Educational success and long-term adaptation of immigrant students in israel

The paper examines patterns of longitudinal cultural adaptation demonstrated by a group of professionally successful immigrants who moved from Transylvania, Romania, to Israel. On a continuum of attitudes towards immigrants ranging from resistance to active solicitation as a function of underlying ideologies, Israel’s emphasis on nation-building represents the positive pole. Its educational expression is a professed interest in immigrant children as the citizens of the future. Nevertheless, the data indicate that these immigrants, though not regarded as culturally remote from Israel’s Western-oriented mainstream ethos, perceived initial educational encounters as oppressive, alienating, and antagonistic. They used these encounters as levers to achieve educational success. Several conditions for favorable cross-cultural adaptation of populations on scholastic and social levels are identified.