Shortlisted for the Anne Bloomfield Prize 2010 This book fills in the gaps in the research of nationality regarding national education in its double meaning compulsory national education for all and creating opportunities for fostering national consciousness. Studies in the field have merely emphasized the importance of a national language compulsory education curricula of the humanities and symbols and memories. However are educational devices less important than contents Is National education carried out only via the curricula implemented or also by the great variety of means employed in formal education and in the various nonformal frameworks within the schools and jointly with them Based on these questions the analysis focuses on three concentric circles of secular Zionist education Kibbutz education The Labor Trend Zionistsocialist 19211953 and the General Trend the centralliberal nonreligious education system in the yishuv period later the state education system.