"My mother and father planted music in me," wrote the poet Penia Bergstein in 1944 (sung beautifully by, among others, Judith Ravitz).
If he had asked a contemporary poet to describe the educational burden that parents give to their children, the page would have remained blank.
According to what is becoming clear regarding the appointment of Avi Maoz as Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, who will also be in charge of some of the study programs that are currently in the hands of the Ministry of Education, our children do not receive any educational value at home but are only shaped by what they are taught at school.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am a secular-liberal in my worldview, much closer to the progressive current than the currents represented through the Noam party, its spiritual patron, Rabbi Tao or its representative in the Knesset, Avi Maoz.
Their influence is bad in my eyes and I am ashamed to live in a country that gave them, even if indirectly, a mandate to be among the 120 members of the legislative authority.
But with all my distaste for the dark conservatism expressed by these, I do not remove from myself the greatest responsibility that I have taken upon myself in this life: to be solely responsible for the value baggage with which my children came into the world.
He is not responsible for shaping our children's values.
Avi Maoz (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Why should the education system be different from the health system?
I am of course not in favor of integrating homophobic content into the curriculum, under the washed-up title "family values", because I believe there are all kinds of models for parenting and family.
I'm also not in favor of combining dark racism under the guise of "strengthening the values of Judaism", but I really don't think this is what will transform my children (for the sake of full disclosure, the two oldest have long since parted ways with the education system and the third has about six months left until she completes my 36 years of schooling, in the aggregate, as a parent) from young and enlightened people to candidates for joining the Lehva. Why? Because I know in which house they grew up, who educated them - and above all why they were educated. I want to say, a Kahanist child is first of all an educational failure of his parents, only (much) later , of the school.
Let's compare for a moment between the education system and the decentralized health system, which allows us to receive treatment - according to our preferences - in one or another institution, with different doctors or (especially in recent years) to combine solutions from the field of conservative medicine with those from the field of alternative medicine.
When a patient chooses acupuncture over conservative treatment, I don't suspect that he is undermining my family doctor's diagnosis.
Why doesn't everyone educate their children according to their values and beliefs?
Why is there, beyond the dry law and the threshold requirements of the higher education institutions, a need for "state" education?
A legacy from the days of Mapai that encourages mediocrity
The state education is a byproduct of a young country with a clear narrative, to which refugees from around the world gathered.
The goal was to turn their children into proud adults, those who believe in values common to Israeli society, or at least to the Achusal part of it (Ashkenazi, secular and socialist).
Out of recognition of the unique needs of the religious population, state-religious education was created almost at the same time, and alongside it was given autonomy as well There were also other initiatives for ultra-Orthodox education, but they were closed or at least limited - from the old stream of workers to more modern initiatives such as democratic schools, nature, arts and more (which were forced to undergo major changes).
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The ideological charge is passed on to the children at home (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Rather, each one will educate his children, both in his home and in the various settings, solely according to his opinion and religion.
What will the school under the Ministry of Education teach?
This is perhaps the only point where I agree with my friends on the right: that they should teach them mainly math, English and science - because my impression at least (as mentioned, a graduate of almost 36 years of schooling for my three children) is that the more the school tried to be a broader framework, the level of teaching decreased greatly ( Have you ever tried to speak English with a high school graduate?).
At the same time, as much as he claimed to "educate", violence and boycotts increased in the education system.
Moreover - the expansion of the education system into professions that are not core studies, added, left and promoted within the system mediocre personnel.
In a little more blunt words: alongside wonderful people who devote all their time and energy to their students, quite a few factors have infiltrated the system that you would not let near your children under other circumstances.
If you could choose your children's schools and educational stream by yourself, this would not happen.
Responsible but not guilty?
The double standard of parents
I would draw here more unnecessary lines of difference between the education system and the health system, if it didn't seem that this is a much deeper bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of parental authority.
The one who clucks his lips and blames the education system for everything that his child is more violent (or suffers from violence), boycotts or confiscates, consumes alcohol and drugs, etc., is first of all the one who abdicates responsibility from himself.
Teachers do not raise violent children - it is violent parents who make them so, the Ministry of Education cannot turn a child into a homophobe or a transgender, even if it calls what used to be father and mother as "Parent 1 and Parent 2" - these are subtleties that create a being, but Totally irrelevant to anything.
how do i know
In those days the education system was much more conservative.
I remember how secular parents were shocked and called "religion" when someone asked to teach the children of Israel the words "Shema Israel" a few years ago.
So in the high school I attended in my youth,
The teacher was a convert, a radical rightist, some of the content he advocated also infiltrated his classes.
I will forever be grateful to the man: none of his extreme opinions stuck with me, but thanks to him I know how to read a page of Gemara, no small matter in my eyes as a Jew, even a non-believing Jew like me.
Why did it only affect my knowledge and not my consciousness?
Because my parents had an ideological load to pass on to me.
at home
When they told me that it's okay if I miss school, but woe betide me if I miss the youth movement trip, they were telling me something much bigger.
I'm not asking you to judge now whether they did the right thing or not (from the distance of the years even I'm not sure, I just cherish both options), but the fact is that they were not worried that one of the teachers would "convert" my religion or even just my opinion.
Do you want to educate to accept the other?
Want to educate for conservatism?
For pious religious faith or extreme liberalism?
Do it at home.
Because if we are so afraid of Abi Maoz (and I will make it clear again how much I dislike his views), it means first of all that we have failed as parents.
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