ETHIOPIAN IMMIGRANT YOUTH AT YEMIN ORDE, 1981–1989: A CHAPTER OF THE YOUTH ALIYAH STORY

In the early 1980s, an influx of child immigrants from Ethiopia forced Youth Aliyah and some of its affiliated youth villages to return, unequivocally, to their initial calling. Yet, reports from the field at that time exuded the sort of spirit expressed by one educator: “The situation in the youth villages that opened their doors wide to the underprivileged is getting worse and worse…. Let's be honest with ourselves: the institutions are attempting to solve today's problems with yesterday's tools (emphasis in the original).¹ Research studies at that time, too,² attested to “disappointing facts” (cf. Adiel's introduction [1980] to a collection of studies). A decade of education, which began when the Jewish Agency entered into a covenant with the Government of Israel and undertook to educate underprivileged Israeli children in Youth Aliyah residential settings, ended in an atmosphere almost bereft of commitment to the original Youth Aliyah mission: providing readily available and suitable frameworks for the accommodation of Jewish youth from any potential source of immigration, however unexpected.     

Is giving up traditional religious culture part of the price to be paid for acquiring higher education? Adaptation of academic Western culture by Jewish Israeli University students of Middle Eastern origin

This research was designed to investigate whether the Middle Eastern student feels that attaining the status of a “Western modern man” is incompatible with maintaining a traditional, religious way of life. In 1980, a representative sample of the Jewish University student population (N = 1250) responded to a questionnaire aimed at measuring religious attitudes, beliefs and practices. The students of Middle Eastern origin proved to be more religious than their Western counterparts, however their feeling about themselves is that not only are they less religious than their parents and grandparents but that they are less religious than they themselves have previously been. This feeling stemmed from their having discarded or having become lax in the carrying out of some of the more extreme religious practices even though they still maintain many of the same religious practices, attitudes and beliefs as their forefathers. The degree of religiosity, both of the Middle Eastern students and their Western counterparts, is strongly influenced by the home, the high school attended and youth movement membership, with the former two having a stronger influence on the Western student and the latter having a stronger influence on the Eastern student. The findings show that though there is some loosening of certain extreme practices on the part of the Eastern student, there is no revolt against home or tradition and the student has found the way to the “new life” without breaking off from the “old ways” of the parental culture.     

Deceitful Behaviour in Situation Comedy: effects on children's perception of social reality

Research findings in the last decade indicated that although situation comedies were most popular with children, most children did not fully understand the moral of stories or the messages conveyed. Psychologists expressed concern that an adequate comprehension of messages in this genre may require complex intellectual operations which young viewers were not capable of. A broadcast presenting deceitful behaviour in a situation comedy, tested among 314 9‐12 year old children in Israel, had no immediate effect on the perception of children vis‐à‐vis norms of behaviour in their surroundings. The degree of understanding increased with age as did the level of children's critical approach and moral judgement of deceitful behaviour in the broadcast. Young viewers regarded negative behaviour presented on the screen as wrong. Evaluations of such behaviours on TV were independent of children's perception regarding the norms of behaviour in their real life environment. The study revealed that even at the age of 9, Israeli children display a high degree of understanding of motives and effects presented in a situation comedy. Sympathy for TV characters was not based on the characters’ moral/immoral behaviour, but rather on their entertaining appearance and quality of acting.     

Intergroup acceptance and perception of Israeli and Russian immigrant students

The study assessed intergroup acceptance and perception of native Israeli and Russian immigrant students. Fifth- (n = 1,438) and eighth- (n = 851) grade Israeli and Russian students from integrated classes completed a battery of questionnaires, including social acceptance, self-esteem, and an intergroup perception scale which assessed the traits ascribed to the typical Israeli and the typical Russian. A symmetrical pattern of intergroup relations was obtained with each group reporting a higher social acceptance for ingroup-than for outgroup members. In addition, higher self-esteem Israelis revealed a greater outgroup acceptance, whereas higher self-esteem Russians revealed a greater ingroup acceptance. Pertaining to intergroup perception, students of both origins ascribed higher sociability to the typical Israeli than to the typical Russian and better manners to the typical Russian than to the typical Israeli. Members of each group attributed higher scholastic ability to the typical figure of their ingroup vs. their outgroup. Present findings were compared with research addressing immigrants from Middle-Eastern and Western origins. These were discussed in the framework of Taylor and McKirnan's (1984) five-stage model of intergroup relations.     

Restructuring heterogeneous classes for cognitive development: Social interactive perspective

An educational application derived from the socialconstructivism view based largely on the theories ofVygotsky (1962, 1978) and Piaget (1926), was tried inorder to improve cognitive development of childrenstudying in a heterogeneous class. A path analysisbased on the study of 1017 pupils, 8- to 11-year-olds,studying in 36 classrooms, shows that complex learningtechniques are related to cognitive development,especially of lower level children. The processrequires that the teacher take a developer roleencouraging the students to interact verbally in orderto solve the learning tasks. The improvement seems tobe based entirely on the students' on-task verbalinteraction, but that was instigated by the developerteacher's role and impeded by supervisory role.