Reflections of disability in Israeli school readers, 1953-67

Abstract

ABSTRACT Disabilities were hardly and indirectly represented in Israeli school readers in 1953–67. This article proposes an integrative reconsideration of this attitude. Indeed, while disabled persons are represented as sensitive, their encounters remain sterile with no mention of either physical or emotional contact, without crossborders discussions. Normative persons address their disabled counterparts as seemingly helpless, neither willing nor able to help themselves. School readers offer a compassionate but a cold and distant glance. The whole period lacks empathy, and the disabled represent a specific aspect of that attitude. Israeli normative society emerges from school readers as elitist, ready to accept only those who conform to its high standards. For that reason, the readers abound with immigrant narratives, potentially able to integrate, but not with the disabled, of which readers seemingly despair. Even those who became disabled during military service are absent from the readers, for which they are of no educational use.