IJJER
International Journal
of Jewish Education Research,
2011 (3), 65-89.
Social Education of Immigrants as a
National Socialization Agent in the New
State of Israel
Tali Tadmor-Shimony | [email protected]
Ben- Gurion University
Nirit Reichel | [email protected] Kinneret Regional Academic College
Abstract
Facilitating the integration process of new immigrant students in
Israel was a major goal of the Israeli social education policy during the
1950s-1960s. Apparently, the state schools served as a crucial interface
between the host society and the new Jewish immigrant children, who
comprised nearly half of the student population at that time. Examination
of various aspects of this phenomenon is the main focus of this article.
The education system attempted to use social educational tools to
activate peer groups and to empower student councils and committees,
as well as employing various other techniques. These educational means
at the disposal of the student society, based on progressive educational
theory in tandem with Zionist educational goals, were employed in
order to create a new society. The Hebrew national education system
theorized that the schools should act as key acculturating agents, in
expectation that the socialized younger generation would promote the
acculturation of other members of the immigrant families, as well as that
of the immigrant students.
Keywords: National education, social education, Immigrant
children education ,student council, school parent relations
This research was partly supported by the Rich Foundation.
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Social Education of Immigrants as a National Socialization Agent in the New State of Israel
This research focuses on the function of social education as a
nation-building agent. Social education is a component of the informal
educational activities within school programs that do not award students
any academic credit. These activities, according to Schimad and Eram,
are “conducted by the students themselves or in cooperation with the
school authorities” (1998, p. 87). Schools thus have a dual role, both
providing formal education and acting as socialization agents. Since the
implementation of compulsory education in western countries during
the 19th century, schools have played a major role in the acculturation
of immigrant children. Schools provide one of the core environments
in which immigrant children and their parents encounter the host
culture. This phenomenon has been discussed in recent research on
migration and identity formation, especially in regard to multicultural
education approaches (Fyfe & Figueroa, 1993; Kalekin-Fishman, 2004)
This paper, however, deals with the issue from the vantage point of the
history of education, a point of view that has been neglected thus far,
according to Myers (2009). Following the massive influx of immigrants
to the newborn State of Israel in 1948, the Israeli school system served
as a crucial interface between the host society and numerous new
immigrant children, who then comprised the nearly half of the student
population. Hebrew education in the Land of Israel took a direct, active
part in molding the new Hebrew society and was required to serve as
a major agent of socialization for the Zionist ethos. The third Minister
of Education, Ben-Zion Dinur, defined the State school as “the State’s
primary unit” (1958). Schools were an essential forum for shaping the
identity of the desired adult citizen and creating a society suited to the
Zionist ethos of the vast majority of the resident, host public.
The Israeli education system was attempting to reach this end by
using educational tools typical of Zionist education: certain fields of
study and specific learning materials, particularly via social education—
including texts, celebrations, class trips, and student councils overseen
by an educator. The textbooks were infused with the Zionist narrative,
transmitted amidst different educational messages. In fact, social
education purposefully inculcated new, native-Israeli norms of social
behavior. These educational contents all contributed to forming the
“New Jew” as opposed to the “Old Jew,” reborn as a tiller of the soil in
the Land of the Patriarchs, and thereby redeemed from the derogatory
and unproductive Diasporic ways of making a living. It was this
inherent criticism that caused structured ideological tension between
the immigrants’ traditional home life and the school culture that was
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being promoted (Tadmor-Shimony, 2010). Parents often distinguished
between formal schooling, which they knew and for which they felt
responsible, and informal education, with which they were unfamiliar.
These parents did not realize the importance of social education and
considered it to be useless and a waste of time.
How did policies implementing social education in general and
establishing student councils in particular impact the integration process
of new immigrant students in the 1950s and 1960s? How did social
education affect the relationship between home and school? This issue
became more acute in light of the differences between the positions of
progressive education (a pedagogical movement whose values were at
the basis of Israeli social education) and the conservative/patriarchal
attitudes towards education typical of many of the students’ homes. To
answer such questions, this paper focuses on the kind of social education
provided for the students and on the dialogue between the school and
the parental home within the historical context of those decades.
More specifically, we concentrate on the period from 1948-1966,
due to the large volume of new immigrant students enrolled at that time.
During the 1950s, the proportion of immigrant students reached 45%46%; in the 1960s their proportion started to decrease, and by 1966 it
had dropped to only 17.6% (Central Bureau of Statistics [CBS], 1957,
p. 21; 1967, p. 45; 1971, p. 55). Note that this study deals only with
the Jewish schools, and not with the Arab educational facilities (which
underwent entirely different processes). We study these issues with
the tools normatively used when researching the history of education
and present the theoretical perspectives of social education, migration,
and nation-building, relying on primary sources that include: archival
documents, teachers’ records, autobiographical accounts, and school
papers.
