Lapid's Tirades vs Chareidim and Army Wrong

This post is also on Israel Blogger as Chareidim to IDF with Honey not Lapid’s Tirades.

The truth is that I do think that the chareidim and the extreme Leftists who have been finding lots of loopholes to to get out of IDF service should serve. But there's one thing for sure. Yair Lapid's hateful and spiteful tirades against the exemption for chareidim will only make them oppose army service more. And all those religious people who support him, like Dov Lipman, should take Lapid's rabid anti-chareidi statements more seriously. Lapid doesn't have the personality characteristics to make him a national leader of the State of Israel.

Chareidim aren't a small marginal part of the Israeli demographics, the way they were seventy years ago as the modern State of Israel came into being. A very large portion of the First Graders each year are in various chareidi educational frameworks, and the percentage shows no real sign of shrinking. One of the big problems in chareidi society and families is the vast difference in educational curriculum between the girls and the boys. The girls generally study enough English and math to pass the Bagrut, Matriculation exams, study a profession and support their families. The boys have an extremely limited curriculum, which sometimes even ignores Hebrew as a spoken language, besides not teaching English and Mathematics. This not only limits professional opportunities, but it can make for difficult homelife.

Lapid's We're done being suckers statements only makes army service into an unbearable burden for fools/"suckers," rather than an opportunity to serve one's country, mature, make lifelong friends and even learn a profession or complete a Bagrut Diploma.

I have no doubt that by being amenable, understanding and sympathetic, plus offering an extensive "end of service educational package," more and more chareidim will decide that it is to their advantage to serve in the IDF. To make it more suitable, the teachers should be male, preferably religious/chareidi, and some will be graduates of the program who undergo teacher training. The added bonus will be a new cadre of chareidi men qualified to teach academic subjects. That's the educational revolution that must happen here in Israel, the sooner the better.

Education Rip-Off

Basic English words for "quiz-game" I made up for my high school students last year.

This is now the season when Israeli children return to school. For some it's the same old school but a different class/grade, and for others it's a new school completely. Israeli parents have a lot of choices in education styles and curriculum when choosing schools for their children. In most cities, towns and regions there are regular "state" or public schools, which aren't religious, state-religious and atzma'i-"independent," which are chareidi. In the religious sector, for boys there's also the Talmud Torah, which is charda"l, a "zionist chareidi" style of education.

In recent years men who left the chareidi way of life have protested very vehemently about how the curriculum in the chareidi schools left them at a terrible disadvantage in trying to learn a profession, study in a university and/or get a decent job. The curriculum in the chareidi boys schools only prepares them for yeshiva life. It's almost totally Talmud with very basic math. And in some schools the classes are taught in Yiddish, so that their Hebrew is sub-par. A neighbor of mine who left the chareidi world says that they aren't even taught to write basic compositions, just to memorize and recite. The norm in recent years in the chareidi world is for the husband to "learn" in a yeshiva full-time as a job, get a small stipend, and be supported by his wife. That's why in the girls schools, there is a general bagrut, matriculation curriculum, in which the girls learn math, English and other subjects on a level which allows them to study for a profession and get a good job/salary.

The newscasts about this problem, which I saw, left out the fact that it's not just former chareidim who  suffer from badly conceived curricula. When I taught English in yeshiva high schools I discovered that many of my students in the lowest/remedial groups weren't there because of a lack of innate ability. They hadn't failed the English entrance exam, because they had a serious learning problem. They failed because their parents had sent them to an elementary school that didn't teach English at all or just made it into a joke in order to claim they taught it. They certainly didn't teach it on the level that a state school, religious or not, demands. And many of the same students, otherwise good students and highly intelligent, had serious problems in math for the same reason. The parents of these children aren't chareidi. They just thought that the religious level would be higher in the "talmud Torah." But those same parents wanted their children to learn professions and even go to university as adults, so for high school, they looked for schools with bagrut, matriculation curricula.

