Table Of ContentPOLITICS AND EDUCATION
IN ISRAEL
STUDIES IN EDUCATION/POLITICS
VOLUME 3
GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
VOLUME 946
POLITICS AND
EDUCATION
IN ISRAEL
Comparisons with the United States
SHLOMO SWIRSKI
FALMER PRESS
A MEMBER OF THE TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP
NEW YORK & LONDON
1999
Published in 1999 by
Falmer Press
A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group
19 Union Square West
New York, NY 10003
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
Copyright © 1999 by Shlomo Swirski.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swirski, Shlomo.
Politics and education in Israel/Shlomo Swirski
p. cm.—(Garland reference library of social science: vol.
946. Studies in education/politics: vol. 3)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-1616-X (alk. paper)
1. Politics and education—Israel. 2. Discrimination in
education—Israel. 3. Education and state—Israel. 4. Segregation
in education—Israel. I. Title. II. Series: Garland reference
library of social science; v. 946. III. Series: Garland reference
library of social science. Studies in education/politics; vol. 3.
LC94.I75S95 1999
379.5694—dc21 99–40928
CIP
ISBN 0-203-90672-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-90750-7 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-8153-1616-X (Print Edition)
Contents
Series Editor’s Introduction ix
Acknowledgments xv
Chapter 1:The United States and Israel: Nations of Immigrants? 1
The Nation of All or the Nation of Some 6
Nation, Class, and State Schooling 8
Segregation, Integration, and Tracking 12
The Plan of the Book 15
Chapter 2:Three Communities on the Periphery of
European Capitalism 19
The Zionist Movement 21
The Palestinian National Movement 35
Palestine Under the British Mandate 43
The Zionist School System in Mandatory Palestine 46
The Palestinian School System in Mandatory Palestine 53
The Jewish Communities in Muslim Lands 58
Nineteenth-Century Ruptures 60
The Jewish Schools in Iraq 63
The French in North Africa 65
Education for a Non-Sovereign Version of
Jewish Nationalism 70
Nationalism, Western-Style Education, and
Women’s Emancipation 71
Education, Nationalism, and Gender 75
v
vi Contents
The Ruptures of 1948 77
The Palestinian al-Nakba 77
The Breakup of Jewish Communities in the Arab Lands 80
A Nation of Immigrants? 84
Chapter 3:The Encounter of 1948 and the Israeli State 87
A Federation of Micro Societies 87
A Civil-Society-Become-State 90
A Ready-Made Peuble 94
The Paucity of Protest 98
The Politics of Carving Up: Carving up the State,
Carving up the Peuble 99
Two Exceptions That Prove the Rule 104
Mamlachtiut 108
Chapter 4:Israelization: The Schools and the Israeli
Defense Forces 111
The Absence of Common Schools 112
Israeliness and Learning 119
The Defense Forces as an Israeli Institution Par Excellence 122
The Shortcomings of the IDF as Israelizer 126
The Line of Gender 126
The Line of Nation 128
The Line of Ethnicity 130
Chapter 5:Economic Development and Class Formation 133
The Drive for Economic Development 134
Agriculture 135
Construction 138
Industry 140
The Expansion of the State Apparatus and the Emergence
of a State-Made Middle Class 142
The Closing of Ethno-Class Ranks 144
Differential Defense from the Histadrut 146
The Israeli Left 149
Chapter 6:The Labor Market and the Rise of a Three-
Tracked Welfare State 151
Micro-Society Safety Nets 152
The Dole 154
Contents vii
The Construction of an Ethnically Defined Welfare State 154
A Three-Tracked Welfare State 157
Social Science and the Legitimation of a Ethno- and
Nation-Class Differentiation 159
Chapter 7:From Separate Schools to Hierarchical Tracks: The Israeli
School System, 1948–1968 165
Curricular Absences 166
Curricular Targets Not Met 168
The Problematic Implementation of Compulsory Education 170
Unqualified Teachers 171
Prejudice Among Teachers in Mizrahi Schools 172
Security Control in Palestinian Schools 173
Failure Becomes Apparent 174
The Introduction of Differentiation 175
An American Precedent 176
Teunei Tipuach 179
The Introduction of Vocational Education on a Mass Scale 180
The Introduction of Ability Groupings 182
The Rationale for Ability Groupings 185
From Peoples’ Schools to Selective High Schools 190
Integratsia Is Linked to the Reforma 193
Opposition to Integratsia 194
The Paucity of Protest 196
Chapter 8:Israel Becomes a Regional Military-Industrial Power 199
Israel Becomes a Regional Military-Industrial Power 200
Differential Benefits 203
A New Cheap Labor Force and a New National Agenda 205
An Ever-Shifting Bottom 206
The “Stabilization” of the Israeli Political Economy in 1985 208
A Bipartisan Policy 211
Wage and Corporate Tax Cuts 213
Growing Inequality 215
The Marginalization of the Histadrut 216
The Great Losers 219
The Rise and Split of the Mizrahi Electorate 221
The Rise and Split of the Israeli Palestinian Electorate 223
A Middle-Class Society? 224
viii Contents
Chapter 9:The Rise of an Educational New Right 227
Education Budget Cuts 228
“Gray Education” 229
State Schools for the Elite 231
Parental Choice 232
Pupils Made Redundant 233
Russian Immigrants and a New Spurt of Growth 235
Tracking Moves into Israeli Higher Education 238
Chapter 10: Towards a Higher Integration 243
Tracked Schools, Tracked Nation 247
Towards a Higher Integration 251
References 255
Index 283
Soup, Salad, or Cake: A Metaphor for
Education/Politics in Multicultural Societies
Series Editor’s Introduction
MARK B.GINSBURG
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
“Take education out of politics!” “Education should not be a political
football!” “Keep politics out of the schools!” “Educators should not be
political!” These and similar warnings have been sounded at various
times in a variety of societies. Such warnings, however, miss (or misconstrue)
the point that education is political. Not only is education constituted
by and constitutive of struggles over the distribution of symbolic and
material resources, but education implies and confers structural and
ideological power used to control the means of producing, reproducing,
consuming, and accumulating symbolic and material resources (see Ginsburg,
1995; Ginsburg & Lindsay, 1995).
Political struggles about and through education occur in classrooms
and nonformal education settings; school and university campuses; education
systems; and local, national, and global communities. Different groups
of students, educators, parents, business owners, organized labor leaders,
government and international organization officials, and other worker-
consumer-citizens participate (actively or passively) in such political activity.
These struggles not only shape educational policy and practice; they
also are dialectically related to more general relations of power among
social classes, racial/ethnic groups, gender groups, and nations. Thus,
the politics of education and the political work accomplished through
education are ways in which existing social relations are reproduced,
legitimized, challenged, or transformed.
ix