National Education and the Formation of a State
State education has been functioning as an agent of nation-building
since the last third of the 19th century. State monopoly of education was
an important factor in the consolidation of the nation-state; therefore,
in 1882 the Third Republic in France founded a centralized education
system of elementary schools. These secular schools succeeded in turning
the peasants living in France into French citizens who were aware of
their common heritage, language, myths, and other shared elements
(Weber, 1997). We find further evidence that national education
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Social Education of Immigrants as a National Socialization Agent in the New State of Israel
systems are indeed capable of creating a shared national consciousness.
For example, in Germany, after its unification under Bismarck, a
German national education system was established by the state, aimed
at shaping the collective memory of the citizens of the united nationstate (Kennedy, 2007). In the U.S.A., a country constantly absorbing
immigrants, the education system fulfilled the function of absorption
agent for masses of immigrant children living in the large cities during
the decades preceding and following World War I (Foster, 1999). The
above examples illustrate the dual importance of national education: as
compulsory, integrative education for all the state’s children (to provide
a common cultural background) and as definitive education (to mold a
desired national identity).
Thus, Ernest Gellner (1983) perceived the education system’s
activities as prerequisites for success and Anthony Smith (1986)
mentioned that any compulsory education system consolidates national
consciousness. Eric Hobsbawm (1990) considered education as the
primary tool for forming nationalism and its dissemination, while
Benedict Anderson (1991) emphasized the role of education in the
process of forging an “imagined community.”
Israeli National Education
Israeli education was anchored in the Hebrew schooling provided
during the pre-State period, with 75% of the students enrolled in the
three Zionist educational tracks and the other 25% studying in various
other schools (Yonai, 2007). The following tracks represented Zionist
pluralism in Mandatory Palestine: The General Zionist track, promoting
national Hebrew education based on the Zionist consensus; the Mizrahi,
representing Religious Zionism, and the Labour track, with its small
religious sector (Dror, 2007). This system remained unchanged for the
first five years after the establishment of the State of Israel (1948) and
Jewish children continued to be educated in these existing frameworks.
In late 1949, more than 150,000 immigrants arrived in Israel,
doubling the number of students (Lissak, 2003). It was at this time
that the Israeli Parliament passed the “Compulsory Education Law,”
mandating formal schooling from preschool through eighth grade, and
placing the obligation to register children for school on their parents
while funding was provided by the State and local authorities. This was
primarily intended to insure that a basic level of education be provided
for all the young citizens residing in the country. One of the outcomes
of this legislation was the expansion of the education system, bearing in
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mind that more than 45% of the students at that time were newcomers
(CBS, 1957, p. 21).
In the summer of 1953, Israel passed the “State Education Law,”
which annulled the 4-track education system. The General Zionist track
and the Labor track were merged within the framework of the State
Education System, and the Mizrahi track became the State Religious
Education System. The ultra-Orthodox schools were recognized as an
independent track, remaining outside the State system (Reichel, 2008).
Some new immigrant students attended the existing schools, while
most attended new schools established hastily in the new immigrant
communities in the peripheries of Israel. There was a severe shortage
of school buildings and equipment. In small communities, additional
difficulties were due to the need to set up classes comprising several age
groups, and to the fact that new students often joined these classes in the
middle of the school year.
One of the serious problems affecting the Israeli school system was
the great shortage of licensed teachers; the Ministry of Education had
to recruit and train thousands of new teachers within a short period of
time. In the mid-1950s, about two-fifths of all the teachers in the system
had less than four years experience and many were uncertified and still
in training. The teaching staffs included immigrant teachers, who had
received only superficial training and whose knowledge of Hebrew was
inadequate, graduates of Hebrew secondary schools without any training
at all, and student-teachers, who had not yet fulfilled their obligations
for certification (Tadmor-Shimony, 2010).
The Role of Social Education
Three main types of non-formal education were provided in order
to absorb the younger generation: social education, complementary
education, and special care of school dropouts (Fordham, 1993;
Richardson & Wolfe, 2001; Kahane & Rapoport, 2001). The concept
of social education originated in the United States during the 1880s.
The first extended reference to the concept was made in Scott’s volume,
Social Education (1908). This book dealt with the connection between
the formal curricula and the role of the school in preparing the
individual for social life as a citizen of the future. Scott presented social
education as a social function of the school and as being implied in the
school curriculum. John Dewey (1957) had argued that social education
is essential and inseparable from the formal school curriculum. He
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Social Education of Immigrants as a National Socialization Agent in the New State of Israel
designed a method of progressive education, manifestly democratic in
nature, under the assumption that a democratic social order will create a
better human experience.
Since Dewey believed that personal experience is affected by
the surrounding environment, this denotes that one’s childhood
educational environment is quite significant and influential, due to the
social supervision, shared situation, and interpersonal influences that it
provides. Dewey and his colleague William H. Kilpatrick (1941) drew
a corollary between the educational process and the stages of human
development - mental and ethical, as well as physical. They both claimed
that moral development stems from free thought, which encourages
student creativity, and from social supervision, which guides individuals
toward social justice, fair play, and the public good. This educational
system was based on the student society and its leadership. The student
society had autonomous organizations for various activities within the
school and in the student leadership community itself (Tsidkiyahu,
1992; Reichel, 2008).
