'National Education' Through Mutually Supportive Devices : A Case Study of Zionist Education

Shortlisted for the Anne Bloomfield Prize 2010
This book fills in the gaps in the research of nationality, regarding ‘national education’ in its double meaning: compulsory national education for all and creating opportunities for fostering national consciousness. Studies in the field have merely emphasized the importance of a national language, compulsory education, curricula of the humanities, and symbols and memories. However, are educational devices less important than contents? Is National education carried out only via the curricula implemented, or also by the great variety of means employed in formal education and in the various nonformal frameworks within the schools and jointly with them?
Based on these questions, the analysis focuses on three concentric circles of secular Zionist education: Kibbutz education, The Labor Trend (Zionist-socialist) (1921-1953) and the General Trend, the central/liberal non-religious education system in the yishuv period – later the state education system. The research deals with the Zionist period in (Eretz-) Israel, beginning in 1882-1948, the time of the Jewish yishuv (pre-state community), and ending with the first fifty years of the State of Israel.