The Israeli education system was subject of three stories in the news this week and they should have every parent with school-age children worried, both from an educational as well as a moral view.
The first two stories describe the worries and protests of parents at two different schools in the Tel Aviv area. In the first, in an effluent neighborhood in Herzliya parents are up in arms because of a new teacher that was added to the staff. None of these parents knew the teacher, knew about her experience as a teacher, her success as an educator or her love of her work. They knew one thing only: the teacher is an Arab woman and that was sufficient to disqualify her. The arguments were basic racism packed in slimly veiled educational worries. “She won’t be able to teach “Jewish” values”, “how will she behave on Memorial Day, will she stand for the sirens?”; “will she be able to instill in the children, a love of Israel, the homeland and the symbols?”. The education Ministry attempted to defend the teacher and the decision of the school, but succumbed very quickly to the raw racist demands of the parents and had an assistant assigned, who will teach the subjects with “Jewish values”. It is unclear how this teacher will use these “Jewish values” to explain the racism but she probably won’t even have to bother. Racism is a fact of life in Israel and getting worse by the day.
The second story brought (again) to the forefront the plight of the children of asylum seekers and so-called illegal immigrants on the south Tel Aviv neighborhoods. The Tel Aviv Municipality has long been trying to find a solution to the “problem” of the children of the foreigners living in the southern neighborhoods, and both segregation, (by building schools only for immigrant children) and integration (by busing children from the south to the northern neighborhoods) have been attempted without much of a success either way. But with the approach of September 1st, children need solutions, even if they are only immigrant children, so a decision was made to place eight (!) children in a school adjacent to the immigrant populated southern neighborhood. The parents of the school, some of them spurred on by arch-racist Sheffi Paz, held demonstrations to demand “protection of the home-land” and to “get rid of the infiltrators”. While for some parents the idea of being called a racist was too much and they withdrew from the demonstration once Paz and her thugs joined in, they still intend to refuse to accept the presence of the immigrant children in the class next to their own, and decided not to send their children to school on Wednesday. It may be comforting to some that parents do not want to be called racists publicly, and bring all kind of (weak) arguments why the immigrant children should not be allowed in the school, the bottom line does not change.: refusing these children an education is racist, no matter how you dress it up. Without going into educational aspects of integration, which could only enrich their children, show them the world beyond their own backyard, and make them aware that there are other people out there just like them, the parents are mainly showing their kids that racism is allowed and should be encouraged by making the children tools in the expression of this racism.
With all this happening right before the start of the school year (which already will be most challenging because of the Corona pandemic), with parents worried about their children’s education and the “Jewish purity” of this education, a third story came out which probably was missed or ignored by many of these parents, but should worry them a whole lot more. The Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research published a new report on the state of Israeli Education. Israel has a higher birth rate than any country in the OECD (3.1 children per family), which may be seen as a positive issue, but looking a little further, the Shoresh report, shows, that most of these children are born in two sectors of the Israeli society: Ultra-orthodox and Arab children make up 43% of Israeli first-graders, with most of the former not studying the core curriculum, and the latter receiving in many cases sub-standard education, for various reasons.
But even the non-religious Jewish schools show results that are far below OECD averages and the Shoresh institute calls the current situation in Israeli Education a “Ticking Time-bomb”. According to the report, the traditional reasons often brought up as an explanation (or excuse) for the dire situation, such as classroom size or teachers’ salaries are mostly things of the past that are not really relevant anymore, and the main reason the report points at is the quality of the teaching staff. Of course this is a bold subject to brace and will definitely find resistance within all circles, not in the least with the teaching staff itself, but if the future of Israeli education is at stake and with that, according to the report, the future of the security, stability and even existence of the State of Israel, it appears it would deserve serious and intensive investigation with the primary goal to rebuild the education system to a level that will prepare these youngsters, and with them also the State, for life in the most challenging areas in the world.
So it appears that Israeli parents do have something to worry about and should take to the street to demand that their children (and all children in Israel) receive the education that they need. But “need” is expressed not only in economic need, or social status need. Need must include a worldview that goes beyond the narrow xenophobia that apparently many Israelis have grown up with, resulting in a racist attitude and distrust of anything not Jewish or Israeli. “Need” includes the understanding and conviction that the fact that a child is born of refugee parents who were thrown into south Tel Aviv neighborhoods and abandoned is not a reason to be afraid of him, to despise him or to reject him.
Education, the “right” education, will make Israel, and the world a better place. And education used as an excuse for Racism, is destructive and not only for the victims of this racism.
I hope you found this article interesting and I welcome any comments you may have.
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