Analyzing the cultural content of materials used for teaching English to high school speakers of Arabic in Israel

Naming practices

This study assumes that English textbooks mainly cater to the Jewish cultural milieu in Israel without considering Arabic speakers (20% of the learner population), for whom these textbooks are also designed. Naming practices of characters and places in textbooks may have an ideological basis, so studying them might shed light on the ideological stand of those engaged in selecting names. As a minority, Palestinian Arab learners may fairly claim the right to be represented by their ethnic names in school textbooks, as this practice is a metaphorical acknowledgment of their existence.

In order to examine Palestinian Arabs’ representation in English textbooks as opposed to that of Westerners, Americans, and Jews, I counted all the names of people and places in each textbook and classified them into three categories: (1) Western-American, (2) Jewish-Israeli, and (3) Arab. It is worthy of mention that social identity theory argues that social categorization, which is the subjective process of classifying people into groups (e.g. through the use of ethnic names), involves a basic distinction between the category containing Self (the in-group or ‘us’) and Other (the out-group or ‘them’) (Tajfel and Turner, 1986).

Indexical pronouns

Analyzing the use of various cohesive devices establishes the role(s) played by each clause or textual unit regarding another. The use of personal pronouns, such as ‘we’ or ‘they’, among other types of deictic words, may enable the analyst to uncover an ideological position such as establishing an interactional in-group feeling as opposed to an out-group feeling, or creating a ‘We’ versus ‘Them’ distinction through presenting ‘us’ in a positive and upgrading manner and ‘them’ (i.e. the Other) in a negative and degrading manner.

The use of pronouns is also evident in texts dealing with the relationship between dominant and dominated groups, majority and minority groups and – more specifically – between the Western and the Eastern worlds. These dualities are often represented in the form of ‘We’ versus ‘They’, where ‘We’ are positively represented whereas ‘They’ are negatively presented. Such positive or negative presentations are often based on biases that serve the dominant group’s ideological interests. Thus, the use of pronouns may serve to express ideological positions or create in the reader a sense of belonging to the ‘in-group’ or the ‘out-group’.

The use of the passive/active voice when referring to the Other

Presenting a clause structure in the passive may sometimes reflect the reader–text relationship that the writer wishes to construct. Apart from cases where the agent is unknown or already known and thus omitted, the passive may be used when the agent ‘is judged irrelevant or perhaps in order to leave agency and hence responsibility vague’ (Fairclough, 1992). The rationale behind using the passive or active voice in a certain narrative depends on whether the individual subject is perceived as a receptive or a free agent. In his article on discourse and manipulation, Van Dijk (2006) differentiates between assigning an active or passive role to recipients and claims that each practice might be interpreted differently. Whereas an active role to a subject presupposes a capacity to believe or act freely, assigning a passive role presupposes the inability to understand real messages and act accordingly.

Thus, choosing certain grammatical forms might affect readers’ attitudes and ideological positions, functioning to maintain or create stereotypes and prejudices concerning the Other. Namely, ‘the use of active vs. passive sentences, nominalizations (de)emphasize Our/Their positive/negative agency, responsibility’ (Van Dijk, 2006: 373).

The use of explicit statements to define the target audience

The assumption that English textbooks in Israel are mainly aimed at Jewish learners and associated with Western culture demands an examination of explicit statements that define the target audience of these texts. Such statements may posit that Israeli Jews are part of a larger Western culture by explicitly presenting features of Western or American cultures that the English language is generally associated with. This indicates that texts which explicitly address Jews or associate Jews with the West or America implicitly and explicitly exclude Palestinian Arab learners, who are associated with the East and Arab culture, thus creating a Self (or We) versus Other (or They) situation. Using phrases such as ‘our modern Western Culture’ explicitly includes those associated with that culture and simultaneously excludes those who are not. Through analyzing recurring phrases such as these in textbooks, I will demonstrate to what extent these practices may function as cultural gatekeepers, preventing minority students from identifying with these texts and perpetuating their status as outsiders. Therefore, one of the strategies used by writers to produce ‘local meanings of Our/Their positive/negative actions’ is by ‘being explicit/implicit’ (Van Dijk, 2006: 373).

The use of narratives from remote cultures: Negative or positive representation?

The curriculum states that one of the main principles underlying English teaching is including culture as a significant component of presenting language to learners. Therefore, including narratives about other cultures and peoples in English textbooks corresponds with the teaching requirements of the curriculum. One example of this in textbooks is presenting cultures from remote places (such as India or Pakistan). Although this is ostensibly a presentation of a variety of cultures, a deeper analysis of such narratives might reveal a less egalitarian agenda. Hence, this article will attempt to uncover how these cultures are represented negatively in light of Van Dijk’s (2006) strategies for analyzing discourse about the Other:

According to Van Dijk, implementing these ideological strategies in schoolbooks may constitute ‘socio-political manipulation’.

