Israel and the school quandary

It's a mistake comparing countries on this matter. Israel has about double the number of children per capita than other Western countries. Average class sizes are bigger, physical classroom are smaller and more crowded.

Schools being closed is much more disruptive to our economy because simply we have more young kids per capita so more people who have to stay home or try to WFH with little kids under foot. We also just in general have a younger population with more families of childbearing age.

This is part of what makes our country so dynamic and innovative, but in the case of covid it may make our school system something of an Achilles heel.

The parameters are simply very different for Israel than the UK or Sweden or the US or the Netherlands or any other Western country many of us naturally compare Israel to.

Maybe opening schools in the US and UK for example has gone for the most part relatively smoothly, especially primary schools.

That doesn't necessarily mean that having the same policy in Israel will yield the same result. It doesn't mean that enacting the same policies and safeguards will work the same way.

We need to be making our own model based on our own demographics, climate and resources not just saying "but in the US/UK/Sweden/Germany" etc.

Many of the schools here closed in September not because of the lockdown, but well before, due to outbreaks among pupils and staff that left schools logistically unable to function due to large numbers of teachers and kids in quarantine or infected.

Schools can't function normally when infection rates are through the roof. I saw primary schools where hundreds of pupils were in bidud at any one time with dozens of teachers either infected or in bidud.

Lockdown or no lockdown a school can't function like that. Certainly a situation of rolling recurring quarantines and infections will not yield any kind of stable school routine and it will still disrupt the economy and parents ability to work.

More than many other Western countries with colder climates we are in a position to make a lot of use of the outdoors. Yes, even in the rain.

I realise this is not mainstream, but among Israel's homeschoolers and at the margins there is a "forest school" type movement, there are communities where learning happens at least in part outdoors and in most weathers. There is the Shomrei Hagan organisation which has educational programmes running outdoors throughout the year in all but the most foul weather.

These are resources which MoE could be looking at to apply on a wider scale to facilitate learning through the covid crisis. We have a country blessed with a relatively mild winter with lots of winter sun. We have stunning nature and archaeology sites, many within or close to urban areas, including in more deprived locales and especially, but not only, in the periphery.

Even if we have to in part continue by distance learning it should be possible for classes to have regular weekly socially distanced meet-ups outdoors, with nature and archaeological classes and activities. These are mostly free resources located near to so many of our schools.

Yes, it will mean that academically there is less emphasis on the conventional core curriculum but frankly I don't think that is key during a global pandemic. Facilitating learning lishma and the social connections between kids, class cohesion, contact with their teachers, healthy outdoor time, these are all fundamentally important to the well being of our communities and our kids.

Maybe they will still be zooming maths and English part of the time, but outdoor schooling away from screens at least a couple of times a week could do a great deal to support their physical and mental health.

None of this is to say that MoE has the foggiest idea how to enact any of this. MoE policy makers are unlikely to look to homeschoolers or fringe educational movements for their covid policies (or any others), but in principle the concepts and resources are there for innovative alternatives.

Will the Ministry of Education do any of this? Sadly I think that is doubtful.

I see a lot of innovative teachers and school headteachers who would like to get more creative and more flexible in their response to covid and who see how critical it is to maintain that bond between them and their students, who appreciate that creating an alternative framework for learning together is far more crucial than plugging away at some kind of traditional core curriculum. 

My impression (and I hope that I am wrong) is that the MoE itself is characterised by policy makers who are far more set in their ways and unable to deviate from a more traditional curriculum and teaching methods. I fear that this will mean continued attempts at re-opening schools and doing the same attempt at "regular school" over and over with the same results we had in May and in September.