Article
Palestinian Literature Vanished on the Way to the Classroom
January 18, 2006
Some of this boldness, however, disappeared somewhere on the way from the curriculum to the literary anthologies used in Arab schools. So did some important literary works, such as poetry by Mahmoud Darwish and other prominent Palestinian poets, like Rashid Hussein and Samih al-Kassem. The committee that drew up the 1981 curriculum had tried to avoid controversy by choosing texts of a universalist nature. But the committee’s only Jewish member, Immanuel Koplewitz, the head of the Education Ministry’s Arab Education Department who later supervised the publication of the anthology, recalls having some doubts about what had been decided. He says he asked the publisher to remove from the anthology texts that, as he puts it, “verged on being works thatcreate an ill spirit.”
One need not look very far to find the poems of Darwish, and not only those dealing with universalist themes. They, like other works by Palestinian writers, are included in the state’s literature curriculum for Jewish high schools. So are various other Arab works translated into Hebrew in the last decades. The Jewish curriculum includes poetry and prose by Yusuf Idris, Taoufik el-Hakim, Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Samira Azzam, Siham Daoud and Salman Masalha.
One chapter of a Hebrew anthology is, according to the editors, devoted to the Palestinian tragedy. It features Ghassan Kanafani’s story ‘The Land of the Sad Oranges’. Kanafani, born in Acre, is among the foremost writers of Palestinian political literature. He was the spokesman for the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine until 1972, when he was killed in a car bomb blast.
The historical preface to the story tells the reader (that is, the Jewish high school student) that the war that broke out in 1948 is known among the Jewish Israelis as “The War of Independence” and among the Arabs as “the 1948 war” or “al-Nakba” (the catastrophe). The preface also describes the circumstances under which the residents of Arab settlements began to abandon – in some places, according to the text, “they were driven, at times forcibly, from their homes,” while “in the Deir Yassin village near Jerusalem, expulsion was accompanied by a massacre perpetrated by Irgun [Jewish pre-state underground militia] forces.” This does not mean that every Jewish student is necessarily exposed to Arab literature. The texts are merely included in the elective sections of the curriculum, and they can easily be ignored.
Dr. Mahmud Abu Fanni, the Education Ministry’s veteran supervisor of Arabic studies in the Arab sector, admits that some of the works easily taught to Jewish students would be very difficult to include in the Arab schools’ curriculum. However, he claims that “this time we will not be able to run from Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Kassem. It simply isn’t possible.” Abu Fanni is referring to the work of a committee (of which he is the coordinator) that has spent the last two years formulating a new Arab literature curriculum. The committee intends to demand that Arab literature, currently included within Arabic language studies, be recognized as a separate, two-credit subject of study for Arab high schools.
This will be a chance to fix one of the oddest flaws in the Arab students’ literature curriculum: its exclusion of world classics. Although a curriculum for general literature studies in the Arab sector was published in 1990, it is not part of the mandatory matriculation material. Unless their school specifically insists on it, most Arab students can graduate without having studied Chekhov, Kafka, Shakespeare or Molière. Ghanayim says that this exclusion of world literature could be part of “the government’s attempt to create an Arab student who is not open to the world.”
Abu Fanni hopes that the committee will conclude its work within a year, at which point the new curriculum will be submitted to the ministry’s Pedagogic Secretariat for approval. Dr. Abdalla Khateeb, who three months ago became director of the Education Ministry’s Arab Education Department, believes that this will happen even sooner. Khateeb intends to demand that mandatory Arabic studies be expanded into a four-credit subject. He says the additional hours will be available thanks to the 2002 Shoshani report, which changed the distribution of class hours in a way that benefits the Arab sector.
The 1981 Arab literature curriculum seems cutting-edge compared to the list of Hebrew literary texts taught at Arab schools. Compiled back in 1977, this curriculum is so outmoded that it has been virtually ignored since 1995. In the absence of a new plan, an interim solution was devised: four printed pages, which the supervisor of Hebrew studies in the Arab sector, Dr. Hany Mosa, pulls out of his pocket whenever he is asked about the curriculum. Mosa is working on a new curriculum, which Khateeb pledges to have approved within six months.
The Hebrew literature curriculum includes, among other things, a choice between the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis and the first four chapters of the Book of Ruth, as well as 11 mishnayot (verses) from the Avot Tractate. The ‘Criticism and Philosophy’ section includes essays by philosopher Martin Buber; under ‘Fiction’, one can find works by Chaim Nachman Bialik and Y.L. Peretz; and the ‘Poetry’ section includes the poetry of Rachel and Shaul Tchernikhovsky and one poem by Yehuda Amichai. This curriculum, while more up-to-date than the one from 1977, seems pitifully meager compared to the one used by Jewish high schools.
