Education for Democracy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted, with a two-thirds majority, a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Despite the tiny area designated for the Jewish state, news of the resolution was received joyfully, with dancing, by the half-million Jews living in Palestine at the time and by the 10 million Jews living elsewhere in the world (six million Jews had been massacred only a few years previously in the Holocaust in Europe). The Arabs in Palestine and the Arab states responded with great rage to the resolution. In early December 1947, the Palestinian Arabs, together with five Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq) instigated belligerent activity against the Jewish Yishuv (Heb., community) in Palestine and sought to occupy the entire land. Israel's War of Independence lasted fifteen months and resulted in tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties. On the Jewish side, 6,000 died and 30,000 were wounded, about 6 percent of the Jewish population. 650,000 Jews and 160,000 non-Jews (mostly Muslim Arabs) resided within the ceasefire lines drawn up at the end of the war (March 1949).

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, proclaimed Israel's independence. The Declaration of Independence was signed by representatives of all the Jewish factions in the country (left, center, right, ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and non-religious). The Declaration opens with a long historical survey, the first part of which follows:

The second part of the Declaration determines the democratic foundations of the State, and has in fact served to this day as a sort of constitutional infrastructure.

Thus, the Declaration of Independence established the two foundations for the State of Israel: first, a Jewish state and the state of the Jewish people; and second, a democratic state in which the values of equality and freedom for every citizen are guaranteed, including the rights of minorities (national, ethnic, and religious). In fact, since its very inception, Israel has been vacillating between being a "Jewish state," and being the "state of all its citizens" (including those who are not Jewish). On the one hand, Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, feels responsible for world Jewry the and aspires to have the majority of world Jewry settle in the country. On the other hand, it is one of several dozen enlightened democratic countries committed to equal rights and status for all its citizens and is recognized as such in the community of nations.

One of the first laws adopted by the Knesset (Israel's parliament) after the ceasefire agreements signed in 1949, was the Free Compulsory Education Law, which stipulated that all children aged between 5 and 14, without distinction between sex, religion or race, be entitled to free preschool kindergarten and elementary school. Three additional basic resolutions passed in the same year, have shaped of education system:

1. Every Jewish family would determine the free (state-funded) education for their children according to its own worldview. At the time there was a total of 100,000 pupils in all the educational establishments. Contrary to practices in many other countries, parents were given a choice of three educational options: general education (non-religious); Zionist-religious education (modern religious), and haredi education (ultra-orthodox). In fact, there were even more choices, as each option had sub-divisions: rural-settlement education within general education; different levels of orthodoxy within the religious-Zionist education; hassidic or anti-hassidic education within the ultra-orthodox education. The result is that Israeli democracy has given maximal freedom - more than in most other countries - to each family in the choice of education for their children.

2. It was decided to continue the separate non-Jewish education systems (a large majority for Muslim Arabs, others Christian Arabs and Druze), that had existed before the State was established. This separation was not imposed by law, but most parents living in separate localities chose to educate their children in separate institutions. In mixed localities, mainly in Yafo, Haifa, Akko, and Ramle, there are, though few, examples of mixed Jewish-Arab education.

3. Israel's non-Jewish citizens, the large majority of whom are Arabs, were given the formal right to foster their heritage and cultural and religious identity. It might be worth stressing that not every democracy in the mid-twentieth century gave their minorities the right to study in their own language and foster their own culture. Israel decided to do so, despite the fact that a large percentage of the Arab minority had links of blood and culture with kin in Arab countries, which were trying to annihilate Israel. One of the arguments that was used repeatedly in internal Jewish discussions and which led to acceptance of this rule, was the historic experience of Jews in various countries and their demand, not always conceded, to preserve their independent identity among other peoples in other countries.

Since the education system in Israel has, from the very beginning, been so pluralistic, the heads of the system have asked themselves - and continue to ask themselves to this day - how to provide an education in shared core values, and what minimum national education to demand from the various educational establishments. In the first year there was agreement about compulsory study of the Hebrew language (in Arab institutions, as a foreign language), a minimum physical education, shared rules about hygiene, and nothing more. Since then - despite attempts at definitions that have been brought up and deliberated every few years - no shared "Israeli minimum" has been determined. The elementary requirements of every pupil to study subjects such as exact sciences, national history, Hebrew literature, civics and others have not yet been determined. The present Minister of Education, Ms. Limor Livnat - who took office in March, 2001 - has proclaimed this as one of the objectives of her office.