The Role of Social Education in Israel
During the pre-State era, the concept of social education evolved
along with the development of Jewish Zionist education, growing and
changing over time. The elements of social education include: a) the
educator, who provides guidance and formative and creative experiences
for the students; and b) the student council, which leads the students
and encourages their active social participation in various committees,
trips, ceremonies, etc.
The Educator
The Hebrew education system clearly distinguished between the
‘teacher’ and the ‘educator,’ and chose to stress the role of the educators
to lead in educating/instructing/mentoring the younger generation of
Israelis in the State of Israel. One could say that there is a similarity
between the Israeli educator and the American home-room teacher.
Israeli educators, however, had the additional social tasks of moral
education that were not required of their American counterparts. The
Israeli educators defined themselves as national educators who were
supposed to be responsible for the character of the next generation
(Gordon & Ackerman, 1984). These educators had a broad definition
of their role; they were not satisfied to merely relay information, but
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were characterized by a love of conceptual pedagogy—in which children
respect their elders, the spiritual level is accentuated, and the educator
serves as a practical role model for the children, demonstrating personally
what he or she expects of them. Such an educator avoids enforcing his
or her authority and treats the children with respect, teaching them
independence and promising them joie de vivre (the joy of life) along
with intellectual support and pleasure. An educator is ideally a cultured
person and, in the case of the Hebrew education system, is also a
promulgator of culture, ever enriched by it, as well as someone with a
general education (whether formal or autodidactic) and a broad, openminded perspective. The educator’s role is that of a public emissary,
both exemplifying and teaching values, while assessing their relevance
together with his/her students (Reichel, 2009).
The Student Society
The student society, which included all of the school’s students,
consisted of several committees responsible for planning and coordinating
the social life of its members, and was managed in turn by the student
council (Tsidkiyahu, 1992; Schmida, 1979). Student councils are used
worldwide to provide experience in enacting social values in general and
community education, in particular (Dror, 2007). The concept of ‘student
council’ is also often called ‘student government,’ and forms part of the
students’ society; it functions to promote the values underlying social
and civic education in many societies. J. J. Cogan claims that: “Some
form of student self-government is considered proper and necessary for
them to be educated into good citizens through early experience in the
democratic form of decision making and decision enacting” (Cogan,
2000, p. 50; cited in Dror, 2007, p. 57). Student councils originated in
secondary schools in Europe towards the end of the 19th century and, at
the same time, in progressive schools in the U.S.A.
Dewey spoke about the educator/student dialogue, a process/
an interchange for which the educator is responsible. He also stressed
that the school should act as a miniature society, not only providing
knowledge, but also creating an active social group, and so reflecting life
in adult society and interacting with and experiencing things outside the
school walls.
The first such groups of student councils in Hebrew education were
set up in secondary schools at the beginning of the 20th century, even
before the Jewish educators had heard the term ‘progressive education.’
However, these educators had studied in their youth in European
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secondary schools and were copying models of student organizations
with which they were familiar. The prototype of the Jewish ‘student
council’ was set up in Palestine in the 1920s at a socialist kibbutz
(Dror, 2004). Later on, urban educational institutions and youth
villages were influenced by the movement of progressive education. The
members of a student council were delegated student leaders, chosen
by the student body to initiate positive, cooperative activities inside the
school and sometimes in its vicinity. All the students were taught to
take responsibility and to share in social burdens, e.g., the children took
turns doing various chores, ranging from classroom duties to soliciting
contributions for worthy causes. These student councils functioned
on two levels: classroom and school level. In the classroom, the main
activity was a weekly discussion on disciplinary, social, and learning
problems, during which the children practised patient listening and
effective communication skills. In the school, various committees were
established to handle issues pertaining to: health, sports, the school
paper, and so on. Delegates chosen from each class sat on the school’s
various committees. Classroom situations provided opportunities for
the practical application of the above principles, for instance, bringing
homework assignments to sick children at their homes.
As stated above, formal social education was intended to prepare
the students for active participation in adult society. The children
were taught the basic principle of ‘representative democracy’ in the
early grades—decision-making by majority vote. Classes elected their
representatives to the student council and its committees in this way;
these committees also reached their various decisions democratically.
The establishment of student councils in the immigrant settlements
appeared, at first, as a natural development of student activities, and
characteristic of Hebrew education. However, in communities consisting
exclusively of new immigrants, they also served to impart the culture of
the Israeli host society, bypassing the original cultures of the parents and
their children. Note that the establishment of student councils was a
new phenomenon for most of these immigrants, particularly those from
patriarchal Muslim countries, who were unaware of the existence and
rationale of progressive education.
Pedocentric pedagogy, a basic principle in progressive education,
was unfamiliar to most of these immigrant parents. Their encounter
with the student-council ethos compelled them to grapple with an
alternative view of a variety of issues, such as that of democratic
decision-making. Education systems in traditional societies did not
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include comparatively autonomous student councils that were able to
actively make certain decisions and set some limited behavioural rules/
social norms. Though some of these immigrant parents had studied
in modern, but conservative, educational institutions in their original
homelands, such as the schools run by the Alliance Francaise in North
Africa or “modern” schools in Baghdad, Iraq, these conservative schools
did not have educational activities initiated and run by students for the
student body (Leslau, Krausz & Nussbaum, 1995).
