Israeli Education Policy since 1948 and the State of Arab Education in Israel (original) (raw)
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This paper analyses Israeli policy towards Arab education in Israel and its consequences. Drawing upon literature on the colonial nation-state, and ethnic indigenous minorities, the study distinguishes three educational policy shifts since 1948: (1) Arab education under military administration until 1966 (2) the policy of integration 1967-1991 (3) the peace process since 1992, the quest for autonomy and Arab education's present 'on hold' status. Using the analytical framework suggested by Hodgson and Spours (2006), I first analyse political eras; then describe the state of the education system, the policy-making process and its consequences for the educational space and system outcomes. These concepts and methods are used to narrate historical developments of the Palestinian Arab education system in Israel, to critique state policy-making and identify future challenges. The findings demonstrate contingent relations between ethnicity and the state. The paper concludes by discussing existing educational policies and suggesting recommendations for the future.
Creative Education, 2022
The article examines the educational policy of the Israeli governments towards the Arab education system and the implications of this policy on the status and achievements of that system. Based on a theoretical background describing the relations between Israel as a Jewish state and the indigenous Arab minority, the study focuses on four main historical eras: 1) that of the Military Administration period (1948-1966); 2) the "melting pot" period (1967-1999); 3) After "Al-Aqsa Events" 2000 through 2017; and 4) Between the years 2018 (Nationality Law) and 2022. Drawing on the analytical framework designed by Lauen & Tyson (2009). The findings of the study demonstrate the existence of understandable patterns of inequality on the basis of ethnicity and possible relationship between national ethnic affiliation in Israel and education policymaking for the education system of Arab minority. The article offers insights, conclusions, and recommendations for the future.
An Historical Review of Educational Policy f or the Arab- Palestinian Population in Israel
2013
Introduction Some of the most important issues in the history and sociology of education for minorities are the relationships between education and policy and between education and social change. In this context, a number of central questions frequently arise: Is education a factor in modernization or preservation? Is education a source of power for minorities, or an instrument for the dominant group to rule over the weaker groups? What is the function of colonial education? Do political and historical processes influence the educational system? Some of these questions will be addressed by an examination of the Arab-Palestinian educational system from a factual, chronological perspective in order to understand the historical dynamics that have impacted this educational system. These influences are categorized by the following theoretical approaches: the positivistic, the conflictual and the colonial model. Hence, this paper aims to outline the components of these approaches and thei...
2002
""The dissertation is about the ethnicisation of social relations in Israeli society and its reflection and manifestation in education. My main aim in this study is twofold: first, to offer a critical account of the development of ethnic relations in Israeli society and to examine the role ethnicity has played in the processes of nation-building and state-formation; and, second, to propose a history of the educational system in Israel which accounts for the role of education in creating and perpetuating ethnic identities. The first part of the dissertation consists of a critical reading of existing analyses of ethnicity in Israel. Its aim is to bring the state into the analysis of ethnic relations and demonstrate that such an approach is vital to the understanding of ethnic relations and identities. In the following part, I trace back the processes of nation-building and state-formation demonstrating how governments and major political actors became involved in the formation and re-production of ethnic boundaries within Israeli society. In these two parts, I am arguing against both functionalist and critical accounts of ethnicity in Israel, which tend to ‘essentialise’ ethnic categories and thus deny the political nature of ethnicity and its power as an organising basis for political action. In the third and major part of the dissertation, I seek to re-construct the history of the Israeli educational system within an understanding of ethnicity as a structural feature of state-society relations. This re-construction reveals how ‘ethnicity’ became an organising feature of this system since its inception as a Zionist national educational system in the early days of the Jewish colonisation of Palestine. Whereas the ‘national’ educational system was characteristically sectorial, non-European (mizrahi) Jews were denied the same autonomy that their European counterparts enjoyed. With the transition to statehood, and the massive influx of Jewish immigrants, the educational system was re-organised under the aegis of the state. Yet, it turned out, this new system retained the ‘old’ lines of division between Arabs and Jews, and between European and non-European Jews, thus imposing upon the latter the stigma of being ‘non-modern’ and ‘non-Zionist’. This re-emphasised ethnic boundaries, and entrenched ethnicity as a powerful basis for political action. In the 1960s, when the state engaged itself in reforming the educational system, making it compatible with the new needs of industrialisation and nationhood, ethnicity again played a critical role in legitimising state policies. ‘Integration’, that is, the de-segregation of the educational system, turned out to be nothing but a political token and, in fact, a means for entrenching ethnic boundaries and identities. The state, I argue, has thus been a crucial factor in perpetuating those ethnic images and realities, and hence a focus of ethnic discontent in the 1980s and 1990s.""