Israel is the only country in the world whose population doubled in the first three and a half years of its existence. In the first forty months, after the gates to the country had opened, the Jewish population increased from 650,000 (in 1948) to almost 1.5 million at the end of 1951. During this period, the number of Jewish pupils tripled from 100,000 to around 300,000.

Coping with the education of so many pupils during those first critical years was not a simple task.. Hundreds of new buildings, a great deal of furniture and much educational equipment, hundreds of thousands of textbooks and, most importantly, thousands of new teachers were needed. In those days, almost any high school graduate could become a teacher. On instructions by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, even the army was drafted, supplying hundreds of soldiers for teaching and educational roles.

The immigrants who arrived in the country between 1948 and 1951 came mainly from Europe and from Asia-Africa. The first group of newcomers, about 350,000, were survivors of the Holocaust. They came from countries including Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, and most were fragmented families with very few children. The second group, of a similar number, came from Islamic countries - almost half from Iraq and the rest from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and North Africa. The period became known as Israel's "melting pot time," when the natives made vehement demands on those coming from the Diaspora to shed their "Diasporism" quickly. Despite the many successes (for example, the teaching of Hebrew to hundreds of thousands within a short time), many families were left with severe scars and a deep identity crisis. The old-timers demanded of the newcomers - and particularly from Oriental religious families - that they turn into more modern, non-religious, "new Jews" forthwith. The traumas created in those early days of statehood have remained with many immigrant families to this day.

Since the 1950s, the country's population has grown several times larger, and at the beginning of 2001 numbered over six million (almost five million of them Jewish). Educational policy has changed from one extreme to the other. The "melting pot" idea has been discarded and replaced by the present idea of fostering multiculturalism. Over a million immigrants have arrived in Israel in the past decade, about a million form the former Soviet Union and some 80,000 from Ethiopia. These immigrants have been absorbed in a sensitive, restrained way. The educational approach is more pluralistic and more attentive to the ethnic origin of each immigrant, and helps them to study Israeli culture whilst preserving their own.

Until the establishment of the State, about three quarters of the adult Arab population in Palestine -and the absolute majority of women - were illiterate. There had been two types of schools for Arabs: government schools (supported by the British Mandatory government) and private schools (most of which were affiliated to religious establishments, Muslim and Christian), and all single-sex. On the eve of the establishment of the State, there were 424 schools for boys and only 90 for girls, with a population of 64,550 boys and 16,550 girls.

One of the State's first tasks was to tackle the significant differences between the two education systems - the Jewish and the Arab - and to promote education of Arab girls. In the early 1950s, efforts were made to open mixed classes for boys and girls; this caused strong opposition from conservative Arabs. One innovation, perhaps even bolder than the previous one, was introducing women teachers into boys' schools (and in mixed classes of boys and girls). This innovation also met with strong opposition, but reality has overcome most of it. At the end of the twentieth century, there were thousands of young Arab girls studying in post-secondary and higher education.

There exists an array of fundamental questions concerning education and democracy relating to Arab education today, which includes the following three issues:

• the problem of Arab identity in a Jewish and democratic state. Some of the pupils, and even some of the Arab educators salaried by Israel, do not respect the laws of the country and the symbols of the State. They repudiate laws such as the Law of Return and symbols such as the national anthem and flag. The question of Arab identity in Israel has become a more complicated issue especially since October, 2000, when the current wave of Palestinian violence broke out.

• the resources needed to keep up with the Arab population growth are enormous, and sometimes insufficient. In the Bedouin sector, for example, where the natural increase is the highest in the world (!), the educational services fall below those that exist in the center of the country.

• the average level of teaching in Arab schools is generally lower than in Jewish institutions. Many of the Arab teachers have held their positions for dozens of years and have not adapted their teaching methods and educational style to the twenty-first century. The result is that, on average, Arab pupils are lower achievers than Jewish pupils.

