The first Hashomer Hatzair School in Mishmar HaEmek 1931-1940

The first Hashomer Hatzair School in Mishmar HaEmek 1931-1940
Yitzhak Platek

Excerpts
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The consolidation of Hashomer Hatzair in Israel, the establishment of Hakkibutz Ha'artzi, the quick and constant increasing amount of members in the kibbutzim and in the Kibbutz Ha'artzi during the fifth aliyah and the fact that Hashomer Hatzair was the third strongest body in the working population in the country…, created motivation and a need to formulate and strengthen the movement. One of the ways to do so, and perhaps the main one, was establishing educational institutes.

The educational project was considered by Hashomer Hatzair people as the future and the continuation of the movement. Tzvi Zohar expressed it clearly when he wrote that the Kibbutz Ha'artzi, like every societal movement that has aspirations directed to the present and to the future, if it seeks to be based, must grab "the horns of education". He believed that the kibbutz movement must build an independent educational project that will express the social aspirations and will be based on the ideology of Hashomer Hatzair. The establishment of the Mossad Hachinuchi (the educational institute) was, to his opinion, the initial and most significant step of a movement that craves to put down roots in the educational reality in Israel and avoid being a temporary movement.
(p. 3-4)

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It seems that the first goal viewed by the educators in the Kibbutz Ha'artzi was the relationship between the educated generation and the generation preceding it, that is to say, continuing the fathers' creation of the kibbutz by the generation of the sons. The role of education was preparing the child to the existing kibbutz reality. Therefore, the "children's society" was within the social environment of the kibbutz, with constant relationship between the adults and the children in all fields of life - from daily tasks to ideological partnership. The people of Hashomer Hatzair sought to pass on the values created in the kibbutz; they wanted the mossad to have a social structure and contents that will grantee direct affinity between it and the kibbutzim. This paragraph was worded in a very general way. The educators of the kibbutzim asked to continue the kibbutz creation and believed that the sons must be educated beside the kibbutz community in order that the values of the kibbutz will pass from the founders to the second generation. The kibbutz community was viewed as an educating role model.
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The connection between Hashomer Hatzair's educational movement in Israel and outside of Israel and the Mossad seemed important to its founders. They emphasized it frequently. To their opinion, Hashomer Hatzair had to be the foundation of the educational guideline in the Mossad. They also had a goal to prove the truthfulness of the youth movement's educational values in a "holistic educational framework". The people of Hashomer Hatzair knew the many differences between a youth movement and a "holistic educational framework" in which the child is educated in a boarding school, studies a daily curriculum, and the relationship between him and his friends and between him and his educators has a very different character than in the youth movement. However, they often mentioned that the Mossad Hachinuchi will continue actualizing the values of Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.

The people of Hashomer Hatzair requested to establish the Mossad as an autonomous children's society, a framework of life, with a social, cultural, and independent economical structure; A children society that will be free from the daily stress in the world of the adults in order to highlight the children's own value. The autonomous children's society shall diminish the contradictions between the adult world and the children world through a regime created by the children. They will find a full course of action, learn to dare to think and act, and find out the right conditions to develop into creative and active grownups. The children's society will be based on communal life and partnership on a daily basis. Giving up egoistic requests for the community was, according to Hashomer Hatzair people, the training process towards the cooperative life work in the future.
(p. 7-8)