What Would I Change in the Education System?

With God's help

Besheva – 2008

When discussing the education system, this should be done on three levels: what are the educational goals? What are the instructional goals? And what is the administrative system that will implement them optimally? I will do so telegraphically, for lack of space.

As for administration, the system's centralization works against us. Bureaucratic considerations usually block the path of various initiatives and the establishment of institutions. Standards are lowered for political reasons (= the success of the Minister of Education is measured by the percentage of students who pass the matriculation exams) or fashionable ones (equality). There is almost no systematic identification and advancement of talented students, except by a few private bodies.

Therefore I would privatize the system in curricular terms (financially, support can be provided to those who lack means). Let each person determine the character of their children's education, instead of the current situation in which the education system is an arena for political-ideological struggle, where each side tries (unsuccessfully) to bend the other in its direction (see, for example, Jewish studies, core curriculum, and the like).

With respect to the other two planes, education and values are amorphous areas; there is no consensus about them, and I assume many will focus on them in particular. Therefore I choose to focus on learning. Admittedly, for someone committed to the centrality of the commandment of Torah study, it is clear that learning, too, has educational value.

A considerable part of the education system's current conceptions is an anachronistic remnant of the situation several decades ago, when most students reached, at most, the matriculation exams. Today the situation is different, and the school ought to focus on developing learning skills and general education—specifically in areas that the student will not encounter later—and less on knowledge and specific technical skills. Therefore I would almost completely abolish the various tracks, and teach all students a broad range of subjects at more basic levels. Written and oral expression, rhetoric and logic, critical reading and viewing, reading, study, and the independent organization of material. In terms of knowledge, the focus should be mainly on introductory material. Any student can study physics, if one does not harass him with complicated and unnecessary technical problems. At the university he will do so in a quarter of the time and at a higher level, and there it will be only for those who are truly interested in it. On top of that, one can offer additions to those who are interested.

As a rule, teaching should be conducted in an individualized manner, similar to the Open University, from books and/or on the Internet, with the teacher serving as the guide and the pace determined by the student. In this way, the quality of instruction does not depend critically on the quality of the teachers (which in practice is difficult to change), and the content being studied is prepared by the best teaching staff. In such a model, every student in the country would have the best teacher in every field, and the differences would lie only in the nature of the assistance.

Measures of success should not be determined through national averages (which place us next to the bottom deciles of the Ivory Coast). Those who truly require real mathematical skills are a tiny fraction of the population, and they should be identified and developed. The rest can know fractions and percentages, and understand in general what mathematics is (today, precisely because of the technical emphases, even the stronger students do not really understand this).

These steps may also have an effect on the quality of our academic research, which suffers from superficiality, an extremely low intellectual level, and distorted measures of success and promotion. But that is already another story.