From subjects to citizens: On educational reforms and the demarcation of the Israeli-Arabs
Citizenship Studies, 2005
Based on a critical analysis of the Arab educational policy, from Israel's independence in the 1970s, this article examines the pivotal role of the state in engendering the trends of Palestinianization and Israelization that arguably characterize the attitude of the Arab minority to the Israeli state. Exploring the educational reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, it shows the contingent relation between ethnicity and the state, and also, the interrelationship between the intra-Jewish and Jewish-Arab divides. Looking at the ethnicization of social relations not as a preordained upshot of primordial realities, the history of the reforms unravels the changing patterns of inclusion and exclusion that result in demarcating the Arab minority as both Israeli and Palestinian, and in constructing the oxymoronic category of “Israeli-Arabs”. Seen from the perspective of the goals for Arab and Jewish education, this category manifests the internalization of the “Arab Question” and the shift in educational policy from preclusion to incorporation, but also the limits of inclusion. These goals thus epitomize the ways in which the new discourse of meritocracy (resulting from the liberalizing of the economy and society) had determined civic equality between Arab and Jewish citizens, but equally important, the seclusion of the Arab minority from both the Jewish (ethnic) society and the Palestinian (national) collective. In this sense, I argue, neither Israelization nor Palestinianization were a matter of choice. Rather, both constitute the inevitable dual path for social and political inclusion, limited as it is.
Introduction: A Historical Context of Palestinian Arab Education
American Behavioral Scientist, 2006
This introduction reviews the historical and political context that provides an essential background for exploring key contemporary issues in Palestinian Arab education in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Formal public education in Palestine, from its very beginnings, was never under the control of the Palestinian people but instead, has been controlled by successive colonial/external administrations. This introduction examines how major historical periods have affected the development of Palestinian Arab education from the Ottoman period (1516 to 1917) to the British Mandate period (1917 to 1948) to the post-1948 period after the establishment of Israel, which includes the post-1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Oslo agreement period from 1993 to 2000, and the first and second Palestinian Intifadas.
Palestinian Education in Israel: The Legacy of the Military Government
Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 5 (1), pp.21-56., 2006
This essay analyses the ways in which the military government (1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966) and its policies positioned the Palestinian Arab community in Israeli society, with a particular focus on public education. The educational system for the Palestinian Arab community developed within the context of military government, and while the formal administrative structures have changed, the legacy of using education as a tool for political purposes has endured and continues to defi ne the educational experience of indigenous Palestinian Arab students in Israel today. Despite the formal abolition of the military government in the mid-sixties, its ongoing legacy continues to shape educational policy and practice, as well as the broader status of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel.
Palestinian education in the Israeli settler state: divide, rule and control
Settler Colonial Studies, 2018
ABSTRACT This paper situates the Israeli public educational system in the broader context of colonizing educational systems and explores the avenues through which it serves the Jewish settler-state project and establishes a colonial educational hegemony. Public education in Israel is legally mandated to promote the values of Jewish culture and loyalty to the Jewish state. Furthermore, its policy and content systematically instill racially derogatory attitudes toward the Palestinian citizens of Israel among Jewish students, as a basis for fostering and perpetuating the deep-seated societal division between Jews and Palestinians. In addition, the public educational system effectively maintains the cultural, socioeconomic and political subordination of Palestinian students through the substandard and discriminatory provision of resources, programs and services and the imposition of aims, goals and curricula that alienate Palestinian students. Consequently, their levels of educational achievement are lower than that of their Jewish counterparts. As such, the Israeli public educational system plays an essential role in consigning Palestinian citizens to the social, economic and political margins of society. The Israeli educational system is designed to control both the Palestinian Arab minority and Jewish majority and to maintain an unbridgeable divide – in support of the Zionist settler state vision.
Social Identities, 2004
The state educational system in Israel functions effectively to maintain the cultural, socioeconomic, and political subordination of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens through the imposition of aims, goals and curricula to which the students cannot relate, and the substandard and discriminatory provision of educational resources, programmes and services; all of which result in markedly poorer levels of educational achievement and lower rates of students qualified to enter higher education. As with every other aspect of the education system in Israel, these inequitable outcomes are not a matter of chance, but rather a matter of policy. In this paper, I will explore the ways in which racially derogatory attitudes towards the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel have been translated into discriminatory practices in the state-run educational system. I will examine the mechanisms by which these practices have placed Palestinian Arabs on an unequal footing with regard to their social, economic and political development vis à vis the Israeli Jewish majority, and have led to the institutionalisation of an education system that perpetuates racist attitudes and practices.