The use of culturally specific prior knowledge in reading comprehension texts

A meta-cognitive perspective on reading emphasizes the reader’s ‘need to be aware of what is involved in the process of reading and of utilizing effective reading strategies to enhance reading ability’ (Carrell et al., 1989, 1991, cited in Lin, 2004). In order to enhance reading abilities, Lin (2004) considers the ‘recognition of EFL readers’ cultural prior knowledge as a guiding factor in improving reading comprehension’. In reading English texts, comprehension depends on the learner’s ability to connect new information with culturally specific prior knowledge that the writer assumes he or she has, but this might not necessarily be the case. This means that when writing texts, writers base newly presented information on prior knowledge that the reader already possesses. However, being familiar with New York’s Central Park or the Yankees baseball team, for example, is not necessary true for all readers, as this kind of knowledge is culturally based. Culturally based knowledge may impede readers’ comprehension and even cause them to lose interest.

This study assumes that the culturally specific information presented in English textbooks is based on familiarity with Western (American and European) culture, so it caters more to privileged mainstream Israeli learners than to minority and underprivileged learners who might be Palestinian Arabs or members of Israeli-Jewish groups. However, the manner in which culturally specific information is presented to English learners in Israel raises a fundamental and complex question: Should English be taught as a foreign language by ‘domesticating’ it or by preserving its Anglo-centric hegemony? Whereas the former transforms English into an ‘alien’ medium in order to suit the cultural milieu of the people learning it (Akere, 2006: 2), the latter presents English through an Anglo-centric lens, that is, through mainly exposing the English as a foreign language (EFL) learner to American and British culture. Determining which approach should be adopted as part of the language policy and planning in Israel is clearly a multifaceted issue that needs to be dealt with elsewhere. Nevertheless, materials should be designed so that they cater locally to the specific cultures of the learners and globally so as to place English in its broader, international-language context. What I am suggesting, then, is neither pure domestication nor pure preservation of the Anglo-centrism of English, but rather a balanced approach between the two.

The use of discourse for constructing identities and collective memories

One way to linguistically indicate identity is by using certain discursive devices, such as indexical pronouns (as discussed earlier) or certain lexical items that aim at uniting a group under one national or ethnic identity. My assumption is that the narratives used in English textbooks formulate national identities and maintain collective memories. A national identity may emerge if a learner associates himself or herself with a character that ‘usually joins his grandfather when he goes to the synagogue on Shabbat’ (Maor and Zir, 2009: 66), or with a youngster who has ‘finished his army service and is now going to travel’ (Cohen et al., 2006: 31). Collective memories may also be maintained when Israeli-Jewish learners read about the Holocaust and how symbols of it were carried into space by the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon that ‘represent the six million people WE lost in the Holocaust’ (Komet and Partouche, 2006: 48 (my emphasis)). To sum up, the inculcation of these and other symbolic national concepts such as the Israeli flag, celebrating Purim or Hanukah, or referring to places in Hebrew but with English transliterations may all function as building blocks that construct identity cons.

Analyzing naming practices

Among all the names used in the researched textbooks, Western and American names were the most dominant (70% of the occurrences) (Table 2). The assumption that most textbook writers and designers associate English culture mainly with the United States and the United Kingdom is compatible with the recurrent use of Western and American names in the textbooks. Similarly, other researchers have found that locally produced English textbooks contained mostly British and Anglo-American cultural values, rather than globally oriented materials (Shin et al., 2011).

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Table 2.

The distribution of people’s names used in the textbooks.

Book	Western/American names	Jewish/Israeli names	Arab names
Build Up	87	23	2
Ten	46	10	0
Results for 4 Points	94	40	0
High Points	65	30	2
Zoom	28	32	0
Dimensions	33	14	0
Total: 506	353 (69.76%)	149 (29.44%)	4 (0.79%)

In addition, Israeli-Jewish names of people and places were used in almost 30% of the cases (Tables 2 and 3). One prevalent linguistic practice for presenting Jewish names (especially of places) was by an English transliteration of a Hebrew name despite the availability of an English alternative, for example: Kinneret or Tveria instead of Tiberius, Akko instead of Acre, and Agam Hula instead of Hula Lake. Furthermore, this linguistic practice was also employed to name Jewish organizations or social customs such as Galgal Bema’agal to refer to dancing in wheelchairs, Magen David Adom (Red Star of David or Red Mogen David) to refer to Israel’s national ambulance service, Matkot to refer to the paddleball game, Ulpan to refer to institutes for intensive Hebrew study for immigrants, and Rosh Hashanah to refer to the Jewish New Year.

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Table 3.

The distribution of place names in the textbooks.

