From ethnic segregation to bilingual education: What can bilingual education do for the future of the Israeli Society?

In May 2006, a group of experts in language education from Europe, Canada and Israel gathered to discuss and reflect in a conference entitled: Into the Future – Towards Bilingual Education in Israel. The conference, held at the University of Haifa, was initiated and organized by the Jewish-Arab Center and sponsored by the Zeit Stiftung from Germany. The participants were change agents in each of their respective countries and held a critical view of our changing world, in which the clash of cultures and religions – as represented by languages – calls for brave action via education. Many language educators and researchers work for changing school structures and programs so that the schools can become less controlled by the dominant language and culture. They are guided by the ideology that it is necessary to enable suppressed cultures as well as languages that are sometimes almost lost, to have a voice and a place. This can be achieved only by genuine and sophisticated multi-language education within a context of multicultura