Of course, no good yeshiva high school will take boys missing English and Math, and whatever school would accept them would have to put them in remedial groups. In most cases, the students never really catch up.

So, please do your children a favor. Use "backwards planning" when choosing an elementary school. First think of your child as an adult who will have to work and earn a living. Then think of the type of post-high school study and training needed for that, then the type of high school and then the best sort of elementary school to prepare him/her for that sort of education. And, yes, there are many good state-religious-torani elementary schools which do their best to prepare students for both a Torah observant life and a top university education.

Israel, Excellence in Education

School Year Opening Ceremony in Ofra

In various articles I've read about the opening of the new school year here in Israel, NRP aka Jewish Home's Education Minister Naftali Bennett's aim is "excellence" in education. That's nice, but I don't think he's going about it in the right way. If I've understood correctly, in recent years, the Ministry of Education has forbidden doing the the Mathematics and English Bagrut (Matriculation exam) in the Tenth Grade. They want the students to continue studying the subjects more years, which makes sense, but what they do by that ruling is actually "dumbing down" to "very good" rather than raising the level to "excellent."

High school students should be studying those basic subjects until the end of their senior year, 12th grade, but those who are capable of passing the highest "5 point" test in 10th or 11th grade should be given the chance, and if they pass, they they must take higher level courses. That's what my eldest did when she was in high school. A group of parents pushed the school to allow their English-speaking daughters to take the test in the 10th grade, and then in the 11th grade they took an extra, 6th point, English Literature course. That excellent high level course opened up a whole world of knowledge and interest, which led to her majoring in the subject in university.

My second daughter also did a number of her Bagrut tests early, including English in the 10th grade, and found herself in the position the Ministry of Education wants to prevent. She had almost nothing left to study as a senior. At least her high school allowed her extra Jewish Studies in a neighboring seminary for women. This was before today's easily accessible internet and "elearning."

If the Ministry of Education really wants "excellence," then they should encourage the gifted students to finish the basic 5 point exams earlier and provide higher level classes for them until they finish their "twelve years of studying." These classes, when there aren't enough students or suitable teacher in a school, can be via the internet.

The other day, I saw a news clip about how the children of Chabad families all over the world study in "classes" via the internet. In some cases, the children have to be up in the middle of the night, because of the time differences. So, here in Israel, this wouldn't be a problem. Even gifted and motivated students in the smallest schools can study on a suitably high level.

A "Teudat Bagrut," high school diploma, of such a student with high level tests and grades allows the student automatic admission to university in majors related to the subjects passed on a high enough level. That means, no Psychometric Exams and courses required for those subjects.  That's a big time and money saving for those high level successful students. My third got into university like that, and ended up finishing her Master's Degree simultaneously with her Bachelor's.

Things are always changing in Israeli Education. One "reform" is replaced by a newer "reform" ad infinitum... If they want excellence, my suggestions should be implemented.

The Real World

Not only did I teach high school English here in Israel for the past eleven years, but my five children are all high school graduates.

I'm certainly not going to praise the educational system here nor support the most recent version of the English Bagrut (state tests.) That's not what's behind my criticism of David Herz's op-ed.

Like many, Herz's complaints and visions are rooted far from reality. Promoting the cancellation of the Bagrut tests will not inspire the youth to love learning for learning's sake or any other lofty ideals. There are two main problems, and an additional one which shouldn't be forgotten nor ignored, in his proposal:

1. The students
2. The teachers
3. And the parents

Honestly, who really controls things?

Human nature and generations of breeding have produced students who expect rewards and they aren't "friyerim," suckers to work hard if they don't "have to." Honestly, it doesn't matter what tricks you try, the vast majority of students won't study unless there's a test which can't be avoided.

For the past few decades, the prevalent pre-school set-up here is pinot, "corners." The children are allowed to choose the toys they play with in various parts of the room, with very little requirements and instructions. The aim was to make them curious and not feel forced, but the result is that it's very easy for a kid to avoid anything difficult or challenging. He/she just does what's easy and fun.

