Zoom. And more zoom. Tomorrow we do get to school, the day after tomorrow we don't, so far there is no history. The teacher is recruited.
That family was evacuated, the neighbors have a kidnapped daughter, friends lost their firstborn who fell in Gaza, the family business is collapsing. The building shakes when the Iron Dome meets a Qassam rocket hovering overhead. In the stairwell, at eight o'clock in the evening, you can't hear anything but the voice of Yonit Levy or Hila Korach.
A country at war is not normal. After a massacre, when more than 200 of its citizens are kidnapped, it's a life-changing situation. No one in the country remains as it was on 6 October.
And we also came to this terrible event with our tongues out, tired and exhausted, hated and divided, recovering from two years of Corona.
And in the midst of this chaos, the education system is trying to maintain a routine of studies. Teachers struggle with their fingernails to teach, trying with the remainder of their strength and students' strength to get enough material to approach matriculation. In front of students whose attention is nil, who have matured too quickly, that this difficult country has made them impatient, aggressive and impatient. An education system that suffers from a shortage of teachers, crowded classrooms, and ministers who try to change an agenda every term, is trying to deal with a situation that has changed the world order.
It makes no sense to try to preserve what exists. We cannot continue to demand from teachers and students what we demanded of them before Black Sabbath. We need to stop and think about what the word education means at this time. Is another chapter in the Bible or a formula in mathematics what matters right now? Is it possible to create something different that includes learning, values and acceptance of the needs of the hour?
Think for a moment about a stand-up comedy show where everyone laughs together, followed by talk about humor during difficult times, including the Holocaust. Both a history lesson and a value discussion
Education Minister Yoav Kisch is already talking about this. There are various initiatives of going out for picking, who for one day and who for a week or more. Boys and girls who have been sitting in front of screens for years thinking that tomatoes grow in the supermarket's refrigerator, smell soil after the first rain and feel the blazing sun. Reach for a vegetable or fruit without which it may rot and fall to the ground, work shoulder to shoulder, practice physical activity, learn agriculture, and also internalize the meaning of the terms time and validity and time. A wonderful lesson in philosophy.
These initiatives need to be expanded and intensified, instead of theater and film classrooms and music and dance and museums. A distraction that at the same time really expands the mind. Think for a moment about a stand-up comedy show where everyone laughs together, followed by talk about humor during difficult times, including the Holocaust. Both a history lesson and a value discussion.
Instead of tests, students should write research papers in a group, reflecting what is happening now. They must be allowed to experience and digest, to share and lend a shoulder, to bring in the rest of the spirit. A little wisdom, sensitivity and creativity in a world that has turned on us and on them.
True, routine is important. But a routine doesn't always have to stick to itself.
The Israeli soul stretches a little more and a little more every day, touching its own edges, rubbing and scratching from reality. Now, of all times, the education system has a tremendous opportunity to stop teaching – and start educating.
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