Politics and Policy-Making in Israel's Education System (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 121 Israel involving the group that is certainly the most different from any others that have come to the country. It is particularly useful in its description ofthe educational aspects of the process up to 1987. The author should be encouraged to continue the story to see what changes might have occurred in the years since then. James Quirin Department of History Fisk University Politics and Policy-Making in Israel's Education System, by Haim Gaziel. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1996. 195 pp. $24.95. In Israel as elsewhere, education is one ofthose policy fields that touches many citizens intimately. It purports to affect the life chances of our children, and its demands on the public treasury weigh heavily on our taxes. It generates public dispute, sometimes at the highest levels of intensity, concerning the full range ofpolitical issues: who gets what? and who pays how much? Embedded in these questions are who goes to school with whom? how much are teachers paid? how large are the classes? what subjects will be favored or slighted in the curriculum? what weight should be given to provocative values such as equality ofopportunity and the resources to be allocated to the gifted or the disadvantaged students, as well as to those from ethnic or religious minorities? and what influence in the content ofeducation is to be given to teachers, parents, politicians, and professionals in local and national agencies? Haim Gaziel provides a comprehensive survey of policy-making for elementary and secondary education in Israel. He begins with basic lessons from political science that deal with policy-making, proceeds to a historical survey of elementary and secondary education in Israel since modem Zionism began at the end of the nineteenth century, describes major points ofprofessional and political dispute prominent over the years, and ends with his own list of favorite reforms. The emphases ofthe book are the disputes between major organizations that reflect conflicts deeply rooted in Israeli society. Here is material for readers interested in the religious-secular dispute and the importance of ideologies touching upon religion, nationalism, socialism, integration or particularism, as well as the special needs or disadvantages asserted on behalfofIsrael's non-Jewish minorities. Also prominent in his survey are parents who ascribe or object to one or another policy theme, plus teachers and administrators who want better salaries, more resources, or more freedom, and university researchers who cooperate with educational authorities and politicians in supporting one or another fashion in education, sometimes with the endorsement of 122 SHOFAR Fall 1997 Vol. 16, No.1 research showing its utility and sometimes in the face of research indicating its lack of utility. Israel's education is formally centralized but reflects the looseness, lack of discipline, flexibility, and openness to particularistic political pressures that are well known across Israel's public organizations. "Gray education," or parent-financed supplemental programming, seems to be growing alongside the slogan of universal, compulsory, and free education ideologically required in the name of equality. Integration between socio-economically disadvantaged and advantaged Jewish pupils has failed in the face of crude or sophisticated evasions by parents and school administrators, with the cooperation of Ministry of Education and local authorities supposedly operating under an explicit policy of integration. The book is a valuable addition to what is known about education in Israel and is crafted to earn a place in the literature that compares policy efforts across nations. The author's perspectives are eclectic, and his judgments ofthose who contend for influence is fair. Along with this praise, it is appropriate to indicate what is lacking: a more focused concern as to how Israel compares to other countries in the resources allocated to education and its achievements, and a survey of higher education in Israel. Both are important deficiencies. The lack of international.comparison keeps the reader from knowing how education in Israel, for all the clumsiness of its policy-making, stacks up against other countries. The lack of attention to higher education limits the author's treatment of equality versus achievement that consumes so much political energy in Israel and a great deal ofspace in his book. Some ofthe most important conflicts about equality versus achievement...