Uri noted that for both Jewish and Arab families to send their children to a school such as Hagar it must first offer a high-quality educational system. However, Jewish families typically have a good amount of alternative options to send their children to. Also for many of them, the shared-living ideology behind Hagar is not always an incentive but rather a deterrent that makes some Jewish families initially suspicious and concerned as to the outcomes of this shared learning experience. In sharp contrast, many Arab families are faced with a harsh decision when their kids reach schooling age.
They either have to compromise the level of education they receive in Arab public schools or compromise their identity when sending them to other, primarily Jewish schools, where their group identity, including language, is not expressed in the curricula and school life.
As an Arab minority living amongst a Jewish majority, Hagar’s philosophy of shared living resonates more naturally with Arab families. This is why the demand for Hagar’s schools is greater on the Arab side.This year there was also a wait list for the Jewish side as well, which Uri interprets as an indicator of the positive reputation for what the school provides. The families and pupils who make up the Hagar community are very much part of both mainstream societies. All of Hagar’s educational institutes are officially recognized by the state of Israel.
As such, the state provides basic funding to the school and pre-K classes. Hagar provides the needed additional resources in order to enable bi-lingual programming, staffing, curricula, etc., such as an extra teacher per class, so that each age group has two teachers
– one Arab one Jewish – and in this way are continuously exposed to both languages.
What do you expect discussions to be like about the war when school returns?
“I think that throughout this recent escalation at a macro-level Jewish-Arab relations have taken major steps backwards from what we were able to achieve in the past decade. I expect the regrouping to be awkward. Many underlying feelings and questions could either remain unspoken or burst out in anger so it would be up to our professional and sensitive handling of the situation to facilitate constructive dialogue about what is happening. I am hopeful that our students' track record of practicing such dialogue routinely will prove beneficial.”
He added that they are trying to create a safe-haven for people to be able to be who they are and bring themselves to the community as they are. There is enough structure for people to be able to communicate even in these tough times. For example, recently in the third week of July of this year the Hagar Association held a joint Iftar, the breaking of the fast meal during the Ramadan, attended by more than one hundred people.
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Hagar Association
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