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Peace Education in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies pp 231–246Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

“Yeah, It Is Important to Know Arabic—I Just Don’t Like Learning It”

Can Jews Become Bilingual in the Palestinian-Jewish Integrated Bilingual Schools?

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Abstract

For the last decade, I have been studying integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel. Identity construction and cultural negotiation were the interests that brought me into this scene. However, I had little choice but to start paying attention to language because language was always marked in the activities I recorded. Language was marked because the teaching of both Arabic and Hebrew had been chosen as the main feature through which to mediate the encounter between the two populations involved, Jews and Palestinians, with their long history of conflict. It was assumed that the learning of the other group’s language was essential in fostering outgroup recognition and tolerance. Over the course of my research, I continually returned to the following question: how could an educational environment so committed to bilingualism and so invested in efforts to achieve bilingualism fail for one group (Jews) while being so successful for the other (Palestinians)?

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Authors
  1. Zvi Bekerman
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Editor information

Claire McGlynn Michalinos Zembylas Zvi Bekerman Tony Gallagher

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© 2009 Claire McGlynn, Michalinos Zembylas, Zvi Bekerman, and Tony Gallagher

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Bekerman, Z. (2009). “Yeah, It Is Important to Know Arabic—I Just Don’t Like Learning It”. In: McGlynn, C., Zembylas, M., Bekerman, Z., Gallagher, T. (eds) Peace Education in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230620421_15

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