Education in a Society at a Crossroads: An Historical Perspective on Israeli Schooling

Abstract

SINCE THE EARLY i98oS, THERE have been many changes in Israel's education system, paralleling changes in Israeli society. The traditional Zionist and Jewish dimensions of education, once considered the essence of what was necessary to educate the new generation, began to be replaced by more conventional ideas of what is useful to teach the young. It is clear that there is a growing interest among parents and students in American-style instrumental education.I Even ideological and humanistic education can be properly understood only when it is seen to be instrumental in a different way. Israel's education system was founded on certain civilizational and ideological principles having to do with the survival and reinvigoration of the Jewish people according to the perspectives of Zionist ideology overall and the specific interpretations of that ideology represented by different camps within the Zionist movement and the emerging Jewish state: socialist, civic (international), and religious. Fostering these ideological and civilizational elements was considered to be the most important instrumental task of Israel's education systems from the beginning of the Zionist enterprise until the late 1970s. Thus Israeli education was designed with that task in mind.2 Most of these changes have to do with increasing the Israelis' ability to fit into contemporary civilization, especially in its Western, and most especially, the American version. The goals of Israel's education system in all of its parts are, perforce, different than those of the public educational system in the United States, because of the difference between the respective societies and their cultures. The American educational system is, to a very substantial extent--one might even say first and foremostinstrumental and always has been. What