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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
Education in Israel has been characterized historically by the
same social and cultural cleavages separating the Orthodox from the
secular and Arabs from Jews. In addition, because of residential
patterns and concentrations--of Orientals in development towns, for
example--or because of "tracking" of one sort or another, critics
have charged that education has been functionally divided by an
Ashkenazi-Oriental distinction, as well.
Before 1948 there were in the Jewish sector alone four
different, recognized educational systems or "trends," each
supported and used by political parties and movements or interest
groups. As part of the prestate status quo agreements between
Ben-Gurion and the Orthodox, this educational segregation, favored
by the Orthodox, was to be protected and supported by the state.
This system proved unwieldy and was the source of intense conflict
and competition, especially as large numbers of immigrants arrived
between 1948 and 1953. The different parties fought over the
immigrants for their votes and over the immigrants' children for
the chance to socialize them and thus secure their own political
future. This conflict precipitated several parliamentary crises,
and in 1953 resulted in reform legislation--the State Education
Law--which reduced the number of trends to two: a state-supported
religious trend and a state-supported secular trend. In reality,
however, there were still a few systems outside the two trends that
nevertheless enjoyed state subsidies: schools run by the various
kibbutz federations and traditional religious schools, yeshivot
(sing.,
yeshiva--see Glossary),
devoted to the study of the Talmud,
run by the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel and others. In the 1986-87
school year, about 6 percent of all Jewish primary school students
were enrolled in yeshivot, about 22 percent in state religious
primary schools, and about 72 percent in state secular primary
schools. These figures remained constant throughout secondary
education as well. Throughout this period and in 1988, Arab
education was separately administered by the Ministry of Education
and Culture and was divided by emphases on Muslim, Christian, or
Druze subjects (see
table 3, Appendix A).
Israeli youth were required to attend at least ten years of
school, in addition to preschool. The education system was
structured in four levels. Preschool was available to children
between the ages of three and six; it was obligatory from age five.
Primary education ran from grades one through six; grades seven,
eight, and nine were handled in intermediate or junior high
schools. Secondary education comprised grades ten through twelve.
Secondary schools were of three main types: the general academic
high school, which prepared students to take the national
matriculation examination, passage of which was necessary to enter
university; vocational high schools; and agricultural high schools.
The latter two schools offered diplomas that allowed holders to
continue in technical or engineering fields at the postsecondary
level but did not lead to the matriculation exam. The Ministry of
Labor and the Ministry of Agriculture shared with the Ministry of
Education and Culture some responsibilities for curriculum and
support of vocational and agricultural schools. Education through
the intermediate school level was free. Before 1978 tuition was
charged in secondary schools, and many argued that this
discriminated against the poor, especially Orientals. A January
1984 reform imposed a reduced monthly fee of approximately US$10 in
secondary schools.
Israeli education has often been at the center of social and
ideological controversy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
sociological surveys indicated that youth attending the state
secular system were both ignorant of and insufficiently attached to
"traditional Jewish values," which included a sense of kinship with
Diaspora Jewry. A Jewish Consciousness Program was then hastily
implemented, but results were considered mixed. Most observers of
Israeli education believed that the events of the June 1967 War,
and the subsequent trauma of the October 1973 War, from which
followed the increasing political isolation of Israel, did more
than any curriculum to reinstill a sense of Jewish national
identity in Israeli youth.
Meanwhile, in the 1960s the state religious system,
particularly at the high school level, underwent its own
transformation, which many analysts considered to have had
far-reaching effects on Israeli society. The state religious system
has always included a high proportion of Oriental students from
traditional homes. Middle class Ashkenazim began to complain of the
"leveling effects" the Orientals were having, and more specifically
of the teachers (who were accused of not being pious enough) and
the curriculum (criticized for giving insufficient attention to the
study of the Talmud).
In response to this dissatisfaction, activists from the youth
organization of the National Religious Party, the Bene Akiva (Sons
of Rabbi Akiva), in the 1960s fashioned an alternative religious
high school system, in which academic and religious standards were
much higher than in the usual state religious high school. This
alternative form soon attracted many middle class, Ashkenazi youth
from the older state religious high schools. In addition to having
a more rigorous academic curriculum, the new system was also
strongly ultranationalistic, as reflected in the form known as the
yeshiva hesder, which combined the traditional values of the
European talmudic academy with a commitment, on the part of its
students, to serve in the IDF. These institutions have turned out
a generation of self-assured religious youth who are not apologetic
about their piety--something they accused their elders of being.
Israelis referred to them as the "knitted skullcap generation",
after their characteristic headgear (as distinguished from the
solid black cloth or silk skullcaps of the ultra-Orthodox). Over
the years, they have been more aggressive than their elders in
trying to extend Orthodox Judaism's political influence in the
society at large as well as within the territorial boundaries of
the Jewish state. Many of these graduates have been instrumental in
shaping the New Zionism.
Arab education in Israel followed the same pattern as Jewish
education, with students learning about Jewish history, heroes, and
the like, but education is in Arabic. Arab education in East
Jerusalem and the West Bank followed the Jordanian curriculm and
students sat for Jordanian examinations; the textbooks used,
however, had to be approved by Israeli authorities. After the
outbreak of the intifadah (uprising) in December 1987,
frequent school closings occurred so that students attended school
only infrequently
(see
The Palestinian Uprising, December 1987-
, ch. 5).
Data as of December 1988
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