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Are Textbooks in Israel Biased?

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Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli academic, has published a study on the anti-Palestinian bias in Israeli school books:

Everything they do, from kindergarten to 12th grade, they are fed in all kinds of ways, through literature and songs and holidays and recreation, with these chauvinistic patriotic notions.

You can read the entire discussion of the book at the link I provided. I only wanted to mention that the discussion would be more productive if its author mentioned that this happens in every nation-state in the world. Nationalism operates by falsifying history and promoting an emotional allegiance to an imaginary entity through music, sports, and intense patriotic propaganda.

It always looks very funny to me when the Americans, the Russians and the British (to name just a few examples) righteously excoriate Israel’s patriotic propaganda without even mentioning that they have been engaged in the same thing for a very long time.

 

28 responses to “Are Textbooks in Israel Biased?”

  1. Izgad Avatar
    Izgad

    Of course a government is going to use the education system for its own benefit. One solution to this problem would be to remove government control over schools. You wouldn’t trust your government for news. Why should you trust the government for any other form of information.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      In my state university, we have freedom of speech. Nobody controls what I say in class and what materials I use. With a private secondary education, we will have crowds of complete illiterates. Whom will that benefit?

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  2. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    It may be something uniquely Canadian (how’s that nationalism for ya) to openly admit our flaws. We make no excuses nor do we try to hide how we:
    1) Abused Chinese slaves in the building of the Canadian National Railway
    2) Attempted to obliterate the Native culture through the residential school system
    3) Rejected Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930’s, despite knowing precisely what was going on under Hitler’s regime.
    4) The imprisonment of Italian and Japanese Canadians during the 2nd World War.

    This is just a snapshot of the history we are taught in Canadian Schools. Nothing about Lester Pearson and the development of the United Nations, or the earlier League of Nations.
    Nothing about the contributions of Fleming and Banting to medicine and science.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      “This is just a snapshot of the history we are taught in Canadian Schools. Nothing about Lester Pearson and the development of the United Nations, or the earlier League of Nations.
      Nothing about the contributions of Fleming and Banting to medicine and science.”

      -I’m sick which must be why I’m not getting this. Why isn’t this taught? How can Pearson not be mentioned?

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      1. Pen Avatar
        Pen

        Pearson isn’t mentioned in Canada? He’s mentioned in the US to people who are studying jointly Canada and the US.

        How odd.

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        1. Patrick Avatar
          Patrick

          It’s the typical Canadian “don’t want to appear like an American Patriot”. It wasn’t until I studied Canadian History on my own that I discovered the contributions of some of these great Canadians. Most Elementary and High School courses focus on our mistreatment of the natives. You know, building up some good old PC guilt.

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            I have no doubt that Israel will get to the self-excoriation stage of nationalism eventually. When shared violence becomes unnecessary, people turn to shared guilt for nation-building purposes.

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            1. el Avatar
              el

              Will I be dead till then?

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  3. AllSaintsDay Avatar
    AllSaintsDay

    This reminds me of reading a book in which the author was describing a visit to the Soviet Union. He described seeing children in a school singing and such, and then said how it seemed different and kind of horrifying to his wife, who spoke Russian, and knew that they were singing of the Party and the Revolution. My thoughts were “Um, duh. It’s basically like us having children recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day.”

    (If I had to guess, I think the book was Heinlein’s Expanded Universe, but I am not at all certain.)

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Exactly!!!!!

      I really love this comment.

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  4. nominatissima Avatar
    nominatissima

    I never really learned patriotic stuff about the entire U.S when I was in school, save for one year, when I was in grade 6, and the teacher was a hard-core jingoistic type who kept photos of Bush and the Pope on her desk.
    We learned a lot more about the history of Hawaii (before and after the annexation by the U.S) than America as a whole, and we learned the lyrics to “Hawaii Ponoi” and “Hawaii Aloha” long before we learned the pledge of allegiance or the “Star Spangled Banner”. That’s apparently also the case in states like Montana and Texas, state history takes precedence over the history of the country.
    Make of that what you will.

