The Jerusalem Report Magazine: Columnists : Columnists Article

Click for Contents

Click here to subscribe to The Jerusalem Report

P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017
Tel. 972-2-531-5440,
Fax: 972-2-537-9489
Advertising Fax:
972-2-531-5425,
Email Editorial: [email protected]
Subscriptions: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.jrep.com

David Horovitz: Give Them All an F

There's no assembly hall and only a tiny gymnasium at the Jerusalem elementary school that all three of my children attend. When the school wants to hold a ceremony, or any gathering, for a substantial number of kids, they all have to congregate -- in the winter winds or blazing summer sun -- in the playground. Dance classes are given in the hallways, the music blaring through the adjoining classroom walls. The library is in the bomb shelter. The classrooms are small, some of them oppressively so, and unbearably hot in summer. Paint is peeling from the outside walls.

The malaise sometimes seems to be rubbing off on the neighborhood and some of the parents and staff. Dog detritus regularly fouls the pavements leading up to the school gates. Year in year out, parts of the metal fence on the inside edge of the sidewalk, there to prevent children from wandering down a sharp incline, are ripped out. One of the more selfish parents sometimes mounts the curb with his car and blocks the pavement, and has been known to abuse the kindly security guard when he�s asked to move it. Shameful scenes of honking horns and screamed abuse occasionally accompany the traffic jams on the narrow street at the beginning and end of each day. In open breach of the law, and despite the repeated entreaties of some parents and teachers, members of the cleaning staff insist on smoking at the school entrance -- inside the gates. There�s nowhere else in the building to inhale, they protest.

And boy, are we lucky. This is Tali Bayit VeGan, one of the better schools in the city, characterized by considerable earnest parental involvement. Because the parents kick in with additional funding, the class sizes tend to be limited to "only" 26-28 kids, and lessons run "as late as" 1:45 -- an hour longer than in regular state schools. Most of the teachers are dedicated and energetic. The kids are stimulated and seem to be learning. And violence in the classrooms, corridors and playgrounds is the excoriated exception, rather than the shruggingly tolerated norm.

Elsewhere around the country, by contrast, class sizes rise up toward 40, and even beyond. And while the Education Ministry�s Director General Ronit Tirosh asserted to the Ha�aretz daily recently that "having smaller classes doesn�t lead to greater achievements," I�ve yet to meet a teacher who�d agree. The results certainly fail to bear out her contention: One in three Israeli 15-year-olds can�t read properly, according to a study by the Program for International Student Assessment published in the summer. PISA placed Israel 33rd in science, 31st in Math and 30th in reading comprehension -- out of 41 participating industrialized nations. Twenty percent of kids have dropped out by the 12th grade. More and more of those parents who can afford to, are sending their children to schools they help fund -- deepening the debilitating gap between our haves and have-nots in what we should be striving to make the equal-opportunity years.

Needless to say, all the appalling comparative statistics are dragged down by the figures from the Arab sector, perennially blighted by overcrowding, inadequate facilities and woefully discriminatory funding. And then we wonder why Israeli Arabs say they feel they have no stake in this country, why they speak of their growing alienation.

As for violence, a nationwide survey last year found that 29 percent of children don�t feel safe in school, a staggering 50 percent of elementary school students said they had been kicked or punched in the previous month (33 percent among junior high students; 20 percent among senior high students), and 25 percent had been hurt by a stone or other object. Because surveys three years earlier had found yet higher figures -- one comparison of 28 countries ranked Israel eighth for bullying; another international study named it worst of all for violence -- the ministry is, pitifully, trumpeting such horrifying statistics as evidence of improvement.

We�re all feeling the economic strains -- the combined impact of the intifada, tourism�s consequent collapse, the high-tech slowdown and more. The government is having to cut back everywhere. But the Education Ministry�s budget has fallen in real terms for an entire generation (with the dramatic exception of the 1992-95 Rabin years, when education was made a genuine priority). Each year sees hundreds of teach-ers chopped out of the system. We entrust our children to professionals who are paid paltry sums that reflect the nationwide financial crisis but also indicate how little our society appreciates their contribution. Underpaid and demoralized, they can hardly be expected to electrify the young minds in their care, to provide the basic grounding and the encouragement of initiative we parents nevertheless demand. Unusually, this year, the school year opened without a strike, but only because the teachers� unions are choosing to pursue their dispute du jour through the courts.

This is not a left-wing or a right-wing failure. Israeli governments for far too long have under-valued education, and left hapless ministers to tinker with relatively marginal issues -- more peace and democracy classes under Meretz�s dovish Yossi Sarid; more flags, anthems and "Jewish values" under the hawkish Likud incumbent Limor Livnat -- because there�s simply no money for the desperately needed drastic reforms. But even the little the politicians and bureaucrats could do to ease the strain seems too much for them. Cash-strapped parents have this year been treated to unedifying bickering between various ministries as to whose job it was to supervise the astronomical price of textbooks. Bottom line: Nobody did it. Give them all an F.

Israel�s short-term future may be a perplexing and depressing consequence of our conflict with the Palestinians, which we can try to ameliorate but cannot fully resolve unilaterally. Its long-term future is there to see in the crowded, violent classrooms of our schools. And that�s something we do have the ability to properly prioritize and fix ourselves.