School Paper Committee
One of the main committees of the student’s society was the school
paper committee, responsible for publishing the student paper under a
teacher’s supervision. For historians, these school papers serve as primary
sources that preserve the voices of the students. It is important to bear in
mind that these papers do not represent the entire student body, but, on
the other hand, neither do they reflect an elitist expression.
The teachers encouraged their students to write, and an educated
study of these papers indicates the wide range of levels of writing ability
displayed (Meginim School,, 1964). School papers included articles on
many topics, addressing current events, responding to the educational
subject-matter being taught, and even demonstrating humor. One of
the important functions of the school paper was to relay information
regarding student council activities, elections being held for various
committees, and other miscellany, e.g. the health committee, class
monitors, library services, and the school paper committee (Bet Hinukh
School, 1962). The student paper at the Mabu`im regional school,
in which students from the adjacent Lakhish immigrant settlements
studied, also included information on the goings-on in the settlements
themselves in the context of a column entitled “What’s new,” which,
in essence, served as a regional notice-board (Mabu`im School, 1962).
One of the functions of this student paper, that is to say, was to integrate
the student body into part of the surrounding region, well beyond the
school grounds.
These school papers enabled the immigrant students to express
themselves and to share their feelings with others and thus, in effect, to
create a discussion group which strengthened all its participants. One
can see this sentiment expressed in the words of an eighth-grader named
Sarah from an immigrant town:
When I got to Israel, I was happy … but I also thought about my
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studies. When would I start learning this weird language? Finally,
notification came to present myself at school for studies. When I heard
this, I was very happy. We had the right to learn together with the local
students … They ridiculed me, but I accepted it willingly … I’m at the
end of eighth grade and I want to continue studying like all the Israeli
children. (Shemi School paper, 1959).
This paper offered Sarah an acceptable platform in which to describe
her process of establishing roots in her new country.
Health Committee
Another significant committee in school life that is reflected in
the pages of the school paper was the cleanliness and health committee,
whose members were elected by students and functioned in conjunction
with the school nurse. One can understand the students’ sense of
commitment from the following words of a fourth-grader named Rinah:
The health committee is very important in our school. A short while
ago, a school nurse was appointed and she decided there should be a
health committee; some 4th and 5th graders were elected. This committee
fulfils many functions: keeping the classrooms clean, providing first aid
to children who get hurt at school, taking turns in the school yard
to ensure children don’t bring food with them when they go there.
(Saviyon School,1962).
The activities of the cleanliness committee express the perception
that promoting cleanliness is part of the commitment to modern
Zionism. The Yishuv was influenced by the western ideal of cleanliness
and expected the education system to see to the health of its students
by means of promoting hygienic standards. The issues of health and
cleanliness became more pressing with the subsequent massive influx
of immigrants. The Israeli health system was hard-pressed to handle the
increased numbers of patients. The overcrowding in the immigrant camps
and shanty-towns caused poor sanitary conditions when compared to
the standards maintained in the veteran settlements. These problematic
objective conditions aroused anger in some of the permanent residents
and also anxiety and prejudice—brought on by the perception that the
new immigrants were bringing dirt and disease along with them. This
attitude also characterized certain other immigration agencies active
in the schools, prompting a broad range of activities to be initiated by
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the Israel Ministry of Health (Shvarts, 2004). The students themselves
were not considered as the subjects of these hygiene studies, but rather
as educating ‘objects,’ agents to educate their friends, as may be seen
in the testimony a fourth-grade student named Tamar, who had been
born in the Kaduri shanty-town two years after her parents’ immigration
from Kurdistan in 1950. She studied at the Kaduri School: “We had a
cleanliness committee, which would check our fingernails once a week.
Once a month, I’d go to the school nurse for a more basic check-up, also
ears and hair. The committee would report to her and help her check”
(personal communication Jan. 2011).
This shows that the children themselves, as part of a children’s
society, participated in upholding the rules and served as active members
in the student community. Tamar’s words, spoken about fifty years
later, are supported by a teacher’s report (appearing in a collection of
descriptive memoirs published in 1964), which relates that the parents
were asked to monitor the state of their children’s fingernails, proper
school attire, etc. Due to a lack of cooperation from the parents, this
teacher, raised in the Israeli culture, decided to activate the children’s
society in this matter. He lined up the children every morning and a
team was elected to check if their peers’ hygiene and appearance were
satisfactory and to report those who did not adhere to more western
standards of hygiene (Koren, 1964).
In the rural settlements, these student councils also served to
transmit desired values to the “veteran” agricultural communities, in
order to promote conformity. Often student councils consisting of
students from several different rural communities maintained school
gardens or farms that differed in size and produce. The management
of such gardens or farms was in the hands of a student farm committee
that was composed of students from the higher grades and their classes’
teaching assistants. Each older student delegate was in charge of
organizing the work rotation for a particular task. Some of these school
farms sold their agricultural produce and the proceeds were used to buy
items such as sports equipment or a swing for the school children (Gilat
School, 1962).
