Educational integration of immigrants in Israel

This chapter outlines the characteristics of immigration to Israel since 1948, the interaction of immigrants with the social and ideological milieu of their host country, and the modes of their integration into the Israel society. It evaluates the responses of the educational system as it attempted to provide universal, free, and equal education for immigrant children from diverse countries and cultural backgrounds and to integrate them into the host society. The chapter argues that education should be the main tool for social, cultural, and political integration and for the forging of a unified society out of the diversified ethnic groups. Thus it is rather the social and cultural environment which presents problems of adjustment to the students and not the school itself. Mass immigration to the State of Israel differed from the pre-State immigration in its size, the socio-cultural and ethnic composition, and immigrants' motivation.