ABSTRACT
Mainstream narratives of the Israeli school system tend to follow the line of development of the Zionist settlement in Palestine, which began in the 1880s with the arrival of the first “pioneer” settlers from Eastern Europe, through the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and to the great expansion of the school system that followed the arrival in the new state of a large number of Jewish immigrants and the incorporation of the Palestinians who came under the state’s jurisdiction in 1948 (see, for instance, Kleinberger, 1969). Historians of education follow, in this sense, mainstream social histories (see, for instance, Eisenstadt, 1967).