This type of communal, agricultural activity, normal within the
Israeli framework and stemming from the communal kibbutzim and
youth-villages prototype, was foreign to the students’ parents, who
worked on their private, family farms. The collectively-run school farm
presented an alternative to the family farms. Its success depended on the
children’s motivation and sense of responsibility, based, in turn, on their
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level of social commitment as forged by esprit de corps (group morale).
For example, at a school with students from three villages, an agricultural
instructor started a garden near the school to serve as a model of modern
methods for the cultivation of certain crops. The students worked there
and the instructor expected their parents to come and observe, and thus
to become acquainted with expert methods of cultivation. He was sorely
disappointed by the parents’ total lack of interest in their children’s work
in the school garden (Rinah P., 1964).
School/Class Trips
One of the favorite elements of social education was the school/
class trip.
These trips were based on a tradition which had been initiated
in the philanthropic schools in Palestine by prominent figures in preZionist education (Elboim-Dror, 1986). They served as educational
means for exploring the landscape of the new country. The older the
students became, the longer and more extensive were the outings. In
1907, the Teachers’ Centre decided to include field trips in the official
school curriculum. They were classified into several categories that were
applied during the later years of Hebrew education. One was the scientific
field trip, relating to the curriculum and favouring nearby destinations.
Pleasure trips, educational but also intended for enjoyment, favored
more distant locations, but were also associated with current learning
material. The annual trip, several days long, was inclined to favour
destinations far from the school (Ben Yisra’el, 1999). These outings and
trips became an initiation ritual for the explorer in his/her homeland, a
means for unmediated love of the land by actual physical contact with
its stones and vegetation.
Organizing these trips promoted the cooperative action of all the
students involved, creating “unit solidarity,” which is quite familiar to
all those who have experienced the Israeli education system. This term
was coined in light of the perception that a school class is an important
social unit, meant to fulfil an all-important function in the children’s
lives. Such solidarity is forged by means of various shared activities.
It enhances the students’ commitment to their classmates’ and school
norms. Such a social commitment, to specific values found in the host
society, also promotes a certain cultural affinity. Students share a social
frame of reference and a sense of belonging to their class in addition to
their own family unit; the powerful nature of this academic “peer group”
(Tsidkiyahu, 1992) is very significant for the process of integration into
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mainstream Israeli society.
For the immigrant students, these trips were a means for learning
about their new homeland, as is evident in the words of Batyah, a girl
from Kurdistan who immigrated to Israel in 1950:
I remember the trip to Haifa—the first big city I saw. I can’t forget
the port, the ocean, the ships and the train …On another trip, we
got to Jerusalem. I’d heard so much about it … I was the first in my
family privileged to see the capital and I was really proud about that.
(personal communication, Jan. 2011)
Various kinds of field trips were held under school auspices, some
spontaneous, based on teachers’ preferences, and others dictated by
the State curriculum as part of the nature and homeland studies. The
curriculum recommended six short outings and an extended annual trip
during the school year. The national field-trip program was based on a
“from near to far” rationale. From fifth grade on lengthy annual field
trips were recommended: two days with an overnight youth-hostel stay
(Tadmor-Shimony, 2010a).
Ritual and Ceremony
The designers of Zionist national education considered the school a
primary socialization agent in its role as the creator of rituals and festivities
that would establish cultural traditions. These festivities were designed to
inspire feelings of joy, as part of the gamut of experiences that the school
was to provide. Avner Ben-Amos classifies rituals into two types: action
rituals and remembrance rituals (Ben-Amos, 2004).
The traditional Tu bi-Shevat holiday (Jewish New Year for the Trees)
is traditionally marked by special prayers and the eating of dried fruit. The
Hebrew culture in pre-independence Israel added the planting of trees as
a concrete expression and central feature of this day. This tradition began
when a school principal in one of the early Zionist settlements decided
to plant trees on that day. In 1908, the Teachers’ Union declared that Tu
bi-Shevat celebration in the schools is to feature a ceremony involving the
actual planting of saplings. Tree-planting became an inseparable part of
school culture that is perpetuated to this day (Tadmor-Shimony, 2010a).
Thus, every Tu bi-Shevat, most Israeli students plant decorative flowers or
saplings in public areas, actively shaping their surrounding landscape and
contributing to their community’s physical environment in a tangible
manner. Various school papers provide evidence of the importance of Tu
bi-Shevat in school life (State School A, Nes Tsiyonah, 1958).
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Another ritual-intensive occasion was the Shavuot Harvest Festival
(First Fruits Holiday and Festival of the Giving of the Bible), a religious
festival on which, according to Jewish tradition, the Torah (Hebrew
Bible) was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Shavuot was
transformed into an agricultural festival by Petah Tikvah farmers in the
1880s. In the early 1920s, the Jezreel Valley kibbutzim restructured their
Shavuot ceremonies; instead of the traditional pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
the first produce was carted around the settlement in a festive procession.
