A sacrifice will be made – but when and what is it?

One of the often unregarded voices in the present teacher’s strike is that of the parents.  Parents of children taking the Bagrut this year are complaining “what about our kids?”

There are a couple of points to consider here:

a) a strike can only be implemented usefully if there’s a public that’s being deprived of a service as a result of the strike and

b) of what are these kids actually being deprived and when were they deprived?

To the first point, whenever the strike was carried out it was going to hurt those kids in the bagrut year at the time.  As with any major upheaval (whether it’s a war or a reform in a system those who are in the wrong place at the wrong time will suffer.  History will conclusively tell us that had certain wars not been fought it would have been devastating to the fate of the country that failed to fight it – this brings no consolation to the parents of military age soldiers at the time. Similarly most parents agree (in fact so did the parents of the bagrut takers a few years ago before it affected their own children and they would agree with it as well had the strike been delayed so as to take place in a couple of years when it no longer affects their own children. I know it’s not much consolation to these parents that if the strike actually achieves its aims (and that’s a huge IF since everything seems to have been mishandled all around) their child’s loss this year could be a boon to the education system for years to come.   

But let’s look at the second point, the claim that the kids are being deprived.  Of what are these bagrut takers being deprived?  It’s certainly not an education.  The education of which they’re being deprived is one that has taken place not over the short term of these past 2-3 months, but for the past 12 years, as the result of a degenerated system with jaded teachers unsubjected to periodic reevaluation – the kind of teachers who are so desperate for jobs that they’re willing to work for starvation wages.  It’s all very nice that these kids are trying to get ready to take standardized local tests, but what meaning do they have when its been proven that on an international level the level of knowledge that’s being imparted to them has degenerated to the point where Israel is finishing near the bottom practically last in most subjects (just ahead of Saudi Arabia in fact) on tests in which they used to rank number 1.

The problem therefore isn’t the Bagrut.  With all the sympathy in the world for these kids 1) they had 11-12 years to study the material and to obtain the study habbits and values from teachers and parents that would have allowed them to spend the last 2 months studying on their own or in study groups with their friends rather than staying out in the streets at night and sleeping all day.  Furthermore, the Bagrut isn’t something that has to be done now – in fact to have any educational value now is a poor time to do it.  By the time they’ve finished the army and are ready to enter University, most kids could not score a passing grade on the material they studied for the Bagrut just 2-3 years before. The Bagrut is just one cog in a flawed system.  A system which places putting Vs in checkboxes as an accomplishment (a student does the Bagrut in math, gets 100 and after 3 years in a combat unit no longer remembers what a quadratic equation is or cares much for that matter), which regards information as the be all and end all but sets an educational example by paying its teachers a pathetic salary and allowing parents to get away with sending their kids to be babysat. 

So what it comes down to is do we sacrifice the children of one bagrut year (and even then they can always do it at a later time)in order to (ideally) reform the entire system, or should the teachers say “it’s not fair to the 12th graders of any year so we can never strike,” and sacrifice 12 years for every student of every schoolyear as they make their way through 12 years of subpar teaching and results oriented teaching where material is taken in and regurgitated and checkboxes marked off and nothing learned? 

So yes, one may ask “are we really GETTING the complete overhaul of the system necessary at the end of this process.”  The answer, alas, is probably no. The deal being struck is being reached by the same inefficient bodies that have solidified the problem until now – the government who try to get by with minimum payment for education, and the teacher’s union who zealously fights for all of its members as a body and is unwilling to concede that some sort of evaluation process is necessary and that not all teachers are fit to teach.  But what happens doesn’t change the fact that major change IS necessary and that it’s never going to happen without a strike.  And when that strike happens, whenever it is, the bagrut takers will be asked to sacrifice so that the next generations don’t have to suffer the 12 years of pointlessness of which the test they’re being kept from preparing for (in class) is the culmination.  

Maybe the next generation can spend more time concentrating on education and development of the kind of work habits that will actually prepare them for college and that way if they have to miss classes in 12^th grade they won’t consider themselves as “cheated” but will sit at home and study with their friends – thanks to a reformed education system that has its priorities straight.