Educating Palestine

Abstract

Educating Palestine tells the story of an emergent educational and historical discourse in Mandate Palestine as a space of negotiation between colonial administrators, pedagogues, teachers and students, one of essential importance to the formation of the Palestinian and Zionist (imagined) national self-portrait. It traces and delineates a genealogy of Palestinian pedagogic and historical knowledge through a combination of oral history, students’ journals and extensive archival work in the Zionist, Israeli State and Hagana archives. It intimately portrays its protagonists, teachers and students, emphasizing the encounter between them and the written text and the encounter between them and the national Other.Through an analysis of history textbooks, history syllabi and the history lesson, Educating Palestine investigates the way in which the old-new politics of identity in turbulent Palestine wrote itself into the past and literally change history. The incorporation of Arabic and Hebrew sources and a juxtaposition of the two education systems allows to highlight the reciprocal relations between the two. The book explores the continuous scrutiny and imagination of the national Other of both Hebrew and Palestinian pedagogues and its role in the crystallization of their national pedagogy. It argues that the evolution of education in Palestine stems from this interdependency.