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Does Communal Education Work? The Case of the Kibbutz
- Abstract
TODAY, WHEN THERE exists such widespread dissatisfaction with our educational system, a radically different one might be expected to hold great interest for us-especially one thriving among people like ourselves, of Western background. It is therefore astonishing how little attention has been paid to the fascinating educational venture embarked on some four decades ago by the more radical socialist kibbutzim of Israel: that of the communal rearing of their children-the only such experiment, outside the Iron Curtain, in a modern technological society.*
Our own American Hutterites offer a less instructive case-they are tradition-bound agricultural communities, deliberately shunning modern developments. Yet the ultra-conservative, extremely devout Hutterites share with the socialist and atheistic kibbutzim one very striking feature: the children of both groups, reared communally in children’s homes by professional educators rather than by their families, grow up into adolescents and adults free of the asocial behaviors that worry us most-delinquency, criminality, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, etc. In general the incidence of severe emotional disturbance among them is extremely low as compared with our society at large. Perhaps more important, the Hutterite communities, like the radical Israeli kibbutzim, are “exceedingly effective in rearing their children to live up to the basic moral principles which they share with the larger society.”
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