The "hands off" approach of the pre-school teacher actually deprives the young students of learning skills. Most cannot figure things out by themselves, so they just do the simplest of things. During the eleven years I was in the English high school classroom, fewer and fewer students were capable of working independently, the opposite of the goal.

That brings us to the second problem. Teachers trained in recent decades do not know how to pass the skills needed by their students. Expecting your average, challenged and even many bright kids to just "figure things out" is totally unrealistic. Combine that with workbooks which require almost no writing and the fact that copying from the board is virtually unheard of put the students at a disadvantage. The workbook is a pre-planned lesson. That means that the teacher just presents and doesn't do the thorough planning once required. Pedagogic experts state that students acquire knowledge in different ways, but workbook lessons don't give a variety of methods.

Drills, the only way of really stimulating memory, are now forbidden in most school systems.

And where are parents in all this? They are concerned about two things. How the student feels and what are the test scores. Very few are involved in the nitty-gritty of curriculum.

I believe in serious reform for the testing system and the basic curriculum and teaching methods from the earliest ages, but I don't see the point of blaming it all on the Bagrut.

Wasted Education Budget

Yesterday's workday was spent proctoring exams*, pre-tests for the Israeli English Bagrut, Matriculation Exams. There's a reason I wrote "exams" in the plural. To pass English, a student must take four separate exams.

That's right, not one, nor even two, and there are three levels, known by their previous titles, the 3 point, 4 point and 5 point. Students must pass three different written tests and one oral interview test. For the interview test, they must complete a research project, because half the points on the interview are based on the project.

It doesn't take much imagination to understand that a hefty part of our measly four hours a week instruction are spent preparing for these exams.

• In most schools, the work begins in the 11th grade, so we spend a year and a half on it, but that's not the budgetary problem, it's just the pedagogic one.


• The budgetary problem is that each written test is marked separately, not a cheap process,


• and students with Oral Testing accommodations require specially paid teachers,


• and the teachers doing the interview testing also get paid separately per student.
• Proctors who come to supervise the students being tested are also paid.


• Of course, some students redo tests and even test for more than one level.


• There are three testing seasons: winter, first summer and "second chance" summer.


• Don't forget there's lots more than English in the Israeli school curriculum!

Yes, all of this cost a lot of money... but it's for the students' benefit.

Only a few years ago, there was only one main testing season, the end of the school year in late May, early June. The winter testing was rarely used in schools, since testing, and its preparation, took up much too much class time. Most subjects were tested at the end of the 12th or 11th grades; generally one test, not more than two were given to 10th grade students, just to "break the ice."

Now both English and Mathematics are "modular." Students must pass a certain number of consecutive tests to have passed the subject matter. In Math, the curriculum requirements for the individual tests aren't connected, which makes things very complicated, if a student needs to go "up or down" in levels, like in the English 3, 4 and 5 points. English has A, B, C, D, E, F, G Exams and two levels of oral interview tests.

Are you confused?

The testing system resembles Frankenstein's monster on steroids, but a lot more expensive.

We teachers are struggling to teach our subjects, but we find ourselves mired in the testing system.

Instead of the eduction budget going to teaching, it's going into testing, proctoring, grading, etc. Instead of being able to invest our limited teaching hours in teaching the subject matter, we must prepare our students for the tests.

Unfortunately, the final result is that today's students fail yesterday's exams. The new systems, teaching methods and curriculum are inferior to the old. Even worse, today's new teachers are the products of the new methods. And here in Israel, the politicians insist that only new, freshly minted, academically trained teachers can improve matters.

So far, the news is that no agreement has been reached to end Israel's longest teachers strike. The government refuses to admit that they're offering a reduction in salary (the hourly wage,) and bli eyin haraa, he should remain strong, Irgun Morim Head, Ron Erez refuses to accept such an outrageous proposal.

*Even though I'm totally in favor of the strike, the union members in the school where I work have voted not to strike but to observe sanctions and restrictions in what we do besides actual classroom activities.