Abstract
The aim of the research has been to evaluate the contribution of the genre of bilingual literature, Arabic andHebrew, to citizenship education. Since the Israeli society is a multicultural society comprised of both nations,Arabs and Jews who live in conflicted environment, one must regard those textbooks as civic agents. Literatureis a socialization agent and as such it is an active influential factor in children's mental environment. Choosingliterary pieces adapted to children's life is important, since literature, by its essence, is about values, and itsfunction is to mold the child's character as an adult citizen. According the typology of Westheimer and Kahne(2003), the notion of being a good citizen is comprised of three types: the responsible citizen, the participatorycitizen and the justice citizen. The content analysis procedure, based on Krrippendorff (2004), revealed that mostthe stories, hence, ten out the thirteen deal with the two elevated types of citizenship, namely, the participatorycitizen and the justice citizen. Inspire of the fact that we are dealing with children's literature, the authors ofbilingual children literature do not belittle the capacity of children to grasp their role as citizens in multiculturalsociety.
Highlights
The new genre of children’s books, namely, bilingual literature - in our case Hebrew and Arabihc simultaneously is characterized by the writing of two different authors who represent their mother tongues, or a sole bilingual author
1.1 Typologies of the “Good Citizen”. In his "Ethics", Aristotle (384-322 BCE) describes the happy life intended for man by nature as one lived in accordance with virtue, and, in his "Politics", he describes the role that politics and the political community must play in bringing about the virtuous life in the citizenry
In some ways we have clearly moved beyond his world, there remains much in Aristotle’s philosophy that is valuable in our world today. His views on the connection between the well-being of the political community and that of the citizens who make it up, his belief that citizens must actively participate in politics if they are to be happy and virtuous, and his analysis of what causes and prevents revolution within political communities have been a source of inspiration for many contemporary theorists
Summary
The new genre of children’s books, namely, bilingual literature - in our case Hebrew and Arabihc simultaneously is characterized by the writing of two different authors who represent their mother tongues, or a sole bilingual author. This article, based upon a literary research, aims at setting aside a unique place for books that were conceived as bilingual from their very inception as one organic unit, and not written first in one language and later translated into another. The advantage of a text that was conceived as a Hebrew-Arabic text from the very beginning is that one is spared the problems arising from translating from one language into another (Shavit 1996). The aim of the research has been to evaluate the contribution of the genre of bilingual literature, Arabic and Hebrew, to citizenship education
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