The ancient Shavuot sacrifice at the Jerusalem Temple of the biblical
era was replaced by contemporary donations to the Jewish National
Fund. Many of these modern Shavuot customs that were adopted by
pre-independence Jewish schools have been passed on to Israel’s State
schools, where, during Shavuot ceremonies, the students dress in white,
adorn their heads with wreaths of flowers, and carry baskets of fruit.
In many agricultural settlement schools, Shavuot celebrations were
community events in which the children’s parents and sometimes the
entire population participated. The teachers felt it was very important
for the parents to participate, as may be seen in the quotation below
from the Shavuot celebrations organized by the school in a new village
in the Carmel area, to which all the local residents were invited: “For
the adults, this was something new, something that symbolized their
integration in their new homeland. For the youth and children, it was a
real treat to appear in white clothes decorated with greenery” (Telamim,
1951).
The importance of these festivals and celebrations becomes evident
when we examine the school’s records in a new rural community,
Moshav Tal Shahar, founded by immigrants from Kurdistan, Iran,
Turkey, and Morocco. These records report on weekly teachers’ meetings
during the 1964 school year. The teachers discussed educational matters
and planned the social activities several weeks ahead; holidays and
celebrations were often mentioned. For instance, these teachers decided
to invite the parents to a Purim festival with a carnival (Tal Shahar
School records, 1964).
Principal Dov Aloni, from the rural community Gaia, maintained
that the immigrant parents did not want to cooperate with the school
for the first few months, but he wrote with self-satisfaction: “The only
institution that created a festive atmosphere in the village during the
holidays was the school” (Aloni, 1964, p. 356). Parents were invited to
the celebrations; they were also asked to assist in planning the events and
preparing refreshments. The feeling was that parental involvement in
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social activities would enhance the relationship between the school and
the residents. An end-of-the-year celebration became customary in the
vast majority of the schools in the country. This celebration was a means
for strengthening the attachment of the students and their parents to the
educational institution and for generating a team spirit (Burgata School,
1964).
Home/School Relations
Discussions about social education often express the Israeli
educational argument that the home should not be the only socializing
agent of immigrant children. One could say that student communities
and councils, field trips, and school ceremonies have been used as tools
through which immigrant children are able to practice principles and
norms derived from the host culture. This approach was based on the
belief that the absorption of the child would assist in the integration
of the whole family, aptly expressed by Ami Assaf, Deputy Minister
of Education: “One of the methods in the field of education is the
transmission of values to the adults by means of their children via
the school” (1959, p. 262). This practice stemmed from the Zionist
ideology that wished to create “new Jews” rapidly, even at the cost of
considerably reducing the strength of the family unit. Such ideological
considerations find advanced sociological support in the membership
process undergone by immigrants.
Gibson (2001) recently studied the difficult acculturation processes
experienced by immigrants, some leading to the development of
intergenerational cultural gaps between parents and their children. She
found that children can more readily adapt to a host culture and accept
various unfamiliar cultural practices and values than can their parents. In
a related study, Eisikovits (1995), in her research on immigrant children
in Israel, has found that familiarizing teachers with the original cultures
of their students’ parents enables them to use terminology from the “old”
cultures, and so help children to succeed in their studies, school social
projects, and, along with their families, to integrate into their new land.
The inherent tension resulting between the school ethos and the
parents’ socio-cultural mindset was exacerbated during the period of
mass immigration with the simultaneous enrolment of many newcomer
children into the education system. At that time, the system had to
cope with the physical absorption and socio-cultural integration of
large numbers of Jewish immigrant students from European, Middle
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Social Education of Immigrants as a National Socialization Agent in the New State of Israel
Eastern, and North Africa countries. The differences between the various
home cultures became evident with regard to the perceived teachers’ and
children’s roles in the school and in the clashing definitions of the role of
the home/family versus that of the school. It is important to understand
that this new, complex home/school interface between the two primary
socializing institutions was intended to promote the absorption of all the
new immigrants in Israel.
The Israeli environment in the 1950s differed from that of the
1940s, when at least half of the students did not speak Hebrew with their
parents (Lissak, 2003). The majority of the Jewish (host) population
in Israel at that time was of European origin and feared that western
culture would be overwhelmed by the massive influx of immigrants
from diverse cultures, especially from eastern Islamic countries. These
“veteran” residents were unfamiliar with eastern Jewry, and so colonialist
stereotyping, bordering on hostility, began to spread. Some Israeli
scholars termed this phenomenon “orientalism” (Tsur, 1997).
The intellectual elite within the Israeli host society was concerned
by the very existence of these fears, which appeared harmful to the
collective national ethos. One way of coping with this inconsistency
was to apply a functionalist rationalisation by defining the encounter
between the host population and the new “easterners” as a test case for
the transition from a traditional to a modern society. This approach was
apparent in a series of articles that appeared in the journal Megamot
(Ben Amos, 1994). One famous spokesman of this standpoint was the
sociologist professor S.N. Eisendtadt (1954), who researched broadly
the absorption of new immigrants in Israel in general, and specific
immigrant groups in particular. His book is considered a milestone in
the Israeli academic research of migration (Sharaby, 2004)
Social differences have been explained as being the outcomes
of cultural gaps between traditional and western societies (Eisenstadt
1964). This premise led to the assumption that if the immigrants from
Muslim countries improved their skills according to the standards of
western norms, then their absorption and integration would become
smoother. According to this theory, these children should be exposed
to western educational notions, in order to eventually reduce the gap.