Since the 1990s, the diverse education systems are investing significant efforts in teaching matters of principal relating to the quality of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The various education systems engage, to a great extent, in the implications of these issues for majority-minority relations, the relationship between state and religion, between Israeli citizens and Jews in the Diaspora, and so forth. Special efforts have been invested recently in special programs at teacher training colleges; the curricula and text books are being revised and the above questions are introduced into the subjects studied (mainly the humanities - history, literature, etc.); questions regarding democracy are examined in classes with the core teacher and discussed in informal settings (such as youth movements) and in joint teacher-parent-pupil meetings.

Two important public commissions have also had a bearing on the change in the policy of the Ministry of Education (and allocation of funds) regarding the issue of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State.

The first, known as the Shenhar Commission (after its chairperson, Prof. Aliza Shenhar), was appointed by the religious-Zionist minister Zevulun Hammer in 1991. This commission dealt with Jewish education in the modern world. The second, the Kremnitzer Commission (named after its chairperson Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer), was appointed in 1995 by the non-religious minister Amnon Rubinstein). It dealt with education in civics for all pupils in the country, stressing the goal of citizens committed to democracy.

The Shenhar Commission discussions took place at the beginning of the peace negotiations, which opened in Madrid (October, 1991), continued in Oslo, and culminated in Washington (September, 1993), with a Declaration of Principles signed by the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (since then a peace treaty has been signed between Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan in October, 1994).

In relating to the peace process, the commission stressed the educational-cultural challenges posed by the hopes for peace. The commission declared that Judaism is "a national, pluralistic culture, subject to constant renewal". It determined that nurturing pupils to "combine values of personal and social morality from the Jewish heritage, from the Zionist ethic, and from humanistic ideologies and theories of morality" was an educational objective. The commission addressed itself mainly to the secular state school system, which constitutes the majority education system, and stated that: "The secular state school is characterized by openness to opinions and worldviews, and by a positive attitude to human rights and democratic life."

According to the Kremnitzer Commission, the objectives of civic education are "to provide every citizen with knowledge, understanding, and ability to analyze, judge, and make decisions on social and political issues; to internalize the values of the country; to produce a commitment to democratic government and willingness to defend it; to have the capacity and wish to be an active, involved, and responsible citizens." In fact this applies both to teaching the theory and to instilling positions, values, and active motivation for democratic citizenship.

The Commission stressed the rights and obligations of all citizens of Israel. The right to life, the right to respect, and the right to general freedom were highlighted as core rights. Under the right to general freedom, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom to demonstrate, and the right to information were specially mentioned. The basic rights also include the right to bodily integrity, the right to a good name, the right to privacy, the right to own property, the right to vote and to be elected, the right not to be subject to arbitrariness (the rules of natural justice and the right to a fair trial). Two additional groups of rights are: (a) the rights of subsistence and welfare (social and financial rights), health, education, housing, work and employment, welfare services and national insurance, and a decent environment; and (b) rights associated with the cycle of life: the right to pregnancy and to giving birth, the rights of children and pupils, the right to marriage and divorce, the rights of the elderly, and rights concerning death and burial.

At the same time, the commission spelled out the obligations of a citizen of Israel: the obligation to obey the law (the proviso "on condition that it was passed legally and does not conflict with the principles of democracy" was emphasized), the obligation to pay taxes, the obligation to serve in the army, the obligations of public servants towards citizens.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were more than 1,600,000 pupils in the education systems, more than fifteen times the number of pupils when the State was established. Since the Shenhar and Kremnitzer reports, every government has decided to accord high priority to education for Judaism and democracy. Priority is given at all levels: the policy level, the planning level and the applied level and this applies to all education systems.

At the overall policy level, the issue of Judaism and democracy has become of great importance. It is being dealt with at the top echelons of the Ministry of Education, the local authorities, and all school administrations. At the planning level, the issue has become the basis for new curricula, in teacher training colleges, in schools and even in kindergartens. Dozens of new text books have been written in recent years, mostly privately, following the privatization policy adopted by the Ministry of Education. On the applied level, there is virtually no teacher or teaching staff in the country that does not deal with the issue of combining Judaism and democracy in education.