From this point of view I find in Israeli education a lot that is positive, but not enough. It incorporates fascinating initiatives and worthwhile experiments. But it has too much in-built mediocrity, inequality and, worse of all, too much boredom.
I wrote this article with cautious optimism before the February-March 1996 series of terrible terrorist acts, and the ensuing suffocating closure. I am still a long-term optimist, though one cannot but sense that the short¬term might be tough and frustrating for both our peoples, especially since we feel that peace is indeed in the offing. We, who believe in peace and in education for peace, have a heavy responsibility to join hands and shorten the interim period of pain and sorrow.
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About one and a half million Israelis are studying in the country's educa¬tional system, most of which is provided by the government. The first Compulsory Education Law, for pupils aged five to 14, was passed in 1949, soon after the establishment of the State. Compulsory education was broadened in 1968 up to the age of 16, and free education up to the 12th grade was inaugurated in 1978.
The government has almost total authority over the whole educational system through the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, and is responsible for most of the financing of all stages of education. The State Education Law of 1953 reduced the number of Jewish streams which were inherited from the autonomous pre-1948 Jewish education to three sys¬tems: state (secular), state-religious and independent (ultra-Orthodox). The schools for Israeli Palestinians are also subject to the Ministry of Education, with separate schools for Arabs and Druze. The state-religious and ultra-Orthodox schools have formally and inherently almost complete autonomy in their contents, while the state (secular) and Arab schools depend in this respect on the Ministry of Education.
Achievements and Gaps
In terms of the rates of scholarity, Israel has significant achievements, com¬parable to most developed countries. Enrollment in the Jewish sector ranges from 95 percent in the non-government and paying kindergartens at the age of three, to 100 percent in primary school, and about 85 percent in the 12th grade. Of the Israeli Palestinians, 95 percent study in primary school but only about 70 percent in high school (14-18). At the age of three, the gap is even larger: only about 44 percent of Israeli Palestinians attend kindergarten. In the universities there is also a wide gap - some 9 percent of Jews' enrollment as against 2.5 percent of Israeli Palestinians (1992-1993). The gap is similar between the 15 percent of Ashkenazi Jews who enroll, and the 5 percent of Sephardi. While the overall rates of scholarity from kinder¬garten to grade 12 are quite good, the rates of enrollment at universities are not so good, and the rates of Israeli Palestinian enrollment are very low.
These figures attest to three grave problems in Israeli education: that of quality, that of equality between socioeconomic Jewish groups and that of equality between Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians. For Oriental Jews and Palestinians, quality is indivisible from equality. Indeed, Israel is relatively successful in striving to become a cultural and scientific center, largely because of its broad range of cultural creativity and its uni¬versities and research institutes.
University and Ministry, Business and Society
The first Israeli universities were established before 1948 along Central European lines, and since the 1960s under the influence of the best univer¬sities in the USA. Thus/ there is no doubt that Israeli higher education and research are an integral and successful part of the Western intellectual world.
As elsewhere in the world, the Ministry of Education is concerned to increase the number of students matriculating (this year by approximate¬ly 10 percent), while on the other hand, the universities are, first and fore¬most/ research institutions, interested in scientific achievements and in securing and maintaining their international standard and status.
A compromise was gradually reached according to which the Ministry of Education largely controls the numbers of those entitled to Bagrut, even if this involves lowering standards, theoretically facilitating their admission to higher education. However, the universities laid down their own admission criteria, thereby assuring themselves a decisive degree of influence on the high school's curriculum too.
Both the pressure of the universities and the competitive atmosphere spreading in Israeli economy penetrate the schools. As a result, from a rela¬tively young age, even at primary school, teaching is based on frequent examinations which are meant to assure the "seriousness" of the schools and pupils. Meanwhile, only 37 percent passed the Bagrut this year [1995] and approximately 17 percent of the 1991 age group obtained a B.A. degree.
