Discourse structuration in Israel, democratization of education and the impact of the global education network

Abstract

The 1968 structural reform of the education system in Israel was part both of a global process of democratization of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernization project in which the social sciences played a crucial role. This dynamic was an expression of a conjunction of interests, in which political forces used research on educational matters in order to advance their socio‐political agendas, while researchers used the state's interest in their work and in the ‘social problems’ they elaborated in order to receive public funding and to obtain state recognition of their scientific contribution. This article traces the reformist discourse structuration—the process of institutionalization of the different social science discourses in state institutions, such as universities and national institutes—in order to disclose the social sciences/politics linkage in Israel. It also puts forward the argument that in order to understand discourse structuration at a national level, it is essential to consider an additional factor: global education networks. Global networks adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that tended to be adopted by scholars in different countries. The article focuses on the processes in Israel whereby knowledge producers elaborated the ‘inequality of opportunity’ and ‘ethnic gap’ social problems, and proffered the 1968 structural reform as the solution.

Notes

1. Although this structural reform was later also applied to Arab‐Israeli schools, the reformist policy was not aimed at Arab students who, as will become evident below, did not form part of the reformist discourse.

2. That is, 8 years of elementary education + 4 years of secondary education, as opposed to 6 years of elementary education + 3 years of junior‐high + 3 years of senior‐high education.

3. For a visual expression of the complexity of education networks, see the partial view of the ‘compensatory education’ global network diagram presented at the end of the article.

4. Translation, according to Latour, means a particular way to find and arrange equivalences (Latour, 1984, p. 202).

5. The United States was showing the way when already in the early 1950s many departments of education were firmly settled in American universities and they wielded a long experience on educational research. Research in education, once limited to traditionally pedagogic or psychological matters, which reflected that education was conceived mostly in individual terms, further on incorporated topics such as economy and social groups, that had to do with the new social conception of education. Research in education changed its character in one more basic aspect—its methodology. Instead of a reflexive or experimental discipline, scholars belonging to the ‘scientific movement’ in education imposed an applied research vision based on quantitative analysis.

6. See, for example, studies that follow the ‘one‐man history’ tradition, such as Gordon et al. (1991), who analyze educational reform in Britain in the 1960s, or Ish‐Shalom Rozenberg (1988) and Midrashi‐Zer‐Zion (1975) regarding reforms in Israel, or others that stress political conjunctures that enable transformations of education systems, as in the cases of the reforms in Britain (Kogan, 1972), France (Halls, 1976), Sweden (Paulston, 1968) and Israel (Berenstein, 1990), or the sociological conflictual approach that focuses on the interests of elites or economic groups in advancing the reforms. This is the case of studies on the reforms in Britain (Wirt & Skirt, 1972; Ball, 1990), in the United States (Bowles & Gintis, 1976), and in Israel (Kashti, 1978; Peled, 1982).

7. See, mainly, Meyer et al.'s (1997) work that maintains that many features of the contemporary nation‐state, including educational policies, derive from global models constructed and propagated by international organizations. McNeely (1995) and Chabbott (2002) point to the influence of international organizations regarding national educational policies.

8. Based on Wallerstein's (1974) dependency theory, authors such as Altbach (1971), Carnoy (1974), Arnove (1980) and Cookson et al. (1992) argue that the dissemination of education models is a new kind of imperialism or neocolonialism that enables core countries to perpetuate their cultural and economic domination. More recently, Vinokur (2003) argues that education discourse in international organizations has changed over the last half century according to immediate labor force needs for capital accumulation, and Mundy (1998) also maintains that international educational policies reflect the capitalist order.

9. The pre‐state period, before the foundation of the state in 1948.

10. See also similar works of Beki, Carl Frankenstein and Ortar in Jerusalem, Anoch and Smilansky in Tel Aviv, Ben David in Rechovot cited in Moshe Smilansky (n.d., p. 13) (in Hebrew).

11. See, among others: Abstract and concrete behavior (Goldstein & Scheer, 1941); The meaning of intelligence (Stoddard, 1943); Language and languages disturbances (Goldstein, 1948); and Organization of behavior (Gordon, 1949).

12. Department of the Jewish Agency in charge of youth immigration.

13. Ethnic division in the Jewish population acquired various denominations according to the different authors: western/Oriental population, Ashkenazi/Mizrachi population; populations from western/Asian and African countries of origin; populations from western/Middle Eastern and North African countries of origin.

14. Smilansky, in the memorandum of 1956, was aware that a change of the education system structure was a delicate enterprise requiring a long preparation of the ground. The preparation included information for the teachers and the large public about the reasons and the directions of the reform, detailed programs about the changes the reform would entail in every one of the different education fields and ensuring manpower and funds to implement the reform. But he also pointed out that the reform should be applied progressively and be based on experiments that would be continually improved.

15. See, for example, the following: in Britain, the ‘Early Leaving’ Report of 1954, the Crowther Report of 1959, the Newsom Report of 1963, the Robbins Report of 1963, and the Plowden Report of 1967; in the United States, the Coleman Report of 1966; in France, the Longitudinal INED Survey, 1962–1972; in Sweden, the Longitudinal Survey of Malmo City undertaken by Husen in 1969. Those surveys are commented on in Jean‐Claude Forquin (1990), pp. 19–27.