Book	Western/American names	Jewish/Israeli names	Arab names
Build Up	41	21	0
Ten	18	4	0
Results for 4 Points	25	9	0
High Points	34	4	0
Zoom	10	12	2* (see analysis)
Dimensions	8	3	0
Total: 191	136 (71.2%)	53 (27.74%)	2 (1.04%)

*

the finding requires a special attention and is dealt with in the analysis of names.

As opposed to the widespread Western-American and Jewish-Israeli names used, the study revealed an almost complete avoidance of using Arab names (less than 1%). While studying the textbooks, however, I did encounter the use of six ‘Arab’ names (out of 506) in contexts that need to be explained.

The first name (Muhammad; one occurrence) is used to refer to an Indian Muslim from Bangladesh who is a professor of economics and a Nobel Prize winner (Ezra, 2011: 40); so Muhammad is not an Arab. The second and third names (Mahmoud and Miriam; one occurrence each) are used to refer to Bedouins of the Negev. The two are discussed as members of Bedouin society without mentioning any details associating them with the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel, such as the fact that their native language is Arabic or that they form a part of this large minority. The implications of not referring to Bedouins as ‘Arabs’ in the only two incidences in which ‘Arabs’ are implicitly mentioned raise serious questions regarding how these textbooks present Arabs to Israeli learners. The narratives in which these two ‘characters’ are presented depict Bedouin society as underdeveloped and traditionalist and associate Bedouins with the desert and camels. Similar to the Indian ‘Muhammad’, both ‘Moussa’ and ‘Rokia’ (supposedly Arabic names) are used (one occurrence each) to refer to children from Mali who are Muslims, but not Arabs. Again, the narrative depicts their environment as poor, underdeveloped, extremely needy, and dependent on the ‘good-hearted and generous’ West for support. Therefore, these two appearances of ‘Arab’ names obviously do not represent Palestinian Arabs living in Israel.

Finally, the last Arab name, ‘Samira’, was one of the most questionable instances I encountered. The relevant text (Dobkins, 2008: 37) mentions students from Herzog School acting as volunteers and Samira as one of them. It soon becomes obvious that Herzog School is not an Arab school, so including a girl with an Arabic name (Samira) among eight Western and Jewish names without bothering to place her in her natural cultural setting seems incongruous. The situation would have been different had Samira been a Palestinian Arab studying in a Jewish school (an unusual occurrence). In fact, if adequately presented, a text about a Palestinian Arab student studying in a Jewish school could have offered a new ideological challenge for Israeli learners, Jews and Arabs alike.

Analyzing the textual use of indexical pronouns

Establishing an interactional in-group or a nonreciprocal out-group feeling may be achieved through the use of ‘we’ or ‘us’ and might indicate a desire to include a certain group of people while excluding others. In my analysis, I encountered numerous usages of the pronoun ‘we’ that might be interpreted as ideological discursive devices which, intentionally or otherwise, include Jewish-Israeli learners and exclude Palestinian Arab ones.

It is worthy of mention that analyzing the use of singular pronouns such as I versus he or she, for example, complements the analysis of the plural pronouns We/They as components in constructing Self–Other dichotomies. Furthermore, the use of the direct pronoun You to address readers may also be used to create an in- or out-group feeling, especially if what ‘you’ are asked to do or think about does not conform with what you really do or think about in reality.

The most prominent use of pronouns as a discursive device for forming in- or out-group feelings was in the text involving an interview with the late Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon (Komet and Partouche, 2006: 47). The text highlighted the central role of Ramon’s Jewish national identity through facts such as his having been born to Holocaust survivors, having served in the Israeli Air Force and having participated in famous Air Force attacks, among other things. All of these details were presented as reasons motivating Ramon to become Israel’s first astronaut and why ‘ We can all look up to him’ (my emphasis). However, those who can look up to Ramon for these reasons are only those for whom these facts are harmonious with what they perceive as essential in forming their membership in the Zionist collective (see Kuzar, 2011). In the interview, Ramon also uses the pronoun We to exclusively address the Jewish people – who are explicitly defined as ‘Jewish communities all over North America’ – in talking about his intention to take symbolic Jewish items with him into space and especially that ‘some of them are going to represent the six million people We lost in the Holocaust’.

Ramon seems to use the pronoun We to refer to the 6 million people lost in the Holocaust in order to strengthen the national and historical ties Jewish people have with the Holocaust, which is a major constituent of national-Zionist identity. The sentence could have been written in the Middle Voice (Medio-Passive) as follows:

Some of them are going to represent the six million people lost in the Holocaust.