The universities do indeed preserve their standards and status in the international academic community. However, in some fields they fail to provide the Israeli society and economy with the pertinent number of pro¬fessionals which is indispensable if it is to compete in the international market. Thus, for example, Israel's achievements in high-tech are endan¬gered by the lack of thousands of computer engineers and programmers.
This indirectly links up with the need for increased equality in Israeli soci¬ety in general, and in educational opportunity in particular, at a time when the economic gap between rich and poor has been growing in recent years, despite overall economic growth. As far as education is concerned, the solution is to be found, of course, in raising educational standards in gen¬eral, and the present Labor-Meretz government has indeed increased the educational budget significantly (over 40 percent). But the tendency is to invest in improving the situation in mathematics and the sciences, with new laboratories and an increased use of computers.
There are first signs and good chances that business and government will invest in the implementation of promising experiments and long-term plans to raise the level of the sciences and computer education. There are, nevertheless, fewer chances of substantial progress in the humanities.
The Gap Doesn't Get Smaller
This challenge, however, is indivisibly linked with the subject of equality in the educational system: between Jews of Ashkenazi (European¬American descent), and Sephardi (Asian-African descent), as well as between Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. The figures do indicate grave gaps between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, but they conceal the inequal¬ity between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. There is indeed a constant increase in higher education graduates in the overall Jewish population, due mainly to the new government and universities policy to encourage the establishment of new colleges for undergraduates. But the hard fact is that gaps are not lessening.
The explanation for this takes us back to the years of mass immigration after 1948, when the newly established educational system doubled and trebled itself numerically as it absorbed hundreds of thousands of children from various countries. The challenge was on the one hand quantitative: what about school buildings, classrooms, and even desks and chairs; and where were the teaching staff, even with minimal training?
On the other hand, there were pedagogic and educational challenges: teachers without appropriate training or experience were to cope in het¬erogeneous classes. They had to teach immigrant children, whose homes, languages and backgrounds were so totally different; while their parents, many partly illiterate, were often suffering cruelly from the harsh shocks of absorption in the new country. Decisions had to be made and implement¬ed on an appropiate curriculum. Together, all this was mission impossible, but in those days it was believed that everything was possible.
The Melting Pot Myth
There were two alternatives: an essentially uniform curriculum or a cul¬turally diverse, pluralistic approach. The choice was for uniformity. The slogan was "the melting pot": transforming the uprooted, the "human dust" into one working and fighting people in the new homeland. On first sight this also implied equality. But while the official policy was one of integration, in effect it meant the integration of the newcomers into the dominant culture of the veteran Israelis. The latter was a mixture of Eastern European and a grain of Western culture.
Moreover, in the first years of the State, there was little physical inte¬gration between veterans and newcomers. The latter were almost always settled in the periphery, either on the fringes of veteran cities and settle¬ments, or far away in new settlements in border areas (often on the ruins of Arab villages). Those coming from North Africa and the Middle East, of ten, though not always, from poor and even illiterate areas, found them¬selves in a cultural, social and political set-up unknown to them.
Ever since, we have been witness to the well-known correlation between "Orientals" (of Asian-African origin), and a low socioeconomic status scale expressed in large families, poor education, lack of suitable trade or profession as understood in the new country/ relatively low income and continued residence in the periphery. This results in lower per¬centages in the higher grades of academic secondary schools, and higher percentages in vocational schools, fewer Bagrut certificates, fewer students, fewer university degrees, fewer options for high income occupations.
Basic national solidarity was indeed achieved quickly among the Jews, and pertains with surprising sway up to this day, "helped" by the conflict between Israel and the Arab world. But the educational system was unable to develop structures, pedagogies and didactics capable of eliminating the gaps in educational achievement.
There was no lack of initiatives and experiments in this direction, including what became known as the 1968 Reform of the educational sys¬tem from the age of 12. This aimed, among other things/ at integrated junior high schools with heterogeneous Ashkenazi-Oriental classes. On the other hand, with the start in the 1960s of the era of industrializa¬tion/ vocational education was developed, improved and diversified to the extent that it now embraces about a half of secondary education. Though it also includes tracks leading to matriculation and thereby, theoretically, to higher education, vocational education perpetuates social stratification, and many are of the opinion that this expensive sub-system worked, and still works, against integration and social mobility.
