative historical look at schools in Lebanon and Syria as a space for debate and experimentation over the definition and transmission of “cultural” “ideals” in order to better understand the institutional topography and public reasoning over education and educational reform in each country today. Public schooling and state management of private schooling is on-going, dynamic experimentation to shape the political, religious, linguistic, gender, economic, and ethnic identities of the historic, current, and next generations. By comparing and contrasting two intimately-related and sometimes diametrically-opposed state cases, I attempt to complicate and contextualize our knowledge of citizenship and identity education in the Arab Near East.
Arab Studies Journal, 2018
Nineteenth-century Arabic speakers used two key concepts to refer to education: schooling, or ta‘lim, and upbringing, or tarbiya.1 While today many see these two terms as synonymous, the history of their relationship sheds light on a defining characteristic of nineteenth-century education in the Arab world and beyond: education’s promise to both transform the individual and contain social upheaval. This capacity to promise both transformation and stability made education important to reformers and statesmen around the nineteenth-century world. From France to Russia to Iran, education figured centrally in visions of state formation, individual progress, and social change.2 In Arabic, however, the dyad of ta‘lim/tarbiya marked the tension between reform and stability particularly clearly. While in previous centuries higher education had largely trained clerical, military, scholarly, or administrative elites while religious institutions handled the primary levels, in the nineteenth cen...
Confluences Méditerranée 112 (1), 2020
By retrieving the political experience of Workers' Committees, the following contribution aims at investigating the role of ideology and socio-economic pressures in the process of dislocation and recomposition of the political identities and solidarities in class terms characterizing Lebanon’s early 1970s, and which marked the articulation of the process of constitution-building of Lebanese National Movement. The contribution suggests the genealogical re-examination of the pre-war years – inclusive also of the transformative impact of ideological and class phenomena – as a viable starting point to critically revise the often misleading and simplistic narratives through which the first phase of the conflict has been dominantly understood.
A School for the Poor? A Case Study of an Arab School in Israel Serving the Working Class
Child & Youth Care Forum, 2023
Background The poverty rate among the Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel is two to three times higher than in the Jewish majority. While Arab schools in Israel have been studied from an unequal national and cultural rights perspective, they have rarely been studied from an unequal economic and social rights perspective, which highlights the role of education in social mobility. Objective Our study aims to add the perspective of social class to previous research. In this qualitative-phenomenological exploratory case study of an elementary school serving working-class Arab Israelis, we sought to identify and describe what, according to members of the school community, may promote or impede students' learning experiences. Methods We conducted 45 interviews with school staff, parents, and regional administrators and 26 observations of classes and school surroundings. These were analysed using a phenomenological method. Results Findings indicated that the school environment was complex, with different groups having unique needs and interests which sometimes clashed. Despite an impoverished, diverse, and challenging student population and a stressful working environment, many improvements were mentioned over time in students' achievements and attendance and relationships between staff members and parents, among others. A policy of studentcentred teaching was emphasised at the school, including many extra-curricular enrichment activities. However, many teachers reported burnout and a sense that their needs were not appropriately met. Conclusions An enriching child-centred school environment, parent involvement, and collaboration among staff may not be enough to contribute to significant changes in students' learning environment without addressing poverty on a governmental level.