"Save the children": The government is having a hard time deciding - and the parents are angry Israel today

As ministers consider further delaying their return to school, parents shout: Return students to classrooms • "The damage may become irreversible" • Four families told Israel Today about the challenges of the period that do not yet see the end

• "Distance learning is not enough, the gaps are accumulating."

  An empty classroom during the Corona period

  Photography: 

  Gideon Markovich

Discussions in the government about returning to school in the shadow of the Corona crisis continue, and many parents point to the difficulties in the distance learning system and call on ministers to return students to classrooms.

Four families told us about the challenges and concerns of the Corona period.

The learning gaps are only growing

As with many families in Israel, we too were excited at the beginning of the year that Yotam was going up to first grade.

But then within a few days of the opening of the year came the closure and with it distance learning.

It is a distance learning from the teachers, but a close learning with the parents.

The children are required to learn and complete the material independently, i.e. with mom and dad.

Distance learning included YouTube videos on how to spell the letters correctly, how to teach correct writing of numbers, what the difference is between a pinch and a key and what a closed or open syllable is - but all that will not help.

Someone needs to teach the students to be students.

Teaching them how to hold the pencil correctly, proper sitting and culture of discussion, maintaining concentration for 45 minutes, discovering independence and responsibility - no one does that, and it's worrying.  

I fear that when the children return physically to the classrooms, they will be joined by the ongoing fear of the next isolation and contagion, even the huge gaps.

Must find a way to reopen the educational institutions.

Mia Shoval Menachem, mother of Yotam, 6, who went up to first grade 

Long-term solution or irreversible damage

When I heard on the news that middle school students were not going to return to school for the next ten months, my heart sank in terror.

My daughter, Roni, is a ninth grader, she does get along with the zoom - and yet her heart contracts at the thought of ten months in the room.

After all, who assures us that these will be ten months and not two years?

Since no one has any idea what the corona deadline is, it should be assumed that it is here for years. 

Therefore the solution must also be long-term.

The damage, as it goes on, will eventually become irreversible.

Putting our children in their room boxes, with their own screens, will eventually produce a generation with a deep scratch of loneliness and social difficulties. 

I wish someone would come to their senses and budget the education system so that it could save our children. 

Edith Schechter-Pyle, Roni's mother, a ninth-grade student

Want normalization in the education system

We want normalization - and not just with the UAE, but also in the education system.

We want normalization - not in malls, but in classrooms or schoolyards and parks, it's not so much to ask and do.

But in the meantime, everyone is gone - the ministers, the officials, the teachers' union.

Do not see life itself.  

Long weeks have passed and no one up there in the system is really thinking about how to get the F-children back to school.

As if it did not matter to them.

It can be done in the open air, it's much safer, and why not, actually?

Let someone explain to us why it is possible to open a mall - and a school yard is not.

Why a capsule in kindergarten or fourth grade is fine, but in fifth grade it's already too much. 

Behind a lot of words and rules in the outline of the Ministry of Education - no one sees the students themselves.

Do not remember that there are whole age groups, as in the fifth-sixth grades, with body, heart and soul, which are simply transparent to the outline.

We look forward to seeing thinking, logic and direction for our children.

Benji Leventhal, Karni's father, a fifth grader

The Ministry of Education simply puts out fires

At home I have two high school students, Zohar and Roni, both 12th grade students. Despite the complete difference between them and even though each student experienced the quarantine and distance learning differently, my general feeling is that the Ministry of Education does not see the students. I do not feel the decision makers are committed to the students , But completely detached from what's going on in the field.  

This is a critical year for students graduating from the education system, matriculation, preparing for service in the IDF, a framework in which lifelong connections can be made - but the feeling is that from the beginning of the year there is really no meaningful learning, no long-term vision of what students should get from the system. In firefighting, studying without a framework is like doing an external matriculation.As time goes by the gaps deepen, there is really no learning routine, the feeling is of a great long and lasting freedom.

Michal Bar-Lev, mother of twins Zohar and Roni, 12th grade students

The photos in the article are courtesy of the families