The anger, frustration, and conflicts between the teachers and parents
resulting from this approach is expressed in the harsh words of a teacher
named Yosef Hanani, that appeared in one of the teachers’ periodicals:
Those homes have different morals, a different world-view … not
generally consistent with the goals of the State. Most of the “homes”
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can’t conceive of the great struggle in which the school finds itself.
There are even those who oppose the school and its educational goals.
(Hanani, 1958)
Carl Frankenstein has worked with and reported on learningdisabled children suffering from inferior socio-economic living
conditions and culture shock. His main argument is that the key to good
intellectual functioning and emotional well-being is the development of
cognitive autonomy based on self-confidence. Frankenstein maintains
that, in some cases, a lack of self-confidence in a child is due to the
parents’ dysfunctional behaviour—parents who do not support their
children’s learning processes, due to emotional neglect or inadequate
training at hom—that prevents them from coping properly with the
academic demands placed on them at school. He listed additional sociocultural obstacles, such as extreme poverty, migration, and cultural
backgrounds that do not encourage autonomy (such as prevails in
most eastern societies). This statement was to arouse great anger among
many sociologists, who considered it as an unmistakably prejudicial
expression (Katz & Peres, 1986). However, Frankenstein’s approach
was put into practice to help teachers cope with heterogeneous classes
and is still taught as an applicable strategy today, because Frankenstein
considered learning-disabled children to be intellectually normative,
though disadvantaged by their particular circumstances—labelling
them as being “deserving of nurturing” (Schatz-Oppenheimer, 2006).
That is to say that under better environmental conditions, they would
have been capable of developing autonomous thinking processes. In the
early sixties, the Israel Ministry of Education adopted Frankenstein’s
terminology, though over the course of time, it has acquired negative
connotations.
One of Frankenstein’s far-reaching though controversial
conclusions was that parents frequently interfere with the educational
process. He expressed this blatantly in an article (published in a leading
Israeli behavioural sciences journal) entitled: “School without parents”
(Frankenstein, 1962). Similar opinions had been aired previously, such
as when a teacher who had come to Israel from Holland in 1946 and was
teaching in an immigrant settlement wrote in exasperation: “In every
other society, the parents serve as role models; here it is the youth leaders
and the teachers!” (Shatal, 1956).
In addition to this implicit disparagement, explicit criticism
of the immigrants’ home-life was heard from the Israeli teachers and
representatives of the Establishment, as well as complaints that the
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Social Education of Immigrants as a National Socialization Agent in the New State of Israel
families did not help the children’s absorption. However, alongside those
who complained, perceiving the home as a factor interfering with the
children’s socialization, there were also those with more moderate views,
who wished to reduce the friction between the school and the parents
and lessen the undue pressure put on the children, as we can see in the
following words of the teacher named Segal: “It’s forbidden to destroy a
child’s world with the swipe of a hand … Let’s rather lead with a gentle
hand … step by step, when the starting point is, in fact, his/her foreign
birth.” (Segal, 1958). It is interesting to note that this message appeared
on the same page as the harsh words of Hanani cited above, i.e., that
two conflicting approaches, with regard to the absorption of immigrant
students, existed simultaneously within the educational establishment
and among the teachers. One approach was functional, represented by
Frankenstein, and expressed crudely by Hanani; it viewed the act of
absorption as a meeting between traditional and modern cultures, and
demanded that those students from traditional homes assimilate into
modern Israeli culture as rapidly as possible. According to this approach,
diasporic parental homes are obstacles that hinder the students’
acculturation into the new society and its national ethos. The patriarchal
approach of the home environment seemed to the pedagogues like a
barrier preventing the children’s development. Thus, they concluded
that it is sometimes necessary to challenge parental mores, in order to
reach their educational goals.
The second approach, which also assumed the superiority of
the host society, was equally aware of cultural differences, but did
not discredit the”‘generation of the desert” (those immigrant parents
caught in limbo between their native and the Israeli mores, as it were),
asking that the parents transform into Israelis via their children. These
teachers, fearing that their students would suffer discord in the midst
of this culture conflict, enlisted them to help bridge the gaps. They
encouraged students to express their opinions and to participate actively
in improving their activities and trying to empower them to activate
their peers and to do the same at home. Research shows that the school
environment does indeed impact on the perception of norms, because
attitudes adopted as a result of the school experience are generalized to
include all that is outside the school in addition. The students’ sense of
being able to influence what happens motivates them to intensify their
involvement in school culture and to contribute to and disseminate it
(Gratton, Gutmann & Skop, 2007).
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Thus, most immigrant students in Israel entered a framework in
which the common norms of adult/child behaviour differed markedly
from those in their families, which put/placed them constantly in
stressful situations of cross-cultural conflict. An example is the testimony
of a teacher who taught in an immigrant agricultural village in 1954.