Nonetheless, the use of ‘we’ puts emphasis on the loss of 6 million people as being the loss of the Jewish people only, as opposed to a more universalist view that would also consider it a loss for all of humanity, in addition to the obvious loss for the Jewish people. On one hand, students of all backgrounds should be able to relate to the Holocaust from a humanistic perspective and realize the implications of this horrible atrocity, while on the other hand sympathizing with the impact of this tragedy on the Jewish people. However, when some students are treated as ‘outsiders’ in school textbooks, whose ostensive aim is to teach all students about the Holocaust, they may not be able to form the appropriate attitude.

Analyzing the use of the passive/active voice when referring to the Other

In analyzing the narratives and texts referring to the Other (who may be non-Western, non-Jewish, or nonmainstream), I have noticed that these narratives tend to use the passive voice. Members of minorities are presented in some of the textbooks as examples of people who have managed to succeed despite difficulties. Such characters (whether African-Americans, Bedouins, Indians, or members of other minority groups) are depicted in the passive voice, thus emphasizing that their success was determined by another explicitly or implicitly mentioned agent (usually American, British, or European) that intervened and changed the course of their destinies. On the other hand, inspiring stories about people who originated from similar conditions but are members of the prevailing majority are depicted in the active voice as agents of their own change. An example of such a distinction may be found in the English textbook Results for 4 Points, in which two juxtaposed texts describe teenagers who have overcome failure. The first character is Ryan, a Black ‘dropout’ from Britain (who is explicitly referred to in the text as a minority child), and the second is Liz, a White homeless teenager from New York. Ryan is depicted as follows:

As part of a remarkable social experiment, Ryan Williams, a black teenage dropout, was placed in one of Britain’s top boarding schools to see how he would cope … Ryan excelled.

It wasn’t always so … he might easily have ended up in jail. Then fate intervened. Ryan’s mother was approached by Pepper Productions, a British television company and was asked if her son could take part in a TV series called Second Chance.

What this demonstrates is that in the right environment, children’s lives can be changed. (Cohen et al., 2006: 106)

Ryan’s success, then, was determined by someone else’s initiative (Pepper Productions) and he was accepted at one of Britain’s top schools not due to his resourcefulness or that of his mother, but according to somebody else’s choice. Thus, Ryan’s excellence was determined by an outside force, namely Pepper Productions, which gave him the opportunity to excel, assigning the boy himself a passive role.

As opposed to Ryan’s passive representation, Liz Murray, a White New Yorker who was also doomed to failure, is described in the active voice, as demonstrated by the following excerpt:

… Liz Murray went from living on the streets of New York City to winning a scholarship to Harvard University. [. . .] She had dropped out of school and was living on the streets; sleeping in subways … Liz had always imagined having a better life. With her mother gone, she began to realize that it was up to her. ‘I got the sense that my life was in my own hands … that at the end of the day, whatever I did or did not do with my life would stick to me … so I went back to school’. (Cohen et al., 2006: 113)

The succession of active verbs in this excerpt depicts Liz as an energetic, motivated, and self-determined young woman who is moved by inner forces and not dependent upon external ones. Throughout the text, Liz’s decisions are unaffected by anything but herself and her will to change the status quo. As opposed to Ryan, who is referred to as a ‘black . . . dropout’, she herself made the decision to drop out of school, as well as that to go back to school and resume her education. Ryan, as mentioned earlier, ‘was placed’ back in school after his mother ‘was approached’ by Pepper Productions.

The use of active/passive voice may, of course, be motivated also by various nonideological factors. One may perhaps claim that the choice of active/passive voice is not ideologically motivated. Yet these two examples of almost ‘minimal pairs’ illustrate how a writer’s choice of a certain grammatical feature (i.e. active or passive voice) may reflect underlying assumptions regarding certain religious, ethnic, disabled, gendered, or culturally different groups. Thus, choosing grammatical forms may affect readers’ attitudes and ideological positions, functioning as a tool for maintaining or creating stereotypes and prejudices concerning the Other. Members of minority groups must depend on the intervention of [“good-hearted”] White people, who are [“always prepared”] to offer them ‘the right environment’, so that every ‘black’ child’s life (like Ryan’s) ‘can be changed’. (See the above quote from Cohen et al., 2006.)

Another example of this is in an article about Miriam, who is described as an exceptional young Bedouin woman who was not like ‘most Bedouin women who are not allowed ’ (Ezra, 2011) to do what they want. Miriam managed to succeed in creating her own business, called ‘Daughter of the Desert’ (p. 54), despite living in a patriarchal society where ‘marriages are arranged according to Bedouin tradition’ (Ezra, 2011). However, although Miriam is initially described as a young woman with initiative, we learn later on that,

… chance intervened in Miriam’s life. Her father used to raise and trade horses. In the course of business, the family had developed a friendship with a woman from England. It was she who ultimately made it possible for Miriam to come to England, where she studied marketing for three years. (Ezra, 2011: 54)

Although Miriam herself, as opposed to the other Bedouin women in her society, is not directly depicted in the passive voice, she is definitely assigned a passive role when ‘chance’ intervenes in her life course. Had it not been for the British woman, Miriam could probably not have ‘made it’ as a non-typical entrepreneur since ‘it was she [the British woman] who ultimately made it possible for Miriam’ to be taken out of her traditional society, where she would presumably have entered into an arranged marriage, like all the other Bedouin women.

