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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 | talits@bgu.ac.il

Ben- Gurion University

Nirit Reichel | niritr@013.net 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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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 nation-state (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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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, open-minded 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 pre-Zionist 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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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 learning-disabled 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 socio-cultural 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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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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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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