The Disputed Role of a Traditional Intellectual Group: The case of Arab women teachers in Israel

Ninth Mediterranean Research Meeting: Workshop 03Can Arab Women Teachers in Israel arguably "traditional intellectuals" succumb to the transforming of state ideology (Zionism) and Patriarchal values, which each and jointly, negatively influence their status as Palestinian women? How does the intricate socio-political condition [being Palestinian women in the Israeli state] affect their role as intellectuals? How do they enact social and political roles within a profession - identified with the production and reproduction of social values and political ideology, paradoxically premised on their subordination? Palestinian women in general are perceived to face triple challenge: living within a patriarchal society, being part of the subordinated Palestinian national minority, and, being women in Israel. Those employed in education, have also to cope with contradicting hegemonic forces: state's ideology, which they are required to inculcate through schooling, as opposed to Palestinian cultural legacy which their communities expect them to transfer to the future generations, and some of them might aspire to alter. The study draws on critical educational theory: its understanding of the relationship between schooling - through the curriculum, teaching practices - and the hegemonic public order -social, political, economic, cultural; its view of schools as an apparatus of ideological control and its reproduction, as well as a site for the production of knowledge, whereas competing socioeconomic and cultural interests contest; social, cultural and economic conditions influence peoples' interactions and individuals' and collectives' construction of meaning; its recognition of the individual's capacity to self critique and transformation, and thus reproduction, appropriation and construction of personal and social meanings and realities, all along its recognition of the power of structural determinant (ideological and material). This study relies on the life stories of thirty Arab women teachers from various social settings and religious backgrounds I interviewed for an in progress research on "Arab Women teachers' life stories".(Product of workshop No. 3 at the 9th MRM 2008)