Analyzing the use of explicit statements to define the target audience

Van Dijk (2006) claims that writers usually determine local meanings by being explicit. Basing myself on Van Dijk (2006), I would like to suggest that through the use of explicit statements containing the terms ‘Western’, ‘American’, or ‘Jewish’, writers are targeting their texts at Jewish learners only. Examples of utilizing such explicit statements in English textbooks are demonstrated in Table 4.

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Table 4.

Examples of explicit statements associating the target audience with the West.

Textbook	Explicit statements
Build Up	Hundreds of years ago, European sailors told stories of a dangerous sea monster, the Kraken.
	Travel between Europe and America was becoming more and more dangerous.
	Why did professor Aronnax join the Abraham Lincoln?
Ten	This sign of respect in America and Europe …
	They learn that in America a baby cannot be released from the hospital without a birth certificate.
	It’s a fine tradition [referring to an American tradition]. The kings of France and England did it.
	This issue of our magazine for Rosh Hashanah [the Jewish New Year] is going to Jewish communities all over North America.
Results for 4 Points	A large number of American teenagers have tried …
	It is an exclusive British school.
High Points	Concern with appearance is not just a feature of modern Western Culture … although we resemble other cultures … there is a great difference in the degree of concern.
	… the story takes place in the United States. What do you learn about the American culture?
	Young people in Western societies expect and demand the right to choose their own wife or husband.
	In countries as Sweden, USA, United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
	In the United States, for every two men who receive a college degree, three women receive one.
	Changes are taking place in America’s schools.
	Israel often imitates American trends.
Zoom	David is writing a letter to his American cousin, Jason.
	Read about famous people: three Americans, two British and two Jewish.
Dimensions	Did you know that in the United States, teenagers under the age of 18 … Did you know that in the United Kingdom, teenagers are …?
	When I travel to the U.S., knowing English will help me feel like I belong.
	I like to see English movies and listen to English songs.
	Political correctness started in America in response to pressure from intellectual, liberal and minority groups.
	Red Riding Hood walked on along the main path. But, because his status outside society had freed him from following the Western-style linear thought, the wolf knew a quicker route to grandma’s house.

One editorial text entitled ‘You and the People Around You: International Teen Magazine’ discusses international teen issues for the ostensible purpose of finding common ground. However, the text opens by explicitly stating, ‘Did you know that in the United States, teenagers under the age of 18 … Did you know that in the United Kingdom, teenagers are …’ (Turgeman-Kolir and Zeltsman-Kulick, 2008: 32). The editorial exclusively discusses issues involving American and British teenagers, hence limiting the all-inclusive term ‘international’ to two countries only, namely, the United States and the United Kingdom. An international coverage of teenage issues might have presented problems of teenagers in various parts of the world characterized by different social, cultural, or religious customs and conventions.

Thus, the hegemonic role given to the United States and the United Kingdom in discussing international affairs may allude to an intentional policy of presenting these countries as dominant forces in the Western world. This serves to fix Israel as a supporter of Western – chiefly American – hegemony in the minds of learners. The desire to connect Israel to the West and specifically to America is evident in explicitly stating that ‘Israel often imitates American trends’ (Ezra, 2011: 102) or in creating an explicit bond between Israeli Jews and Americans/Westerners by stating, for example, that ‘David is writing a letter to his American cousin, Jason’ (Maor et al., 2009: 16) or ‘We are visiting my grandparents in London this week’ (Dobkins, 2008: 27). This emphasis on the fact that Israeli Jews have blood relations in the West further supports my assumption regarding the tendency of English textbooks to associate Israel with the West. It may also be argued, however, that in creating such a close bond between Israel and America or Britain, an even closer bond is created among certain mainstream Israeli-Jewish groups – who are probably also upper-middle class – to whom America or Britain (metonymically representing Europe) are their homeland countries/cultures.

Analyzing the use of narratives from remote cultures: Negative or positive representations?

