God Is in the Crowd by Tal Keinan

Author:Tal Keinan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

THE FOURTH ISRAEL’S EDUCATION

By Jewish historical standards, Israel’s diversion of resources to parochial interest groups has produced an astonishing mediocrity in general educational achievement. Measured by test scores, Israeli Jews underperform their U.S. Jewish counterparts significantly. Israel’s ranking in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) will surprise many who remember the Israeli school system of the 1960s and 1970s, which ranked at the top of the world in mathematics and science achievement. As of 2012, Israeli students rank only forty-first in mathematics, between Croatia and Greece, and forty-first in science, between Slovakia and Greece.

Many studies point to the high correlation between educational outcomes and economic development. Until it is fundamentally overhauled, Israel’s education system will continue to condemn the Fourth Israel to permanent economic hardship. The question of whether Israelis are willing to challenge this mediocrity is rarely asked, because Israelis are largely unaware of it. The same PISA exams include a self-efficacy survey, measuring students’ self-confidence in mathematics. Israeli students score near the top of that survey despite their middling test results. As a group, they are painfully ignorant of the realities that exist beyond Israel’s borders.

The generic weaknesses of Israeli education have been debated publicly for years. They include overcrowded classrooms, overworked and undertrained teachers, and disruptive behavioral norms among students. All are real issues, but Israel also faces a curriculum crisis. The current school curriculum is underequipping a new generation for the challenges of contending with a globalized world. As global playing fields level, the world will increasingly polarize into winning and losing camps. One must question to which camp Israeli society is gravitating. Israel’s youth need uninhibited access to the global discourse. Their most important tool is the English language.

The revival of the ancient language of the Hebrews is attributed primarily to Eliezer Ben Yehuda. Hebrew played a critical role in forging a functioning national identity for new Israelis. Twentieth-century exiles from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Morocco shared little cultural commonality, at least on a superficial, day-to-day level. They practiced different customs and approached their Judaism in different ways. These communities would somehow have to come together if they were to function as a society and an economy. They would have to fight shoulder to shoulder against invading Arab armies, the orphaned Polish-speaking Holocaust survivor fresh off a ship from British internment camps in Cyprus and the dispossessed Arabic-speaking survivor of the Farhud.

The revived Hebrew language would become their glue. Without it, they might not have established the unity so critical to their survival. Today, a rich and vibrant Israeli culture flourishes in Hebrew. Hebrew is also a direct link between Jews and the early chapters of their ancient culture. But too many Israelis today are fluent only in Hebrew, and this carries a cost. It disconnects most of Israel, particularly the Fourth Israel, from the rest of the world and, critically, from its American cousins. Only Secularist Israel, rigorously educated and oriented westward, largely speaks English.

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