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Hirsh Goodman: Get Smart

If a child is not getting an education at home or through private tutors, he or she will get little education at all

I honestly do not understand it. This country has no gold, no diamonds, no mineral wealth other than what�s in the Dead Sea. Not even enough water. The only national resource we have is brainpower -- and we are doing everything we can at the national level to ensure that, like the Dead Sea, we can reach the lowest point possible.

School here is a joke. In most elementary schools, for example, there seem to be more holidays and strike days than learning days. When our kids do study, they go to school from after eight to before two for four days a week. On Mondays they come out at one and Fridays at noon.

In most schools there are over 30 children per class, sometimes children with vastly different levels and often with several children newly arrived in the country. Even experienced teachers are paid slightly above minimum wage, their training is acknowledged by experts to be awful and their social standing low. It has become a totally thankless profession.

School facilities in Israel are atrocious. There are few playing fields and those that there are, are sub-standard. There are virtually no sports or enrichment facilities and classrooms are, in many cases, so neglected that they pose a physical danger. This is not the case in Jewish schools in the occupied territories, where there are twice as many teachers per pupil and kids spend 20 percent more hours in school than in Israel proper -- which, in my opinion, is commendable.

The National Religious Party, which long held the Education Ministry and has made a point of lobbying successfully for its State Religious school system, has also ensured that its students score far above the pack.

For years resources have, because of political pressures, been funneled away from the national school system into ultra-Orthodox parochial ones. Shas managed to divert hundreds of millions into its school system, which provide an 8-hour day, free transportation and two hot meals a day, but no math, history, chemistry or English.

As for the regular folks, those who are supposed to be the bulk of the next generation of university students, it has been one budget cut after another -- to a point where if a child is not getting an education at home or through private tutors, he or she will get little education at all. Special education aid for kids with disabilities, or who happen to be just a little bit slower than the rest, has also been slashed. On top of it all, state and local governments provide almost nothing in terms of extra-curricular activities. Keeping children in school for enrichment programs that allow parents to work a normal day cost a fortune, as do outings and anything else that is not absolutely a basic necessity. It really is a scandal.

Now they are cutting the education budget again. What little flesh, not fat, had been left on the bone is no longer there. Decaying schools will decay all the more, teachers' lives will become harder, the investment they are prepared to make will become smaller and the pathetic national scores Israeli children achieve on international knowledge tests will slide even further. Add to this the situation at the universities ridden with debt and rising fees, where academic corners are being cut at every turn, and the picture becomes even gloomier.

One would think that this government of all governments would realize what is happening. Limor Livnat, the education minister, is a serious person who wanted the ministry badly. The economic philosophy of Benjamin Netanyahu, the finance minister -- who holds two degrees, in business administration and architecture -- is based on the value of competitive brainpower. One would think they�d be diverting money into education, not creating future generations of illiterates.

This country can still boast of great achievements. And there are still remarkable students out there, who, when they mature, can provide Israel with some of the brainpower it needs to keep its qualitative edge militarily and competitive edge internationally. But brilliant young minds and even good ones are being wasted in decrepit classrooms with underpaid and under-appreciated teachers doing their job in intolerable conditions. That coupled with the problems created by the deficiencies of the Shas schools is going to boomerang on us with a vengeance in the not too distant future.

All the schools in Israel should look to those in the settlements. But someone should not have to live in Nokdim or Ariel or Efrat to get an education. A decent education is the basic right of every citizen -- and at the end of the day, the best investment the country can make.