Including culture as a significant component of language learning is a principle implemented in English textbooks as required by the English curriculum. Analyzing the content of how other cultures are presented in six English textbooks has shown incidences involving remote cultures (e.g. Indian, Chinese, or Pakistani). However, no fair and accurate description of local Palestinian Arab culture was presented, since the only two examples offered in the textbooks dealt with Bedouins (without referring to them as Arabs). In one of the teaching units entitled A World of Stories, the theme is the universal role of storytelling and fairytales in different cultures. The unit highlights the common features of storytelling and the universal values appearing in this literary genre, such as love, hate, jealousy, and betrayal. It is obvious, then, that the unit’s main objective is to increase students’ intercultural awareness. Therefore, fairytales and folktales from China, India, and Ethiopia are presented. These are juxtaposed, however, with popular Western fairytales such as ‘Snow White’ and ‘Cinderella’.

One text reviews the history of fairytales and informs students that the best-known fairytale ‘Cinderella’ can be traced back to 9th-century China. However, when adapted for the West (by the German Brothers Grimm), these tales are edited and changed through ‘removing the darker and more terrifying elements of the stories’ (Turgeman-Kolir and Zeltsman-Kulick, 2008: 95). The underlying message here is that there is a dark aspect of Chinese culture that cannot be adopted by the West without undergoing a critical editing process. The example provided to support this claim in the text is that in the original Chinese version of Cinderella, the older stepsister cannot get her big toe into the glass slipper, so her mother hands her a knife and tells her to cut it off, since once she is queen she will no longer need to walk, so the daughter does as she is told. These words create an image of violence and mutilation in the reader’s mind which, it could be fairly argued, is not an exclusively Chinese characteristic. In fact, it is a feature commonly manifested in Western literature and filmmaking. In other words, when learners read about these negative violent images as deriving from Chinese culture and rejected by Western culture, they may unconsciously form a negative attitude toward Chinese culture and a positive attitude toward Western culture. The use of such discursive strategies may perpetuate prevailing Western stereotypes regarding other cultures, which mainly depict them as inferior. This is achieved, however, as Van Dijk (2006) suggests, through Self-positive as opposed to Other-negative representations.

The following example (from the English textbook Building Blocks) describes touring the Negev and is entitled ‘Desert camel tours in the Negev’. It opens as follows:

On our tour, we use the desert’s most ancient form of travel – the camel. (Dobkins, 2008: 10)

Unsurprisingly, we are presented with ‘Mahmoud’, a guide for desert travelers. The narrative portrays a scene in which Western travelers are wandering in the desert on camelback guided by a Bedouin Arab wearing a ‘galabiya’ (a long cloak) and an ‘iqal’ (a white head scarf), which are traditional Arabic clothing. The text is accompanied by a photograph showing the travelers (Western-looking in clothes and appearance) on camelback accompanied by a Bedouin guide, who is leading the camels and carrying a shepherd’s Crook.

My claim is that such a representation may imprint a stereotypical image of Arabs on learners’ minds. Numerous studies involving Western images of Arabs have revealed ‘a strong anti-Arab bias as reflected in the public’s negative stereotypes of Arabs – their society, culture, and institutions’ (Hamada, 2001: 7). These stereotypes might create a negative attitude toward the Palestinian Arab minority, which deserves to be more fairly represented in English textbooks. This by no means suggests that Bedouins are not worthy of representing the Palestinian Arab minority, but when they are presented as the sole representatives without mentioning the other groups who form this population, or the fact that they are Arabs, this is definitely inadequate. Furthermore, it is worthy of mention that a large number of Bedouins in Israel are urbanizing, thus, living in cities and leading a modern ‘Westernized’ lifestyle.

Analyzing the use of culturally specific prior knowledge in reading comprehension texts

The problematic aspect of cultural knowledge arises from the fact that textbook writers (who are mostly native English speakers) assume that what they consider to be common knowledge of Western culture is indeed available to all English learners. Culturally specific prior knowledge entails a familiarity with common Western or American cultural symbols starting with knowledge of central locations (such as Fifth Avenue), famous people (such as Abraham Lincoln), movies or TV programs (such as Friends), and ending with knowledge of abstract notions such as ‘Murphy’s law’ or ‘progressive Berkeley’. Table 5 demonstrates some of the examples observed in my analysis of the English textbooks. When texts mention the names of supposedly well-known American or Western personalities such as Abraham Lincoln, Stephen King, or Stephen Hawking, the underlying assumption is that they are well-known to everybody, whereas this does not conform to reality. Furthermore, comprehension questions that usually follow reading texts ask students to connect between these characters and find out what they have in common. Students who are unfamiliar with them and their position in American and British culture/history will be incapable of drawing the required conclusion and thus will be unable to perform the task.

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Table 5.

Examples of culturally specific prior knowledge in English texts.

