Education, Empowerment, and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION In this monograph, an attempt has been made to analyze the role played by formal education among the Arab national minority in Israel. Throughout, we have dealt systematically with one central question: Is education a source of empowerment for a minority or is it, rather, a mechanism of social and political control used by the dominant group? In attempting to answer this question, we have traced the education system among the Palestinians for nearly one century, from the late Ottoman period through the British Mandate and, more closely, since the establishment of Israel. Our analysis was based on a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative methods, including document analysis, content analysis of the press, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and three field surveys of the condition of Arab education, school transition , and the employment situation of Arab university graduates . The analysis highlighted the contradictory expectations of the Palestinian community and the dominant groups as to the role of the education system. While Palestinians have seen education throughout the different periods as a source of empowerment, the dominant groups have utilized the education system as a mechanism of social control. Indeed, a common factor connecting the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, and Israel has been the use of education as an adaptive system, through which the ruling parties aimed at controlling the entire population and maintaining traditional structures and patterns of interaction. That is, they never viewed education as a vehicle for development and social change for the minority. On the contrary, for nearly a century, the education system for the Arabs who lived in Palestine and, later 215 216 EDUCATION, EMPOWERMENT, AND CONTROL on, Israel has been denationalized and deprived of any authentic content. Given this state of contradictory I~xpectations, the development of any national consciousness among the Palestinians has been perceived as threatening to the intlerests of the dominant group and leading toward instability. MOrE!OVer, the ruling groups, without exception, have attempted to deliglitimize Arab and Palestinian nationalism and to use the education system as an instrument for legitimizing the official ideology alongside the transmission of vague universal values. We conclude, therefore, that durin9 the different periods examined, a colonial model was used toward Arab education. A careful comparison of official policy during the Ottoman and the Mandatory periods, on the one hand, and during Israeli statehood, on the other, however, reveals some important differences. Prior to the establishment of Israel the education system, in particular at the higher levels, was elitist. Although the Mandatory government aimed at increasing literacy among the several sections of the Arab population, it made every effort to obstruct mass education or any rapid expansion of higher education. In addition, the Mandatory government invested mainly in urban schools, whereas most ofthe rural population had no chance for educational attainment. As a way of maintaining traditional structures, furthermore, the British Mandate also discouraged female education. Unlike the Mandatory and Ottoman periods, the establishment of Israel brought about a transition, in that education was expanded from a selective system into mass education. This was the result of political change, as a coloniall regime gave way to a nation-state directed by a Western-democratic model. As a result, the Arab citizens have benefited from Isruel's different education laws: the Free Education Bill (1949), the Education Law (1953), and the Law for Free Secondary Education (1978). The importance of education among the Arabs in Israel increased in light of the economic and sododemographic changes that occurred since the establishment of Israel. The Arabs who were left in Israel after the 1948 war WE!re a small, vulnerable minority. The fact that Israel is a democratic but at the same time nationalist state, whose security considemtions have the highest priority, has imparted to the Arab citizens the status of partial membership in Israeli society. With the Arabs deprived of an economic base of their own and having only limited access to the opportunity structure, the need for attaining more education in the competition for local and national rE!SOUrCes took an added importance. Conclusion 217 The narrowing of the class structure among the Arabs in Israel as a result of the comprehensive proletarianization process drastically changed the basis of stratification. In the new system, education replaced land as a major element of an individual's socioeconomic status. This phenomenon has accelerated internal political change among the Arab population. Groups that hitherto were situated...