Thursday, December 06, 2007

Israeli Schools no separation of church and state

This conflict precipitated several parliamentary crises, and in 1953 resulted in reform legislation--the State Education Law--which reduced the number of trends to two: a state-supported religious trend and a state-supported secular trend. In reality, however, there were still a few systems outside the two trends that nevertheless enjoyed state subsidies: schools run by the various kibbutz federations and traditional religious schools, yeshivot (sing., yeshiva), devoted to the study of the Talmud, run by the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel and others. In the 1986-87 school year, about 6 percent of all Jewish primary school students were enrolled in yeshivot, about 22 percent in state religious primary schools, and about 72 percent in state secular primary schools. These figures remained constant throughout secondary education as well. Throughout this period and in 1988, Arab education was separately administered by the Ministry of Education and Culture and was divided by emphases on Muslim, Christian, or Druze subjects.

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