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Education Minister vows to expand Heritage studies

Tuesday, 25. August 2015 - 13:44

Education Minister Naftali Bennett said yesterday he objected to the name of a key educational program, “The Other is Me,” noting, “I don’t believe in blurring identities.”

Ahead of the start of the new school year on September 1, Bennett was hosting the traditional Knesset Education Committee meeting – in which the goals of the education system are presented. The meeting was attended by panel chairman MK Yakov Margi (Shas) and other lawmakers, plus Education Ministry director general Michal Cohen, and the head of the Teachers Union, Yossi Wasserman.

In discussing the program “The Other is Me,” Bennett said, “I do not agree that the other is me. The other is not me, everyone is different. I don’t believe in blurring identities; I believe in strengthening identities. I believe that every Jewish child should know who Maimonides is, and Abraham the patriarch and Hannah Szenes; that he’ll open a prayer book before he gets to the army. Every child must open a prayer book.
"I don’t believe in making a milk shake so all the students in Israel will come out as a pink liquid. Israel is a mosaic, and that is its strength. We have, for example, the heritage of the Mizrahi communities that has not been expressed in our history studies,” he added, referring to Jews of Middle Eastern descent.

He opened the meeting by mentioning what he considers his three flagship plans for the coming year: To reduce the number of children in first grade classes to 32-34, which will mean the opening of more than 300 new first-grade classes; to add a second teaching assistant to preschool classes for 3- to 4-year-olds; and to increase the number of students who sit the advanced, five-unit matriculation exam in math. Bennett says he wants to double the number of students sitting the test, to 18,000, within four years.

The education minister also presented a new plan he said would lead to massive investment in special education students – 945 million shekels ($243.7 million) over the next seven years, with 135 million shekels to be invested this year. “In the framework of the program, we will make about 1,000 acoustic classrooms accessible for children with hearing impairments; we will make buildings accessible – including elevators, ramps, toilets for the physically challenged – so that students will be able to reach the classrooms and not need their friends to help them.”

Bennett said special tablets would also be purchased for vision-impaired students. In terms of goals, Bennett cited “values above everything,” followed by excellence. “We are obsessive about measuring eligibility [for matriculation certificates] but … eligibility in itself has no significance,” he said, adding that the quality of the matriculation certificate also had to be measured.

Bennett added he would like to increase the autonomy of principals, and that “there’s one term that drives me crazy – supervisor. What are supervisors? They need to be developers. We must move to awareness of service. I serve headquarters, and headquarters serves the supervisors, and they serve the principals who serve the teachers.” As an example, Bennett referred to the “shorts protest” – a dispute that broke out in June over the fact that boys are allowed to wear shorts to high school but girls are not. “I trust the principals. Every principal knows what’s good in his school. If they’re not good, we’ll replace them,” Bennett added.

He also presented additional programs, including Hebrew studies in the Arab school system, beginning in kindergarten; and a new program on debating and public speaking, to begin in the 2016-2017 school year.

Yarden Skop

Source: 
www.haaretz.com
Tags: 
educational program
Heritage studies
jewish identities
Naftali Bennett