12—THE BULLETIN—Friday, September 13, 1974
ISRAELI EDUCATORS RE-EXAMINE GOALS
IN THE PAST YEAR, the Israeli education system has come under increasing pressure to explain its "failure" to produce a generation of young Israelis sufficiently "Zionist" or "Jewish" to meet the standards of its critics.
This disgruntlement and the
Best Wishes For A Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year To All From
THE HONORABLE MR. JUSTICE
AngeJo E. Branca
LAW COURTS Vancouver, B.C.
feeling that "a new spirit" is needed in the education system form part of a complex system which was in the making even before the October War. In recent months, the pressures on the schools have been more explicit, taking two main directions.
In the first place, they seek the reinforcement of established norms, a natural outcome of the national turmoil which followed the War, and in the second they reflect the spirit of intense self-inquiry into the character of Israeli society now under way and probably nowhere more keenly than among the young.
Fortunately, there has been a positive response from senior educationists and the debate centres not on whether it is right for questions to be asked, but which questions might be considered healthy or even "legitimate."
Israeli youth have been variously labelled pragmatic, unemotional, despairing of ideology and politics, cynical. It seems both truer and more fair, as Dr. Dan Ronen, senior adviser
to the Education Minister, has recently said that they have to confront an extremely tough twin-pronged internal conflict.
THERE ARE, on the one hand, the humanistic values on which they are weaned - justice, morality and related virtues, and, on the other, the awesome reali^ of violence and war which encompasses their lives. -
They are also confronted by the disparity between the concept of universalism and the sense of international isolation which so seared Israel at the time of the war.
On yet another level, he points out, there is the dichotomy between what the young in Israel have to perform for their society in their wartime role and what
"Concern for the state of the country is a result of the state of the country. . .To consciously fashion and reinforce an outlook in order to tie people to places is anti-educational, anti-civic and anti-social."
This does not mean, says Dr. Ronen, that the school should remain the neutral factor that it has been hitherto. It must have its influence. Nor does it mean that knowledge per se is not lacking and that that lack should not be filled.
Various teaching programs, held in abeyance for fear of stirring political or religious hornet's nests, are in the works. They are designed to impart more knowledge of Jewish affairs, deep-
character of a society or whether the teaching program can itself impart independent values. That debate has been sharpened in Israel's current situation. The fact that it is a rearguard action makes it considerably more problematic.
But it is generally realized that unless the situation is immediately taken seriously, the warning sounded by the top official in the Education Ministry, Elad Peled "that we might one day have to set up an inquiry commission to establish the source of the 'blunder' in this, the most crucial arenas," may come only too true. JCNS.
Abrasha and Edith Kpplan ond Daughters of
KAPLAN'S DELICATESSEN RESTAURANT & CATERING
5775 Oak St. Phone 263-35221
extend to oil their Relatives, Friends | ond Customers i
i
A DEMONSTRATION BT students at Hebrew University—facing up to all tlie pressures.
A Healthy, Happy New Year
New Year Greetings to Our Many Friends
PERMA-GARI) QEANERS
Toleisim Cleaned Free For The Holidays
4562 MAIN STREET 879-1117
BERNARD ROZEN
DR. S. L WARD
845 Denman Sh
Extends Best Wishes For A Happy New Year To AH
Hearfiesf Hew Year Greetings
GRANVILLE SEAFOODS
GEFILTE FISH OUR SPECIALTY
3055 Granville Street Phone 733-4824
they can expect or influence in normal times, even in terms of their own education. This, he feels, has produced a youth culture that is peculiar to Israel.
Many people were shocked by the predominant tone of the questions in a recent TV talk show which featured an audience of Elat teenagers and which revolved fundamentally around Israel's right to an independent existence if this were to be at the expense of another nation.
"One of our most serious threats," remarked Ariel Sharon, ex-general and Right-wing politician, is that "a generation has grown up which does not know it is here and is uncertain whether it must pursue the Zionist enterprise."
However, in broad terms, there seems not to have been any discarding of the fundamental norms such as the validity of a Jewish .State, the need to strive for peace and co-existence with its neighbors and the search to create a better society within that State.
THE PRESENT search is rather for new directions than for a new set of values, with its "heart" the correction of the notion that once the State was established the mission or vision of Zionism was completed.
But how is the challenge to be mef? One trend would bombard the young Israelis with more lectures, more pamphlets on Jewish and Zionist history.
The sceptics argue that he already has a surfeit of Zionist experience instilled from the moment he enters nursery school and that any additional imposition of ideas is liable only to generate a sense of resistence, ending in revolt against the very roots which the system is trying to nurture.
There can be no education "for" argues one of Israel's foremost literary figures, S. Yizhar.
en the average non-religious child's awareness of Judaism and Zionism without becoming embroiled in theology or seeking to impose a value system from an earlier age.
Dr. Ronen stressed that many people abroad subscribe to the misguided idea that Israel's young generation consists essentially of young people who are "goyim who incidentally speak Hebrew." Nothing could be further from the truth, he contends.
THERE MAY have been a re-
I
The system
Nearly 900,000 young Israelis are at school or undergoing higher education. Primary education is free and compulsory between the ages of five and fifteen. The schouMeaving age is to be raised to 16.
Of all children at primary schools, 65-5 per cent attend general State schools; 28 per cent State religious .schools and 6-5 per cent findependent Agu-dat Israel schools.
State education is based by law "on the values of Jewish culture and the achievements of science; on love of the Homeland and devotion to the State of Israel and the Jewish people; on training in agricultural labour and handicrafts; on fulfilment of pioneering principles; on the aspiration to a society built on liberty, equality, tolerance, mutual aid and love of fellow-man."
Wishing All Our Friends a Healthy and Happy New Year
STORE ^'^ANsflSk^ij
EQUIPMENT
SUPPLY COMPANY
1531 W. 4th Ave., Ph. 736-7645
jection of organized religion, but certainly not of Jewish consciousness.
The perennial debate among educationists is whether education is only a function of the
BEST WISHES TO THE JEWISH COMMUNITY FOR A HAPPY AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR
COAST AIR conditioning ltd.
872-7505
233 East 6th Avenue, Vancouver 10, B.C.
A Happy Hew Year fo our Jewish friends
WESTERN STEVEDORING COMPANY UMITED
GfNER4I
snvEmm
OFIFICE:
687 Powell Stmt VaiKsuver V6A 1H3
Telephone 253-6661
Cable Addresi: WESTEVEDOR