Civic education for the palestinians in israel: Dilemmas and challenges

The sociology of education has long been concerned with uncovering processes by which “only specific groups’ knowledge becomes official knowledge” (Apple 1993, 65). According to Giddens (1979), dominant groups mobilize stocks of social knowledge that legitimize their own interests. They conceal power relationships through “representation of sectional interests as universal ones,” “denial or transmutation of contradictions” embedded within class conflict, and naturalization of the status quo (Giddens, 193-5). Indeed, power is always contested, but dominant groups mask their collective power by promulgating their own worldview as it if were everyone’s. In contrast, counter-ideologies situate subordinate groups historically in a manner that questions and challenges their oppression, advocating a resisting “counter-knowledge,” which is often indigenous, local, grassroots level, and particularistic.