But Dr. Mosa, it seems, does not plan to stop there. He recently launched two websites, which he uses to float trial balloons. Literary works that are being considered for the new curriculum are posted on the sites, and surfers are invited to comment on them. On one of the sites, teachers of Hebrew literature at Arab high schools recently held a fascinating discussion of Savyon Liebrecht’s story ‘Apples from the Desert’. The story follows an ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother from Jerusalem as she travels to a kibbutz to visit her daughter, who is living there with her boyfriend. The daughter has abandoned Orthodox Judaism, and the mother is hoping to bring her back into the fold. “I think it would be very hard to include this story in the curriculum, mostly because it uses all kinds of erotic expressions,” wrote one of the teachers in the forum. The daughter’s actions in the story, another teacher added, “are not consistent with the conventions, values and norms of Arab culture.” Ultimately, however, the second teacher agreed with what seemed to be the majority opinion – that “this story could be taught in high schools, provided the teacher is equipped with the proper tools.”
Mosa plans to add to the curriculum some of the best contemporary Hebrew poetry. He even wants teachers and students to be able to choose a full-length Hebrew novel over some of the shorter selections, an option that has never been available to Arab schools.
Mosa gets the greatest amount of encouragement from his students. In recent years, the vast majority of Arab teens have taken an accelerated-level matriculation exam in Hebrew. Some schools begin teaching Hebrew in the second grade, instead of in the third grade, as had been the custom. The plan to expand the mandatory Hebrew studies is in line with this trend. According to Khateeb, the revision of the curriculum will extend beyond teachers’ forums on the Internet. “We’ve begun the change,” he says, “just give us time.”
The Education Ministry responds: During the past two years, a new literature curriculum has been formulated for the Arab sector, which will include world literature as an integral part of the study program. In addition, a new curriculum for teaching Hebrew to Arab students of all ages is being put together. This is part of a general effort to upgrade curricula for all populations, including the Arab sector, the ministry says. The new curricula are due to be finished within a year.
Unsigned translation
Published in Haaretz, July 8, 2004.
What sort of Arab literature is taught at Israeli schools and to whom? This recent article from Haaretz takes a closer look at the curriculum.
The Arab literature curriculum taught at Israel’s Arab schools was last updated in 1981. This was the first time that Arab professionals, and not Jewish specialists in Arab affairs, had led the writing of the new curriculum, one of the main reasons it was viewed as bold and revolutionary. Dr. Mahmud Ghanayim, head of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Tel Aviv University and a scholar of modern Arab literature, recalls showing the curriculum to Egyptian colleagues in 1991. He says they were surprised to discover that it contained works by Ali Ahmed Said (‘Adonis’) and Salah Abd al-Subur – worksthat had yet to be taught in their own country. Some of this boldness, however, disappeared somewhere on the way from the curriculum to the literary anthologies used in Arab schools. So did some important literary works, such as poetry by Mahmoud Darwish and other prominent Palestinian poets, like Rashid Hussein and Samih al-Kassem. The committee that drew up the 1981 curriculum had tried to avoid controversy by choosing texts of a universalist nature. But the committee’s only Jewish member, Immanuel Koplewitz, the head of the Education Ministry’s Arab Education Department who later supervised the publication of the anthology, recalls having some doubts about what had been decided. He says he asked the publisher to remove from the anthology texts that, as he puts it, “verged on being works thatcreate an ill spirit.”
One need not look very far to find the poems of Darwish, and not only those dealing with universalist themes. They, like other works by Palestinian writers, are included in the state’s literature curriculum for Jewish high schools. So are various other Arab works translated into Hebrew in the last decades. The Jewish curriculum includes poetry and prose by Yusuf Idris, Taoufik el-Hakim, Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Samira Azzam, Siham Daoud and Salman Masalha.
One chapter of a Hebrew anthology is, according to the editors, devoted to the Palestinian tragedy. It features Ghassan Kanafani’s story ‘The Land of the Sad Oranges’. Kanafani, born in Acre, is among the foremost writers of Palestinian political literature. He was the spokesman for the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine until 1972, when he was killed in a car bomb blast.
The historical preface to the story tells the reader (that is, the Jewish high school student) that the war that broke out in 1948 is known among the Jewish Israelis as “The War of Independence” and among the Arabs as “the 1948 war” or “al-Nakba” (the catastrophe). The preface also describes the circumstances under which the residents of Arab settlements began to abandon – in some places, according to the text, “they were driven, at times forcibly, from their homes,” while “in the Deir Yassin village near Jerusalem, expulsion was accompanied by a massacre perpetrated by Irgun [Jewish pre-state underground militia] forces.” This does not mean that every Jewish student is necessarily exposed to Arab literature. The texts are merely included in the elective sections of the curriculum, and they can easily be ignored.
