ABSTRACT

The elevation of the Israeli military-industrial corporate elite to the status of representatives of a bipartisan national interest, on the one hand, and the debilitation of Israeli workers, the constant flow of new, manipulable recruits to the work force, and the splits between and within the Mizrahi and Israeli Palestinian electorates, on the other, have been reflected in the changing agenda of the Israeli educational system. The emergence of what has been termed the “winner takes all” ideology (Robert H.Frank, quoted in Thurow, 1996:21) among what in Israel is euphemistically referred to as “the upper deciles” has been paralleled by the rise of a demand for excellence, selectivity, and distinctiveness in education. This demand set the tone for the most significant changes in Israeli education in the 1980s and 1990s.