Nachum Blass

Benyamin Amir

This chapter examines the history of Israel's official, government-level treatment
of the problem of ethnic integration in the nation's school system. The prepara-
tion of this chapter was guided by a historical-theoretical-analytical approach.
In choosing our sources, we relied on our intimate knowledge of the educational
system, and on our appraisal--in light of this knowledge--of the potentially
significant sources reflecting the evolution of integration policy in Israel. We did
not utilize quantitative methods of content analysis to determine the relative
importance of the different objectives and attitudes that comprise this policy
(although we did make use, inter alia, of statistical data in order to support
various hypotheses). It is doubtful whether quantitative methods exist that can
reliably calculate the relative importance of the various opinions within the
system or overcome the problem of the intentional and unintentional bias of
written sources. Moreover, there are situations of changing conditions in which
nondecision or the absence of discussion (or available sources on such discus-
sion) can also serve as an indication of a change in policy (or of loyalty to a
previous policy, depending on the overall context). Nevertheless, in our estima-
tion, the best, though not the only, way to study changes in policy orientation is
by tracing and analyzing the available sources reflecting changes in behavior and
decision making (whether published or internal and unpublished).

Accordingly, we reviewed the following sources: the Knesset Records, basic
policy outlines of the different Israeli governments, government yearbooks, min-
utes of meetings of the executive forums of the Ministry of Education and other
central forums of discussion, documents of the Ministry of Education on specific

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