The class voted on a specific issue (as part of a lesson on democratic
decision-making and respecting majority decisions) and the result was
gender-biased towards the feminine; however, since the majority of the
students in that class happened to be girls, the decision was upheld.
The teacher said, smiling: “This time the boys have to give in to the
girls.” One of the boys grumbled: “Yes, but only here. Not at home! At
home, even if 15 girls voted against one boy, he’d still do exactly what he
decided to do” (Bir-Artsi, 1954, p. 32) .
Another basic principle of social education is mutual aid, which
is one of the prerequisites for the creation of a new society under harsh
living conditions. The socialist principles underlying the workers’ land
settlements and pre-State political institutions placed mutual aid high
on the hierarchy of social values. This aspect of solidarity found salient
political expression in the Histadrut and, of course, in the kibbutz
lifestyle with its distinctive communal education. Since mutual aid was
such an important component of school life throughout the country,
Israeli teachers expected the better students to help the weaker ones,
based on the assumption that the class is a community committed to its
members. Therefore, those strong students who learn easily must help
those in need of help, as a reflection of the collective commitment to
reduce the gap between them.
The teachers themselves attempted to impart this norm, but their
interpretations differed, as we can infer from the following incident
that occurred in a peripheral, rural immigrant settlement: A young
teacher, Yisra’elah, from an older workers’ settlement, decided to teach
the children the meaning of “mutual aid.” Many parents had habitually
taken their children with them to help with fruit picking when they
should have been at school. In this particular settlement, an eleven-year
old boy did not come to school because his father had fallen ill and he
had to shoulder the burden of the peanut harvest. The teacher took the
whole class to help him, joining her students at work. She believed she
was contributing to their education by highlighting the value of mutual
aid. However, the next day, the children came to school with long faces
and told her that their parents were angry that they had worked at
another farm. Only then did the young teacher realize that her own
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Social Education of Immigrants as a National Socialization Agent in the New State of Israel
perception of the concept “mutual aid” was not shared by her charges’
families. In this particular case, the teacher had inadvertently created an
unanticipated conflict of values (Shohat, 1959). This had not happened
during her previous initiatives, e.g. having the children taking turns
visiting sick children, which was perceived as being important by the
entire population.
However, the Zionist education system did not familiarize itself
with the pupils’ cultures of origin, and instead focused its efforts on
getting the children to master the developing Hebrew culture so that
they might contribute to the acculturation of their families. This Israeli
educational policy, which neglected the home cultures of the students,
had begun even before the State was born. For example, beginning in
1880, in the Hebrew school teachers in the Land of Israel encouraged
their students to speak only in Hebrew both in school and at home, even
if their parents did not fully comprehend the language. There are many
recorded stories of children answering their frustrated parents in Hebrew
in response to questions asked in Yiddish and of the prizes they were
awarded by their teachers for such behavior (Reichel, 2009).
Conclusions
What impact did this policy of implementing social education in
general and the establishment of student councils in particular have on
the integration process of new immigrant students in the 1950s-1960s?
This paper has traced the use of social education as a tool for the
absorption of immigrant children into Israeli society during this period
as a whole and into the education system specifically. The greatest
advantages of social education stem from its practicality and from the
ongoing nature of efforts to transmit Israeli social norms to the children.
The results show that at the crux of social education stood a society
of equals led by a student council consisting of peers, in line with the
principles of the resident (“veteran”) Israeli culture, and by means of
various committees chosen by the students themselves. For example, the
duly elected cleanliness committee, acting in accordance with directives
provided by the school nurse, essentially determined the students’
hygienic norms. Sometimes the schools even unwittingly circumvented
parental culture, as happened in the case of the teacher Yisra’elah above,
causing the parents to complain and putting the children in a conflicted
position.
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School trips also serve as significant tools, providing two important
informal educational components: a) strengthening of the sense of
belonging to the group and the land, and b) promotion of student
cooperation in their planning and execution. The ceremonies and
festivities promote community cohesion, as they extend beyond the
school walls. They allow the children to become active participants in
Israeli culture and to present various aspects of that culture to their
families, making them agents for change as well. Educators were
expected to serve as personal role models while simultaneously teaching
Israeli culture, as Tamar relates in retrospect:
Aaron Yarho and his wife Izah--two educators I’ll never forget—have
been with me for 54 years now, almost like parents. They knew me
well and my family, and the same goes for the rest of the students from
the village and the wilderness … Every ceremony in the village, to this
very day, reminds me of the ceremonies and end-of-the-year parties
they organized … I’ll never forget how Aaron reported to my parents
that I’d succeeded, rather than telling them that I’d failed in Math, to
prevent my father from becoming angry and making my mother sad
… How he came to our home to convince my parents to let me go on
the trip to Jerusalem, and that he’d take personal care of me. How he
conquered his anger and explained in a soft voice, to my brother, that
just as he contains himself, not hitting when he’s angry, my brother
should act the same way …. (personal communication, Jan. 2011)
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