16. For instance, a follow‐up study of 1957 graduates of elementary school showed that, of those of European extraction who completed the National Survey in the 80+ percentile, 73.5% entered academic secondary schools, 60% graduated and 55% received matriculation certificates granting entrance to higher education. Of those of Middle Eastern extraction, 60.5% of those applied to academic secondary schools, 37% graduated, and only 27.5% received matriculation certificates granting access to higher education (in Smilansky et al., 1971, p. 10).

17. Of those of European descent who completed the National Survey in the 70–79 percentile and who were therefore not eligible for graded tuition fees and were not encouraged by the State of Israel to attend academic secondary schools, 52% applied to academic second schools, 29% graduated, and 20% received matriculation certificates. As opposed to this, of those of Middle Eastern descent who received similar marks and to whom the Ministry of Education granted graded tuition fees and individual permission to enter academic secondary schools, only 38% actually entered these schools, 15% graduated, and 8% received matriculation certificates (Smilansky et al., 1971, p. 11).

18. See, among others, Leah Adar (1956), Yehuda Amir (1984), Marion Blank, Rachel Bielsky‐Cohen, Chaim Adler (& Peleg, 1975), David Chen, Micha Chen, Hinda Eiger, Feince‐Glick, D. Feitelston, R. Feuerstein, Carl Frankenstein (1952, 1953), Yitzchak Kashti, A. F. Kleinberger, Arieh Levy (1963), Abraham Minkowitz, David Nevo (Smilansky et al., 1966, Smilansky et al., 1971), Gina Ortar, Shlomo Sharan, A. Shtal and Arieh Simon.

19. See, among others, Goldstein & Scheer, 1941; Stoddard, 1943; Goldstein, 1948; Gordon, 1949. All those works are cited in Eiger, 1975, pp. 21–43.

20. See, among others, ‘Society and education’ (Havighurst, 1957), ‘The children of Sanchez’ (Lewis, 1961) and ‘Children of bondage’ (Davis & Dollard, 1964).

21. Smilansky & Shefatia, 1971; see also S. Smilansky, 1964.

22. See, for instance, Smilansky & Smilansky, 1969.

23. The work is described in Hogan, 1971.

24. The work is described in Aran, 1971 and Aranne & Wooler, 1971.

25. See, for instance Klein & Eshel, 1969–1972.

26. Aid groups in which 4–6 pupils studied 3 or 4 times a week. Between 1966 and 1967, 40,000 pupils studied in 15,000 groups. This project and the ‘long study‐day’ project, initiated in 1952 and applied to 2nd through 8th grades, reached 90,000 children in 1973. An evaluation study of this big project was ordered by the Ministry of Education, funded by the Ford Foundation and conducted by the Szold Institute in 1972.

27. The homework assistance program comprised 4,000 students in 1970.

28. Converting the amounts cited by the author from Israeli pounds to dollars, according to Smilansky the committee began its work with an initial budget of around 33,000 US dollars, and in 10 years this was increased to more than 400,000 US dollars. The Center for the Post‐elementary Disadvantaged began its activities with a budget of 500,000 US dollars and in four years this sum had increased to around 820,000 US dollars. In both cases, these funds did not reflect all the expenses of compensatory education (Smilansky et al., n.d., p. 39).

29. The educational level distribution showed that although children from Oriental origin constituted 50% of the 13–14‐year‐old pupil population, only 32% of the total National Survey Test population (at the end of 8th grade) and 17.7% of children in secondary schools were of Oriental origin. In the first grade of academic secondary schools, they constituted only 15.8%, in the 12th and last grade only 7.8 %, and in higher education, 5% at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and 3.6% at the Technion (Smilansky, 1957).

30. ‘Half a future is not a future at all’ from the speech presented in the Knesset on the budget of the Ministry of Education for the year 1965/1966 (22 March 1965) (Aran, 1971). As a reviewer of this manuscript points out, ‘half of the future’ had also been the title of an English Ministry of Education/Central Advisory Council for Education report chaired by J. H. Newson and that was published in 1961.

31. On the links between the education departments at the University of Haifa and the Ministry of Education and specifically with the structural reform, see Dror (1996); and on the Tel Aviv University, see the book on the History of the University of Tel Aviv (draft) and Yedionim, both available in the archives of Tel Aviv University.

32. M. Smilansky, Lecture before the Congress of American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 1964 (in Smilansky & Smilansky, 1967).

33. The sources of funding included, among others, the Van Leer Foundation in the Netherlands, research centers in American universities, the Ministry of Education of the United States, the Rothschild Foundation, and the Federal Research Branch of the United States.

34. Aran stated that in order to attain its general objectives, the government should make efforts to:

1. close the gap between the human quantity and human education quality (meaning to reach a good education level for all the children);

2. avoid large drop‐outs in secondary and higher education;

3. bridge the large ethnic educational gap that still existed;

4. adapt the education system to all the different layers of the population; and

5. deepen the national and social values of the new generation. Report of the Parliamentary Committee for the Examination of the Structure of Elementary and post‐Elementary Education in Israel (1966–1968), Jerusalem, 1971, pp. 11–12. As we can see, four of a total of five reformists objectives presented to the Knesset were basically formulated in an ‘ethnic gap’ discourse. The third objective mentioned directly the need to ‘bridge the ethnic gap’.

35. Hed Hachinuch, 29 (25, Hadar), 1966, p. 12.

36. See Krausz, 1991, Contributors, p. 490.

37. Most scholars maintain that the globalization process began in the 1980s (Robertson, 1995; Green, 1997; Tomlinson, 1999; Burbules & Torres, 2000; Suarez‐Orosco & Baolian Qin‐Hilliard, 2004).