Statement in text	The assumed cultural knowledge
High school basketball teams (not winning for two years).	Assuming familiarity with official basketball teams as part of the American educational system.
We were traveling on the Abraham Lincoln.	Assuming knowledge of the American president Abraham Lincoln.
Why did Professor Aronnax join the Abraham Lincoln?
The TV show, Friends, is a very popular show.	Assuming familiarity with the American TV show Friends.
The songwriter Ehud Manor.	Assuming familiarity with the Israeli-Jewish singer Ehud Manor.
‘Finding Nemo’ (as an enjoyable movie).	Assuming familiarity with the American animated movie.
Gamblers Anonymous (the use of the term ‘anonymous’).	Assuming familiarity with the practice of naming support groups which do not highlight the identity of the supported person, but rather his/her acknowledgment of his/her problem.
Murphy’s Law.	Assuming knowledge of what is meant by referring to Murphy’s law.
Harry Potter goes to school where … (students need to complete).	Assuming familiarity with events in the books/movies about Harry Potter.
‘Jerusalem of Gold’ is well-known in Israel.	Assuming familiarity with Naomi Shemer’s Hebrew song.
Understanding the reference of the word ‘Chipsons’ in referring to the ‘Jacobs’ family who are testing a microchip and ironically referred to as the ‘Chipsons’.	Assuming familiarity with the Western-American practice of referring to all family members by pluralizing their family name (Cohen – the Cohens; Simpson – the Simpsons).
‘the star of the football team at a prestigious university’. This refers to Tony who is ‘every parent’s dream’.	Assuming familiarity with the American notion of being a football star at a prestigious university.
Homeless to Harvard.	Assuming knowledge of one of America’s top universities.
The New York Times (without definition).	Assuming knowledge of America’s famous newspaper.
Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Hawking, Stephen King.	Assuming knowledge of these people.
They were watching what looked like a scene from Elizabethan England.	Assuming knowledge of what England was like during Queen Elizabeth1’s era.
‘Stewardess’ has become ‘flight attendant’ and ‘Indians’ are now called ‘Native Americans’.	Assuming familiarity with the two terms ‘stewardess’ and ‘Indian’ in order to understand why they are not considered politically correct.
Political correctness is often associated with feminist groups, which may have alienated some of their potential supporters.	Assuming familiarity with the deteriorating power of feminist groups.
Whenever Shai arrived in another country … she would look through the telephone directories, call up clubs and arrange to perform.	Assuming familiarity with the notion of performing in clubs as a form of entertainment.
Army boot camp.	Assuming knowledge of what an Army boot camp is, which is basically American.
Columbus Circle, Fifth Avenue.	Assuming knowledge of the Columbus Circle and Fifth Avenue in New York.
A Yankee.	Assuming knowledge of the American Yankees baseball team.
Tigger–Eeoyre debate.	Assuming familiarity with the characters in the book Winnie the Pooh and/or the animated characters Tigger and Eeoyre and their characteristics (fun-loving vs sad-sack) and therefore, understand the meaning of the dichotomy ‘Tigger–Eeoyre debate’.
Call 911.	Assuming knowledge of the American emergency number 911.
Retell the story of Hansel and Gretel.	Assuming knowledge of the children’s story Hansel and Gretel.
In progressive Berkeley, they are talking about eliminating advanced science labs altogether because women and minorities don’t find them interesting.	Assuming familiarity with the American Californian city as being one of the most politically liberal in America and thus termed progressive.

Other texts focus on topics dealing with the history, lifestyle, and/or other social-cultural aspects of the United States or Britain. For example, in a text about the Great American Depression of the 1920s, the text mentions well-known American locations such as Columbus Circle, Fifth Avenue, and Central Park without indicating that they are major New York venues. These and other American localities and cultural symbols are only known to native speakers of English or specific groups of Israeli learners.

Assuming that most Israeli students have early contact with English through family, travel, or meeting overseas visitors is like assuming that most Israelis (Palestinian Arabs as well as other underprivileged Israeli citizens) are established middle-class citizens, whereas the actual socio-economic situation is quite different. Therefore, the intensity of Western/American culturally oriented information in English textbooks, which often constitutes the basis for comprehending English passages, is excessive and constitutes an insensitive, one-dimensional, and even ‘naïve’ view of the status of EFL in Israel.

The English textbooks studied seem to be chiefly based on Western culture and ideology that are mainstream and metropolitan in nature. Teaching English through the use of narratives depicting one sector of privileged people who share similar speech practices, customs, lifestyles, and behavior constructs an image of English being associated with these commonalities. However, this may not be considered positive by everyone. The exclusiveness of these narratives may well increase feelings of hostility and alienation among people who do not associate themselves with mainstream Western culture.

Analyzing the use of discourse for constructing identities and collective memories

As noted earlier in this article, school textbooks are used as agents for producing and perpetuating national identity and collective memory. In Israel, Zerubavel (2002) maintains,

… as is typical of conflictual societies, and especially since the Jewish ethno-nation is a mixture of people from all over the world with hardly anything in common, questions of collective and individual identities are still ‘passionately’ debated and often become heated arguments and even history wars.

