Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices

This paper addresses my political and pedagogical resistance to the institutional discrimination of Palestinian Arab students in Israeli academia. Describing my instinctive negative reactions (frustration, helplessness, anger) towards what seems at first sight as their reluctance to study,  I go on...

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Main Author: Tamar Hager
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 2015-02-01
Series:Radical Teacher
Online Access:http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/article/view/113
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author Tamar Hager
author_facet Tamar Hager
author_sort Tamar Hager
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description This paper addresses my political and pedagogical resistance to the institutional discrimination of Palestinian Arab students in Israeli academia. Describing my instinctive negative reactions (frustration, helplessness, anger) towards what seems at first sight as their reluctance to study,  I go on to criticize my own and other lecturers' tendency to blame the victim by analyzing the structural, cultural, political and social obstacles encountered by Arab students in Israeli institutions of higher education. The paper mainly focuses on the story of my resistance to this prevailing social and political structure. Adopting feminist critical pedagogy in my course "Representing Disability in Literature and the Cinema", I have created a space for my Arab students to overcome at least temporarily their repression by the Israeli academic system. The process of empowerment and the subsequent educational transformative and liberating exchange has enabled all participants to grant Arabs' transparent and excluded knowledge a significant social, cultural and political place, thus creating new and more culturally sensitive knowledge. Confronting the empowering effects of this method, I conclude my paper by suggesting some explanations as to the rarity of critical feminist pedagogies in Israeli academia.
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spelling doaj.art-3afb2aff99ed44938e3acd0f93d27b042022-12-22T01:34:07ZengUniversity Library System, University of PittsburghRadical Teacher1941-08322015-02-011010465310.5195/rt.2015.113108Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their VoicesTamar Hager0Senior Lecturer, Education Department and Gender studies program, Tel Hai College, Upper Galilee, Israel.This paper addresses my political and pedagogical resistance to the institutional discrimination of Palestinian Arab students in Israeli academia. Describing my instinctive negative reactions (frustration, helplessness, anger) towards what seems at first sight as their reluctance to study,  I go on to criticize my own and other lecturers' tendency to blame the victim by analyzing the structural, cultural, political and social obstacles encountered by Arab students in Israeli institutions of higher education. The paper mainly focuses on the story of my resistance to this prevailing social and political structure. Adopting feminist critical pedagogy in my course "Representing Disability in Literature and the Cinema", I have created a space for my Arab students to overcome at least temporarily their repression by the Israeli academic system. The process of empowerment and the subsequent educational transformative and liberating exchange has enabled all participants to grant Arabs' transparent and excluded knowledge a significant social, cultural and political place, thus creating new and more culturally sensitive knowledge. Confronting the empowering effects of this method, I conclude my paper by suggesting some explanations as to the rarity of critical feminist pedagogies in Israeli academia.http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/article/view/113
spellingShingle Tamar Hager
Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices
Radical Teacher
title Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices
title_full Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices
title_fullStr Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices
title_full_unstemmed Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices
title_short Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices
title_sort seeing and hearing the other a jewish israeli teacher grapples with arab students underachievement and the exclusion of their voices
url http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/article/view/113
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