Many social changes have occurred over the years. The Oriental Jews have made progress and continue to do so, but other groups have also advanced all along the line. Accordingly, the gap, far from being eliminat¬ed/ is still substantial, even in the area of politics, where the Orientals have recorded significant achievements.
The Israeli Palestinian Population
The same applies to the continuous gaps between Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians. Since 1948/ the latter have been, from every point of view, peripheral and unequal in Israeli society, occupying the lowest rung on the social ladder. Suspicion, hostility, and especially fear from their possi¬ble irridentist ambitions in the future, explain the systematic and structur¬al obstacles piled up by the many Israeli authorities against promoting their political and economic status. The main goal of the authorities was, with the substantial backing of Jewish public opinion, to assure what they saw as the "loyalty" of the" Arab sector."
Nevertheless, in the course of the years, improvements have also taken place in this field, including the gradual realization that the Israeli Palestinian educational sub-system is entitled to equality and to greater autonomy in determining its forms and content. In recent years some changes have been noticeable. However, all the relative indicators show that, apart from the Christians, all other Israeli Palestinian groups still remain far behind in comparison with all Jewish sub-groups.
Privatized Education?
In a world of market economy, the trend at first sight might seem to be for education to go in the wake of the economy, anticipating a gradual process of privatization of education and the accompanying differences within the Jewish population, between the Jewish and the Palestinian population, etc.
There are more than a few indications of this trend, such as parents paying from their own pockets for additional enrichment courses at school and for other educational services. According to Ministry of Education figures for 1992-93 for the different income groups, the top fifth paid out of their pockets nine times more per family for education than the bottom fifth (New Israeli Shekels (NIS) 5,142 as against NIS 570).
A Different Thesis
Nevertheless, I venture to speculate on a different direction. With peace in the Middle East founded on cooperation between Israel and the countries of the region, with open borders and the free movement of workers, what will be a main interest of entrepreneurs in the Israeli economy? It will be to increase the pool of trained workers in general, and academics in par¬ticular, which is imperative in order to facilitate the establishment of the industries of tomorrow. The first candidates to build up such a pool of sophisticated human resources will come from the inner circles of Israeli society, then gradually from the periphery: women, Jews from Asian¬African origin, Israeli Palestinians, and then Palestinian Palestinians. The Palestinian and Jordanian economy might develop in the same direction.
One has already seen how high-tech entrepreneurs, neither politicians nor exponents of a "new Middle East," break down atavistic barriers because of the need for trained workers. Both the Israeli and the Palestinian educational systems have a great responsibility to provide their children with the necessary tools for exploiting the vast potential inherent in their children.
The Main Challenge
Thus one arrives from an unexpected angle at the subject of education for peace, for tolerance, for pluralism, and for human rights. This issue of the Journal deals with these matters, so I need not expand upon them. But mapping out the background to the central theme of education for peace necessitates emphasizing one point which stands out in Professor Bartal's article (see p. 44).
In Israel, both the curriculum and the textbooks, with their explicit and hidden messages were directed at promoting unity, survival, loyalty, patriotism, etc. In the non-curricular parts of the system, but on its behalf and with its encouragement, in recent years many new initiatives, pro¬grams and activities have developed which focus on education for democ¬racy, tolerance, coexistence and peace. The schools can test and use these according to their own wishes.
Most of these excellent initiatives bear witness to a real process of change. But with all due respect to the fireworks, the essence of education still lies in the gray daily routine of learning and instructing the attitudes and identity-building disciplines - the humanities and the social sciences. Hence, the principal challenge of education for peace is an examination, and then a sweeping change, of the contents of curricula, of textbooks and of teachers' training, in other words, the backbone of regular studies.
This main challenge is still ahead of us!