History and civics education in Israel: reflections from Israeli teachers

ABSTRACT

In recent years, a number of studies have explored the link between Zionism and the latent racism prevalent in Israeli society. As a result of these studies, it has become clear that successive generations of Israeli citizens (and non-citizens) are exposed to a single historical and cultural narrative. Such a narrative is intentionally designed to strengthen the emergent ethno-national character of Israeli democracy. This study examines a selection of Jewish–Israeli teachers’ reflections on teaching in Israeli high school history and civics classrooms, and the institutionalized racism that they encounter both within the textbooks and from their students. I will demonstrate that these reflections are examples of negotiating dilemmatic spaces, resulting from the unique ‘structural conditions and relations to everyday practices’ that Israeli educators must face. Israeli teachers must mediate the curricular materials vis-à-vis the degrees of freedom they are provided to teach counter-historical narratives and their own emotional responses to both the content of the textbooks and their students’ reactions to the dominant national narrative presented therein.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• civics education
• dilemmatic spaces
• history education
• national narratives
• word

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While the international parallels more closely resemble postcolonial nationalist education projects in the global south (Anderson, 1983) rather than the commonly used Northern Ireland, perhaps the closest contemporary analogue is the work of the Institute of National Memory in Ukraine (Cohen, 2016). While not as explicitly revisionist as the Ukrainian project, the type of history taught in Israeli schools shares a similar tactic, legitimating massacres as a function of myth making and nation-building (see Peled-Elhanan 2010, 2012).

2. This process mirrors Anderson’s description of colonial education in Vietnam and Cambodia (Anderson, 1983) where the Vietnamese education system was rendered subordinate to the French system (Anderson, 1983, p. 128). Another parallel is the question of instructional languages – similar to Anderson’s Vietnamese example; Arab-sector students use Arabic as the primary language of instruction but are required to learn Hebrew alongside as a second language. Conversely, Jewish students are given the option of learning either Arabic or English, the vast majority of whom choose the later over the former.

3. The absence of counter-narratives serves to negate not only the non-Jewish narratives but also reinforces the non-European roots of Mizrahi Jews, marginalizing their histories as well as their contributions to Israeli civil society. See Bar Shalom (2006) for a more detailed account of Mizrahi-Israeli communities’ struggles in school.

4. Given the spatial constraints of the journal, this article focuses exclusively on Jewish teachers’ experiences.

5. ‘Political Teachers’ was a loosely organized network of critically minded teachers in the Israeli public school system that actively worked to bring the Palestinian narrative into Jewish spaces.

6. The significance of these years should not be underestimated – each teacher’s military service was within the timeframe of the first and second Intifada (Palestinian uprisings), resulting in extended periods of armed conflict as well as further entrenchment of the occupation of the West Bank.

7. While I do speak Hebrew, my Jewish–Israeli participants and I all agreed to do the interviews in English for three reasons: The first is that because the project would be written in English, translations of interview transcripts would add unnecessary complications. The second is that each participant was very confident in his or her English-speaking abilities – when gaps came up, we switched to Hebrew in order for my participants to best express their points. The final and perhaps most important reason is that because I was also interviewing Palestinian–Israeli teachers, it became a matter of ethics as I do not speak Arabic and did not want to use the language of the (perceived) occupier/colonizer with primary Arabic speakers.

8. The small n sample is consistent with the findings of another recent Israeli study. Yemini et al. (2014) experienced low numbers of respondents and described the limitations in their results, stating ‘perhaps only a certain type of history teacher is interested in engaging with curricular development and dilemmas’ (Yemini et al., 2014, p. 20), a belief I happen to share.

9. Questionnaire

PLEASE NOTE: This protocol is not intended to be used in such a way that every interview will involve asking every question listed here. The method being deployed is active, informal and semi-structured.

1. Where did you grow up?

2. How long have you been a teacher for?

3. Where do the textbooks you use come from?

4. Do you know who is writing them?

5. Why did you specialize in history/social studies/geography/civics?

6. Have you always taught these subjects?

7. What inspired you to teach?

8. How would you describe your approach to teaching? (Student-centred learning, pedagogical philosophies, etc.)

9. How do you teach the war of independence/the 6-day war/the second Intifada? To be more specific, do you tend to follow the text or do you happen to include any of your own experiences and memories into your lectures?

10. Are there any similarities about what you teach and what you learned?

11. What relationship do you see between when you were a student and being a student now?

12. How has the curriculum evolved since you started teaching?

13. What are your beliefs in terms of the conflict?

14. Do you think your personal ideological position impacts the way you teach these subjects?

15. How much autonomy do you have in terms of choosing the textbooks and supplements for your classes?

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen W. Sheps

Stephen W. Sheps is currently an unaffiliated scholar based in Toronto, Ontario. He previously held appointments as a visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and in the department of Sociology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. He completed his PhD at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 2014.