Our demand for a separate Arab educational system is not an expression of a (separatist) desire to break away from the State of Israel. On the contrary, it is a demand for recognition and for support to practice our unique culture, just like the Israeli religious educational system.
Shlomit Amichai, Director-General of the Education Ministry, recently presented the Education Ministry s Plan of Action for the 2008-2009 School Year for the Arab Sector. This plan of action, as signified by its title, is merely a conglomeration of actions – sporadic and unstructured. At its core lies the conception that the main problem facing the educational system in the Arab sector is the need to close gaps.
This emphasis on closing gaps, or rather managing them (since there is no action plan to close them in the foreseeable future), is a recurring narrow and short-term policy inappropriate for the internal needs of the Arab society in Israel. It is a policy that lacks the necessary comprehensive perspective of the educational system s place within the framework of a national minority that seeks to take part in managing and determining its educational content.
It is not enough to deal with the immediate practical needs of Arab education – such as building classrooms or directing funds for specific programs, etc. At the very heart of the matter is a need to debate the strategic requirements and goals of this educational system. The issue relates to how much cultural freedom is to be granted to the Arab minority to choose its identities and the values with which it wishes to live and educate its youth.
From this it follows that the Education Ministry must develop a policy that will ensure the following:
1. Complete equality and even affirmative action in the allocation of funds in order to bridge the vast disparities between the Arab and Jewish sectors, which include on the Arab side: fewer buildings, inferior infrastructure, smaller budgets, and fewer human resources for pedagogical needs such as developing educational programs and original textbooks in the Arabic language.
2. A basic recognition and acceptance of the historic-cultural narrative of the Arab minority in Israel. The educational system needs to acknowledge that the Arab society has its own unique culture and set of values, as well as its own unique sociological problems that must to be addressed, for example: chronic poverty, community violence, and environmental risk factors. That is to say, there is a need to acknowledge not only the cultural uniqueness of Arab education, but also the uniqueness of the problems it faces. This can only be done by establishing a department in the Education Ministry that will be entirely dedicated to these purposes. Furthermore, the Arabic language needs to be recognized by the educational system, not only because it is one of Israel s official languages, but also because it is the language of an indigenous minority that deserves protection. This recognition entails the creation of Arabic textbooks and educational programs as well as the introduction of stricter regulations regarding the qualifications and training requirements of Arabic teachers.
3. Full and significant participation on the part of Arab public leaders and professionals in the management of the Arab public educational system and in the outlining of its pedagogical policies. By including more Arabs at the headquarter level in the Education Ministry, supervisory mechanisms would naturally emerge. These mechanisms would enable the Arab language to be used extensively in the Ministry s headquarters, and would effectively involve Arabs in the decision-making and policy design processes-much like the pedagogical autonomy enjoyed by the religious Jewish state-run educational system.
Furthermore, the plan presented by the Education Ministry reveals neglect in dealing with the structural and organizational aspects of the system. Presently, the Arab school system is managed locally, within the framework of each particular district and is subject to the managers of each district.
The Ministry s departments of Arab, Druze and Bedouin schools serve as small unit headquarters with limited influence on the ground. Despite the fact that the state educational regulations dictate the creation of an advisory board for Arab education, the first board, created by Minister of Education, Amnon Rubinstein during Rabin’s government, resigned following the rejection of its recommendation to create a pedagogical council and administration. The advisory board s activities never resumed.
Any proposal to recognize Arab schools as a separate educational system is viewed by most Israelis as a separatist move. At the same time, proposals to officially recognize the Jewish ultra-Orthodox and the combined Jewish-secular systems are legitimized and being considered by the Knesset.
However, the demand to establish a separate educational system for the Arabs is in no way a separatist demand that seeks to bar government or societal involvement. Quite the opposite is true. Rather, it is a demand for recognition and for the state to encourage, assist and support Arab education – all for the purpose of realizing Arab cultural heritage.
In the coming months, the Arab Monitoring Committee of Israel is planning to establish an Arab pedagogical council that will symbolically challenge the Education Ministry to recognize it. The council will deal with the pedagogical policies of Arab education, will publish critical position pieces relating to educational content and programs, and will offer the Education Ministry alternatives.
Ayman Agbariais a professor of Educational Theory and Policy at Haifa University, and is an advisor on Arab educational matters to the Arab Monitoring Committee of Israel. This article, translated from Hebrew, is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