Therefore, textbook writers tend to include materials that comply with the dominant ideology of educational policy makers. These materials include ideas, symbols, practices, and historical names and figures that are the foundation of Jewish-Zionist national identity and collective memory. Textbook writers are, as Bernstein (1996) puts it, ‘working in the field of re-contextualization’ and thus contributing to the perpetuation and reproduction of already existent features of identity and memory.

When a text states that ‘many of Israel’s political leaders have come from the army, for example, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ezer Weizman’ (Cohen et al., 2006; my emphasis), learners internalize the idea that in order to make it up the ladder in Israel one needs to start in the army. As a result of forming such a political and ideological position, any person who does not abide by this structural order (i.e. Palestinian Arabs or other Jewish groups) might be treated with indifference and hostility.

On the other hand, Palestinian Arab learners, who do not serve in the Israeli army, have different ways of constituting their national identity as Palestinian Arabs living in Israel. The problematic aspect of dealing with the issue of army service among Palestinian Arabs is their common rejection of the role the Israeli army plays against the other Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The repeated use of such narratives excludes Palestinian Arab learners and contributes to their out-group feeling.

The last point to be made in this section involves the choice of lexical words that might create a Jewish national bond. Examples would be words and phrases relating to the Holocaust, such as ‘Holocaust survivor’, ‘Auschwitz’, ‘Holocaust Remembrance Day’, ‘commemorating the Holocaust’, ‘annual trips to Poland’, ‘Holocaust deniers’, and so on (Table 6). All of these terms unite the Jewish people by one shared collective memory that aims at keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and central to Jewish-Zionist identity. Other narratives use terms such as ‘the Israeli flag’, ‘synagogue’, ‘Purim’, ‘kosher’, and so on, which may cause the Jewish learner to identify passionately when reading these narratives and engaging in the discussion activities that follow them. These passionate feelings experienced by Jewish learners are hardly experienced by their counterparts, Arab learners, who may not sympathize with or even understand the symbolic significance of such words. The analysis of the ideological roles of English narratives has revealed prominent use of the army service issue as a major constituent of Jewish national identity and repeated use of Jewish/Zionist notions as major constituents in Jewish collective memory.

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Table 6.

Examples dealing with Jewish history, identity, and army service.

Examples of sentences about Jewish history and identity	Examples of sentences about army service
‘Welcome’ is a volunteer organization that helps teens who have just moved to Israel.	In Israel, both girls and boys serve in the army.
Our volunteers meet with new immigrants, and they teach them Hebrew.	Sara Wolf finished her army service and studied medicine.
Throughout his [Yossi Banai] impressive career he always told stories about growing up in Jerusalem and even sang about it – in ‘Me, Shimon and Little Moishe’.	After my older brother Benny finished his army service, he went on a trip with his friends.
We love to watch the schoolchildren in their Purim parade.	They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their time in the army , and where they had been on vacation.
I usually join my grandfather when he goes to the synagogue on Shabbat.	Andy finished his army service and is now going to travel.
American and Canadian tourists visiting Israel and stating: ‘I love Israel. It’s an amazing country’.	Many of Israel’s political leaders have come from the army. For example, Moshe Dayan … Yitzhak Rabin … Ezer Weizman … On the other hand, David Ben Gurion … never fought on the battlefield.
‘Everyone has a name’, which was recited on Holocaust Remembrance Day.	By the age of 17, most teenagers are mature enough to be treated like responsible adults. In a few months, they will be serving in the army and be ready to take their places as full members of society.
This issue of our magazine for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) is going to Jewish communities all over North America.	One of the suggested topics for compositions is ‘Women in combat units’.
I asked for Kosher food because of the symbolic issue. And NASA is doing everything that they can do to provide it.	She ______ (probably/study) medicine after she finishes the army. [Students write the correct form of the verb].
Why do you think it was important for Ilan to take Holocaust-related items with him into space?	The State of Israel decided that the first one [astronaut] would be from the Air Force.
My mother is from Poland. She is a survivor of Auschwitz.
I will have the Israeli flag up there and I have some more symbolic things that I will carry with me. Some of them are going to represent the six million people we lost in the Holocaust. Some of them will probably symbolize the history of Israel.
… comparing and contrasting the Holocaust to other genocides and concluding that it is different.
The Balfour Trust is an organization whose aim is to strengthen Israel’s position in the international community.
Write an introduction to make American or European high school students more aware of what happened in the Holocaust.
‘The Leica Freedom Train’ (Holocaust-related issue).
Many Israeli high school students go on school trips to Poland in order to commemorate the Holocaust.
The number of Holocaust survivors who are still alive has declined, and the number of Holocaust deniers has grown. In small groups, think of what we can do to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive for future generations.