In her famous book "The March of Folly", Barbara Tuchman enumerates a series of political and historical moves whose harm cries out to the heavens.
Tuchman sets three conditions for such an event to be called "foolishness".
The first: the damage of the event and its negative results will be evident in real time and visible to the eye;
The second: the wrong way must be absolute by a group and not a tyrant;
The third: there must be an alternative and known course of action that can be taken.
In the following lines, I will ask Tochman about these three conditions and examine in their light the conduct of the Israeli education system.
Regarding the considerable damage, I don't think I will need to extend.
The education provided to Israeli citizens by the state is an inferior product.
A cloud of mediocrity is spread over the school building.
In international tests, our children achieve an average score if not below it.
In the schools, a generation without general education is growing up, who does not know how to understand complex processes, who is not aware of historical developments, who learns without joy and without curiosity.
My son entered high school this year, his grades are great and everything is fine, but his eyes are closed.
I remember the same eyes ten years ago when he entered first grade, and they sparkled with excitement.
I torment myself for the fact that studying has become a burden for him instead of a source of joy.
Education in Israel easily meets the second condition as well.
No one forced us to receive such an education in its current form.
Year after year, our elected officials come to a new agreement with the teachers, and every year opens with some kind of "now everything is fine" that I freak out about.
Neither a dictator nor an evil government forced this situation on us, we all choose.
Regarding the third condition, the solution, it will be too short to detail, but it exists.
I got to see him work with my own eyes.
Several external bodies that operate within the schools operate according to a certain model, and their success is phenomenal.
The Torah is written down in detail and is frequently presented to the decision makers, who in turn ignore it.
A fundamental principle of the method speaks of placing the power, authority and responsibility in the hands of the school principal.
He will choose the teachers and be able to fire them, he will be able to reward the teachers, and the decision on the content of the study and the method of study will be in his hands.
In short, the manager, who today is at most a job organizer, will become the owner of the house.
I suggest the reader look at the publications of the "Israeli Education" association and be interested, for example, in Finland, where this model has been working for years and crowned Finnish education as the best in the world.
According to this model, which by the way also operates with great success in some places in Israel, the school is a generator of motivation, both for the teachers and the students.
Irresistible motivation.
Above a school building like this, a flag of unique pride flies with genius, and the stay at the school gives an inner meaning to everyone, students and teachers alike.
An important and obligatory note: the last problem of the Israeli education system is the quality of the teachers.
My four children went through this system, and their teachers over the years, most of them, were dear and successful people, full of goodwill and concern for the child.
Our teachers are the ones who will make the change, their eyes also sparkled once.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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