TITLE:
The Social Adjustment of Girls Circassian Students in State Elementary Schools
AUTHORS:
Yosy Maman, Janan Faraj Falah, Elana Napso
KEYWORDS:
Circassian, Adjustment, Students, Elementary Scole, Israel
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.6 No.1,
January
30,
2018
ABSTRACT: The Circassians are Sunni Muslims, originated in the Caucasus, a part of the former Soviet Union. During the rule of the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II in the 1860s, many Circassians joined the Ottoman Army; some of them were settled in Israel and worked as farmers or as the maintainers of the Hejaz railway’s route from attacks of Bedouin tribes (Shabsu, 1993) [1]. Since 1948, Circassian men had begun serving in the Israel Defense Forces on the order of their leaders. The Circassians live in two villages in the Galilee area, in the Village of Kama and in Rihania. These two villages have elementary schools, in which, most of the teachers are Circassians. They belong to the Druze Education Department that is separated from the regular Israeli educational system. At the end of the elementary school phase, the Circassian pupils go to Jewish schools. This article emphasizes on the difficulties of the Circassian students, who are forced to leave their local school in the village to a Jewish one, to be adjusted to new society and culture, while preserving their own culture and origin. The emphasis would be on the viewpoint of the Circassian students, the extent of adjustment and the option to develop a “built-in model” that would facilitate the absorption of these students (of different origins and cultures) at school. Furthermore, the article emphasizes on the importance of school’s staff exposure to students’ standings, in a manner that would lead towards sensitivity and empathy to these special ethnic groups of students in school.