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    Asked if Palestinian school books also reflect a certain dogma, Peled-Elhanan claims that they distinguish between Zionists and Jews. “They make this distinction all the time. They are against Zionists, not against Jews.”

    But she concedes that teaching about the Holocaust in Palestinian schools is “a problem, an issue”. “Some [Palestinian] teachers refuse to teach the Holocaust as long as Israelis don’t teach the Nakba [the Palestinian “catastrophe” of 1948].”

    I once read a newspaper article on Palestinian school books and her reaction in the 1st paragraph angered me since even if Israel’s textbooks are biased, Palestinian ones are much more so. Here is one of Google links with examples on the matter:
    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/patext1.html
    I studied in Israeli school and didn’t see such anti-Palestinian propaganda, as anti-Jewish propaganda there. In Israel all kinds of voices, including really Left people are heard. Any Palestinian with comparable views would be killed. And I don’t think it’s only because they haven’t got a state yet, it seems to be a matter of culture too.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I haven’t yet encountered any significant cultural differences in how a nation engages in nation-building. The mechanisms are pretty much the same with only small variations.

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  6. Shedding Khawatir Avatar
    Shedding Khawatir

    When I was growing up, we were told that our textbooks were biased because it is impossible to make an unbiased textbook. So, we would just have to figure out what those biases were and take that into account when thinking about the material. You might be interested in the following article, which looks at national biases in foreign language learning at different times in the US, USSR, and Eastern Europe: “Pavlenko, A. (2003). ʼLanguage of the enemyʼ: Foreign language education and national identity. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6, 313-331.” It’s pretty fascinating.

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  7. Z Avatar
    Z

    I wish I had at my fingertips this Nation review of interesting recent-ish book by Israeli scholar, on how censorship works there for certain academic fields. According to him it led to birfurcation of scholarship in some fields because of what sources you could and couldn’t see (unless you went abroad, of course). It seemed a detailed, erudite study and quite convincing.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I’d love to read that book, so if you remember the title, please tell me.

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  8. Z Avatar
    Z

    @el I’d be a bit careful of the AICE as a source of information.

    @Clarissa the study the article refers to doesn’t seem to be about patriotic history taught in schools, but about racist caricatures and so on.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Racist caricatures have been common in early stages of nation-building for every nation I’m aware of.

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      1. Z Avatar
        Z

        And in colonialism, which is what I’d say the case is in Israel.

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  9. FD Avatar
    FD

    Case in point: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/10/british-empire-michael-gove-history-teaching

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Niall Ferguson?? Oy vey. That guy is something else.

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  10. Miriam Avatar
    Miriam

    Ohhh boy. Just look at Palestinian textbooks.

    In fact, their children’s television programming promotes suicide bombing and Islamic world domination.

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  11. Spanish Prof Avatar
    Spanish Prof

    I’m sure they are biased, like those of any modern nation since the XIXth century. There are still occasional diplomatic complaints between Argentina and Chile because of the maps in school textbooks (A. and C. had border disputes until 15 years ago)

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      That’s my point exactly. We can dump on Israel for doing this but where have we seen a nation that was created without such means?

      I’m not excusing racist caricatures, of course. I just point out that this is something that is always attendant on the nation-building process.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        Clarissa, how long do nation-building processes usually last? I mean, when will we and Palestinians be behind violent confrontations’ stage in your mind?

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          The problem is that now the Palestinians are bent on having their own nation-building process and their goal is nowhere in sight right now. Convincing the people who decided they want a nation to abandon that goal has never really worked for anybody long-term.

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          1. el Avatar
            el

            I know, but how long such confrontational stages usually last? Suppose they get a country this September (extremely not likely imo), and? After how many years incessant confrontations between 2 countries usually stop?

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            1. Spanish Prof Avatar
              Spanish Prof

              In Latin America, they lasted for most of the XIXth century. Argentina achieved independence in 1816, and the consolidation of a modern nation is considered by historiography to be around 1880. In the middle, you had civil wars, wars with neighbor countries, etc. It is not done overnight.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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