With the British spending local revenue on strategic needs — ports, roads and communication systems — scant funds were devoted to education in the Mandate. Already baked into diasporic habits, the Jewish community raced forward in educating its own in Palestine to inculcate penetrating attachments to Palestine as the Jewish national home. Arab youth literacy ran in place, with separatist education contributing mightily to communal divisions, as occurred simultaneously in the economic and geospatial spheres.
Reliable resources for deeper Israel understanding
Embrace informed content on Israel, the Middle East and the Diaspora.
Begin with 7 days free to explore CIE’s rich sources, expert analyses and guided knowledge building.
$39 / year
JOIN CIE+Already have a CIE+ account? SIGN IN
* Members of the Jewish Community include only adults above the age of eighteen. They numbered 321,018 in 1941 and amounted to about 66 per cent of the total Jewish population. There has been no new register since that year. Members of the Community together with their children probably now comprise more than 80 per cent of all Jews in Palestine and number not less than 430,000.
* See note of reservations by Sir Leon Simon at the end of this Chapter.
* Hebrew is taught in Government post-matriculation classes, but only in the form of comparative Semitics and when a qualified Arab teacher is available.
+ In referring to Jewish schools we have used the terms “Elementary schools” and “Secondary schools” throughout because these are the terms familiar in Palestine. If in future the terms “Primary” and “Secondary” are to be used, it is not for us but for the appropriate Palestinian authority to establish them. But we should warn the reader what is meant by the terms “Elementary schools” and “Secondary schools”. The bread at the age of 11+, familiar to us in England, is not the practice in Palestine. An “Elementary school” is one which contains children from the age of 6 to 14. A “Secondary school” is one which educates children up to the age of 17 or 18, but also in many cases educates children from the age of 6 upwards. We shall have more to say on these matters in Chapter V on the Educational Structure, but this early note on terminology in necessary.
* The Arab population is increasing so rapidly that it is barely possible for Government to maintain even at its present level the percentage of Arab children of school age (five to fifteen) receiving education. The estimated figures for children of this age group for the last four years are as follows:
1943 1944 1945 1946
Muslim Arabs 246,764; 251,571; 260,306; 274,090
Christian Arabs 27,879; 28,385; 29,076; 29,871
274,643; 279,956; 289,382; 303,961
These figures exclude nomad children numbering perhaps 13,000 to 14,000. We were informed that at present about one-third of the children in the age-group are attending school; thirty-one per cent attended in 1931.
