The Battle of Aristotle | Israel today

On Tuesday, the Minister of Education

, Dr. Yifat Shasha Bitton, published the following post: "Education of opinion without education of the heart - is not education at all." Aristotle. "Under the sign 'Pay attention to education'. Education is the heart of the matter, the heart of Israeli society, and touches every home in Israel. This year it is more important than ever to pay attention - to students, teachers and parents."

Since the heart motif is central to the post and the conference, I was reminded of Yehuda Amichai's beautiful sentence: "Where education ministers talk about hearts, cardiologists will not grow."

From the outset it is not clear why any conference should be conditioned by a quote from no less than Aristotle himself. The whole conference. But if the pretensions are sky high, and if the quote is a doctor of education and an education minister, at least the quote should be true. The New Age spirit of the quote aroused suspicion in the hearts of some readers, lest an error had fallen on the part of the minister and she or someone on her behalf had fallen for another of the false quotes generated by the internet. Happens. In a reformed world just drop the credit to Aristotle, and move on.

The lucky ones (and the elderly among us) remember from childhood shelves laden with encyclopedias: culture, general, and of course the Hebrew encyclopedia. Nowadays, to find a quote from Aristotle you had to read Aristotle. Today it is enough to write in the Google search bar: "Heart of Philosophy Education" and hop! Something will already pop up. But like any horse as a gift, Wikipedia needs to have its teeth checked.

One of the learning tools available to contemporary students is the Internet. Because of this, they need to be taught how to search and how to check sources. If Shasha Bitton had used a quote in her doctoral dissertation without showing a place - they would probably have lowered her grade. Or maybe not. In the humanities and social sciences the criteria are flexible. For example, the Aristotelian quote is at the top of an article written by Dr. Dafna Koppelman-Rubin, who is the head of the Center for Emotional-Social Learning (what just happened to learn?) At the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and quote sites that have no place or commitment to truth. Check the correctness of the quote or the identity of the quoted.It is reasonable if it is someone who tries to flaunt the wisdom of world greats without bothering to know them in depth, but it bothers if this habit is acceptable to an education doctor and education minister who does not feel the need to check sources.

The Minister's Office defended the quotation in

that petty fervor with which I insisted on obtaining proof that it did indeed originate in Aristotle's writings. After I disqualified the validity of screenshots of random sites, a task expert was called. "After consulting with a philosopher of education it appears that this is a typical claim of Aristotle, who has apparently undergone various incarnations of rhetoric over the years," the spokeswoman wrote to me. Behavior education - when the human whole, that is, emotions, is inconsistent with it - is inappropriate. This is in contrast to Plato, who believed that knowledge itself was sufficient. Of education is an authority in the matter. Probably more than me and you. "

Definitely. Only the anonymous philosopher also admits that Aristotle did not write about the education of the heart, but in order not to be blamed in the flesh he quotes another sentence, intrudes on Plato, and adds a free-style interpretation that will lead to the obvious conclusion: there is a quote and there is a "core argument." And this can certainly be attributed to Aristotle, but also to anyone else who has ever written anything about education. It was probably hard to find someone who would be so learned as to simply say, "No, this is not a quote from Aristotle."

At the end of June, the Minister of Education was interviewed by "Israel Today" and spoke about the importance of learning from mistakes in preparation for the start of the school year. She may have meant the learning of others and the mistakes of others, not of herself. But it should come as no surprise that whoever did not admit to being wrong when she rejected Professor Barbash's (correct) corona prediction would certainly have enough tenacity and arrogance in her not to give up support from Aristotle.

Shasha Bitton is not the first

among education ministers to focus on hearts and values. It is doubtful whether she will be able to reach the level of former Education Minister Shai Firon, who pushed the stream of meaningful learning. Like Shasha Bitton, Firon also hoped to grant administrative autonomy to school principals, and like Firon, Shasha Bitton will find that the autonomy that teachers' organizations are willing to grant to principals or the Minister of Education is based on a short rope and a well-tightened collar. So all that remains for the ambitious Minister of Education is to cover in fine words the continued decline of the Israeli education system.

In a discussion held by the Education, Culture and Sports Committee in January 2014, Education Minister Firon demonstrated what meaningful learning is when he quoted a school principal who explained why in his school students start learning fractions only from fifth grade: He will learn fractions before he understands what crises are, so he will never understand what fractures are, because in fact he does not understand what a broken thing is. " The minister marveled: "It was an amazing experience to see a school where so much thought is invested in when a child will encounter a concept, and how he will really understand what fractures are not at the technical level but will really understand, Japanese what the story is."

Why was a former Minister of Education dragged here? Because "beautiful words without cover" (Nathan Alterman) tend to take root. Ideas are like the baobab trees in Moby Dick. Today they are a cute little seedling and tomorrow - an education minister who clings to a nail in a quote that no one knows its origin, and she does not care either.