Dr. Mahmud Abu Fanni, the Education Ministry’s veteran supervisor of Arabic studies in the Arab sector, admits that some of the works easily taught to Jewish students would be very difficult to include in the Arab schools’ curriculum. However, he claims that “this time we will not be able to run from Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Kassem. It simply isn’t possible.” Abu Fanni is referring to the work of a committee (of which he is the coordinator) that has spent the last two years formulating a new Arab literature curriculum. The committee intends to demand that Arab literature, currently included within Arabic language studies, be recognized as a separate, two-credit subject of study for Arab high schools.
This will be a chance to fix one of the oddest flaws in the Arab students’ literature curriculum: its exclusion of world classics. Although a curriculum for general literature studies in the Arab sector was published in 1990, it is not part of the mandatory matriculation material. Unless their school specifically insists on it, most Arab students can graduate without having studied Chekhov, Kafka, Shakespeare or Molière. Ghanayim says that this exclusion of world literature could be part of “the government’s attempt to create an Arab student who is not open to the world.”
Abu Fanni hopes that the committee will conclude its work within a year, at which point the new curriculum will be submitted to the ministry’s Pedagogic Secretariat for approval. Dr. Abdalla Khateeb, who three months ago became director of the Education Ministry’s Arab Education Department, believes that this will happen even sooner. Khateeb intends to demand that mandatory Arabic studies be expanded into a four-credit subject. He says the additional hours will be available thanks to the 2002 Shoshani report, which changed the distribution of class hours in a way that benefits the Arab sector.
The 1981 Arab literature curriculum seems cutting-edge compared to the list of Hebrew literary texts taught at Arab schools. Compiled back in 1977, this curriculum is so outmoded that it has been virtually ignored since 1995. In the absence of a new plan, an interim solution was devised: four printed pages, which the supervisor of Hebrew studies in the Arab sector, Dr. Hany Mosa, pulls out of his pocket whenever he is asked about the curriculum. Mosa is working on a new curriculum, which Khateeb pledges to have approved within six months.
The Hebrew literature curriculum includes, among other things, a choice between the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis and the first four chapters of the Book of Ruth, as well as 11 mishnayot (verses) from the Avot Tractate. The ‘Criticism and Philosophy’ section includes essays by philosopher Martin Buber; under ‘Fiction’, one can find works by Chaim Nachman Bialik and Y.L. Peretz; and the ‘Poetry’ section includes the poetry of Rachel and Shaul Tchernikhovsky and one poem by Yehuda Amichai. This curriculum, while more up-to-date than the one from 1977, seems pitifully meager compared to the one used by Jewish high schools.
But Dr. Mosa, it seems, does not plan to stop there. He recently launched two websites, which he uses to float trial balloons. Literary works that are being considered for the new curriculum are posted on the sites, and surfers are invited to comment on them. On one of the sites, teachers of Hebrew literature at Arab high schools recently held a fascinating discussion of Savyon Liebrecht’s story ‘Apples from the Desert’. The story follows an ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother from Jerusalem as she travels to a kibbutz to visit her daughter, who is living there with her boyfriend. The daughter has abandoned Orthodox Judaism, and the mother is hoping to bring her back into the fold. “I think it would be very hard to include this story in the curriculum, mostly because it uses all kinds of erotic expressions,” wrote one of the teachers in the forum. The daughter’s actions in the story, another teacher added, “are not consistent with the conventions, values and norms of Arab culture.” Ultimately, however, the second teacher agreed with what seemed to be the majority opinion – that “this story could be taught in high schools, provided the teacher is equipped with the proper tools.”
Mosa plans to add to the curriculum some of the best contemporary Hebrew poetry. He even wants teachers and students to be able to choose a full-length Hebrew novel over some of the shorter selections, an option that has never been available to Arab schools.
Mosa gets the greatest amount of encouragement from his students. In recent years, the vast majority of Arab teens have taken an accelerated-level matriculation exam in Hebrew. Some schools begin teaching Hebrew in the second grade, instead of in the third grade, as had been the custom. The plan to expand the mandatory Hebrew studies is in line with this trend. According to Khateeb, the revision of the curriculum will extend beyond teachers’ forums on the Internet. “We’ve begun the change,” he says, “just give us time.”
The Education Ministry responds: During the past two years, a new literature curriculum has been formulated for the Arab sector, which will include world literature as an integral part of the study program. In addition, a new curriculum for teaching Hebrew to Arab students of all ages is being put together. This is part of a general effort to upgrade curricula for all populations, including the Arab sector, the ministry says. The new curricula are due to be finished within a year.
Unsigned translation
Published in Haaretz, July 8, 2004.
© Omer Barak
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