Paper short abstract:

The influence of German educational approaches on Zionists schools in Mandatory Palestine was significant and led to a dialectic process which shaped the comprehension and perception of education. This lecture will present the selective character of the cultural transfer made by Jewish teachers.

Paper long abstract:

The Reformpädagogik, the Jugendkultur, and the psychoanalytic movement were manifestations of a new approach to education as well as a new understanding of childhood and its import in adult life. As they originated in the late 19th century in areas defined by German culture and language, all three partook in an individualistic new ideology. These new trends then exerted a profound influence on Jewish educators who developed the educational system in the Jewish community in mandatory Palestine. And yet, since nationalism was then central to the Zionist institutions that oversaw education, such institutions did not welcome these individualistic approaches. The teachers, carriers of knowledge, had to find a different channel where they would be able to apply and adapt these German innovations.

Focusing on two figures in the history of Hebrew education, this lecture demonstrates the process of cultural transfer, its roots, along with its successes and failures. Polany and Idelsohn were two young students when they were first introduced to the new pedagogy developed in Germany in a German-Jewish Seminar for teachers' training in Jerusalem in 1906. Over the next decades, they then traveled a few times to Germany, taking courses in pedagogy and psychology in local universities and observing reformative schools. They worked together trying to implement the new pedagogy in the new Jewish society until 1929. Following their challenges and vicissitudes, I examine their considerations in choosing different professional directions in the 1930s. Using this micro-historical method reveals new aspects of the educational discourse in Palestine.