Geography teaching in israel: A retrospective view

Israel is arelatively young society. The educational system was designed by immigrants who came mostly from Eastern and Central Europe, where the tradition of academic research in geography is short. The educational system is controlled centrally by national planning bodies that determine both goals and the contents of study for all ages. Thus geography is perceived by those responsible for shaping the educational system as a subject with a national educational message of the highest importance. These people have stressed the affective targets of the discipline and have emphasized localism in the content of geography. How has the teaching of geography changed over the present century in Israel? Which social ideas and which channels of geographic thought have shaped methods of instruction, the curriculum, and the development of school textbooks? These are the central questions of this paper.