Inclusive Curriculum? Challenges to the Role of Civic Education in a Jewish and Democratic State

Abstract

Against the backdrop of growing conflicts in Israeli society and concerns about its democratic character, the current curriculum guidelines and official textbook for civic education in Israel were set to offer a more inclusive civic education that would stress ideas such as pluralistic and democratic citizenship. However, this curriculum does not operate in a vacuum, and despite the language of inclusivity implied in the curriculum guidance, a discursive analysis of the curriculum materials and interviews with 13 officials in the Ministry of Education revealed the complexities and the competing messages that emerged from contemporary civic education in Israel. This article explores the ways in which Israeli citizenship and membership in the civic collective are defined by the official curriculum and textbook for civic education. In particular, it is concerned with the tension between inclusion and exclusion and the ways in which civic education acts as a space for both nation building and state formation.

Notes

Notes

1 Citizenship or civic education are the two terms which are often used to broadly describe the role of education, and in particular schooling, in preparing future citizens and the various educational activities that are designed for that purpose. The decision to use one term rather than the other is often arbitrary; however, attempts to distinguish between the two tend to use civic education to refer mainly to curricular aspects and other formal educational activities, whereas citizenship education is used to encompass a broader range of educational and school activities (Kerr, 2000). Therefore, because the focus of this article is the formal civic education curriculum for high schools in Israel, throughout this article, I use the term civic education deliberately. The term citizenship education is used when the broader field of educational research and practice is discussed as a term which encompasses the whole range of activities, including civic education.

2 See, for example, Maitles (2000), Reeher and Cammarano (1997), and Engle and Ochoa (1988).

3 See, for example, Banks (1997), Frazer (1999), Lynch (1992) and Osler (2000).

4 Of the 13 officials interviewed, 3 were Arab-Palestinians, 4 were religious Jews who work in the religious state education sector, and the rest were secular Jews. Three of the officials were supervisors for civic education in the three state educational sectors: general, Arab and religious. Two were involved in the process of shaping the curriculum and the curriculum materials and eight were advisers for teachers who were responsible for the implementation of the current curriculum (two of whom were also involved in writing the official textbook). Because the number of people who are involved in civic education in the Ministry of Education is very small, it was felt that the best way to refer to all the interviewees was by using the term officials. Using pseudonyms (which could reveal their gender and other characteristics) would have made it possible to identify them and link a specific quote to a specific person.

5 Critical sociology is often referred to, in political and media debates, as post-Zionist perspective. Although this identification has also penetrated academic discourse, the author of this article prefers to use the term critical sociology which tends to highlight more the theoretical and methodological standpoints of this critique rather than its political one. Moreover, the label post-Zionism is not only unclear, but it is also sometimes used to delegitimise this type of critique over Zionism.

6 In this respect critical sociologists follow the analysis of the “New Historians” in Israel.

7 I use the term Arab by itself when I refer to the Arab school system because this is the official name given to it.

8 In the context of civic education in Israel, studies such as those of Orit Ichilov (1998, 1999) focus on these themes.

9 Particularism refers to identifications that assume differences such as ethnicity, race, class, and nationality and are seen as unique, particularly in terms of culture, territory, kinship relationships and so on.

10 The Israeli education system is divided into the following sectors: general state education which caters to the Jewish secular population; state religious education which serves the Zionist-religious population; the Arab state education system; and the independent ultra-religious school system.

11 The Arab education system suffers from continued discrimination in budget allocation, especially in terms of teaching hours, remedial and fostering hours (Geraby & Levy, 2000; Swirski, San-Znegi, & Dagan, 1996; Swirski, San-Znegi, & Dagan, 1997) and in facilities such as classrooms, libraries, laboratories and school buildings (Human Rights Watch, 2001).

12 The success rate in the final examination is one the lowest among the compulsory matriculation exams and since 2003 it has been in decline. In the last examination, in 2005, the average grade was 69.7 (equivalent to C) while 16.4% of those who took the exam have failed (Haromtchenko, 2006, p. 3).

13 Other studies on Israeli textbooks also suggest that since the end of the 1980s, there has been more awareness of democratic and universal values in Israeli textbooks. For example, see Bar-Tal (1999), Podeh (2000) and Resnik (1999). However, as it emerges from these studies, despite these messages, the dominant discourse underpinning these textbook is still the Zionist-Jewish one (Al-Haj, 2005).

14 The Law of Return (1950) secures the right of any Jewish person in the world, or someone of Jewish descent, to “return” to the Land of Israel. It gives legal application to one of the principles inherent in the Zionist ideology—in-gathering the exile—reinforcing the connection between the Jewish people in the Diasporas and the State of Israel (Kretzmer, 1987) and as such, it assumes and overlaps between Israeli citizenship and Jewish nationality. Effectively, it means that the right to belong to the State of Israel has been extended to every Jew around the world. Thus, the State of Israel views any Jewish person as a potential citizen (Kimmerling, 2001). The Law of Return and the Citizenship Law in Israel are conceptually as well as legally tied together. The link between the principle of in-gathering the exile that underpins the Law of Return and the naturalisation process is a significant exclusionary mechanism that is designed to maintain the Jewishness of the State of Israel and its Jewish majority.

15 This cleavage refers to the dispute in Israel society between doves and hawks, that is, the dispute about the peace process and the future borders of the State of Israel.