Carrying School to Adulthood: Cultivating National Leaders in Israel's Elite Schools

Abstract

This study examines elite schooling in Israel through the eyes of former principals and members of the Israeli elite who are ex-students. Using a life-story approach, it discusses the values that informed school principals’ steerage of their schools in young Israel. It also reveals the socio-cultural lessons that ex-students learnt at school and carried into adulthood. It contextualises these life stories in the history of Israel and theorises them drawing from the sociologists Charles Taylor and C. Wright Mills and from the philosopher Aristotle. It unpacks the value regimes of these elite schools and highlights the links between elitism, identity formation, social cohesion, privilege and ethnicity. Overall its shows how elite schools adopt and nurture a sense of entitled exceptionalism which influences the ways that elite ex-students engage with wider Israeli society.