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Madam Minister of Education, Professor Yuli Tamir,
My friend, Mort Mandel, Chairman of the Mandel Foundation,
Director General of the Ministry of Education, Ms. Shlomit Amichai,
President of the Mandel Foundation-Israel, Ms. Annette Hochstein,
Educators, Academics, Visitors,
Members of the Mandel Community,
Distinguished Guests,
The Mandel Leadership Institute – with whose work I have long been familiar – is greatly occupied with strengthening and empowering educational leadership among those working in education in Israel and around the world.
I wish to congratulate the alumni department of the Mandel Foundation for organizing this important Conference marking 60 years of education in Israel. I welcome the fact that the Conference will deal less with the history of Israeli education and more with what it could be if we continue providing the necessary tools.
In this place, today, I wish to devote my time to discussing the matter of the educational future of Israel’s students. When we defined 2008 as a year in which we would make a change in the field of education, we believed that Israel could be a country in which an investment in education is a strategic matter no less than an investment meant to equip us with the most advanced weapons in the world or the establishment of energy, transportation and water infrastructures.
Today, as the calendar year is about to come to a close, and as the Government I lead is winding to a close, I can say that this past year was the most significant in the life of the Israeli education system in decades.
This was a year in which we invested in the “Good Start” program, which deals with children through the age of six and is meant to train professional specializing in the ages between birth and six; establish holistic centers designated for children until the age of six; strengthen well-baby clinics; encourage strong cities to invest in children between birth and the age of six, a time which is so critical to the development of every individual, the age during which one’s personality is shaped.
This was a year in which we allocated an additional NIS 2 billion in education, and this was despite hardships and constraints. This allocation was in addition to the NIS 5 billion we decided to allocate to building 8,000 classrooms in order to finally resolve the problem of scarcity and overcrowding in the system (and nearly half of them are being built in the non-Jewish sector in order to narrow the intolerable gap resulting from many years of misguided policy).
This was a year in which we started the “New Horizon” program and implemented real reform in education, as a result of which teachers are seeing a dramatic increase in their salaries, with the goal of improving the status of teaching, integrating high quality teachers and advancing the achievements of the education system.
So far, this program has been implemented in 810 schools across the country, with the exemplary cooperation of the Teachers’ Union headed by Yossi Wasserman, Chairman of the Teachers’ Union. We wholeheartedly expect that the Teachers’ Association, headed by Ran Erez, will join in the detailed agreement and assist in the expansion of “New Horizon”.
This year, as part of “New Horizon”, with State funding, thousands of one-on-one teaching hours were added for students having difficulty as well as for students who excel. The one-on-one teaching hours, which can serve as the basis for the decisive difference in the ability to advance the achievement of both weaker and excellent students, have ushered in genuine change in this regard.
This year, we advanced a project which will ensure that each of the 60,000 teachers in Israel will have their own personal computers – not only a computer for every child, but a computer for every teacher.
This year, we continued realizing a detailed plan to implement the Schmidt Committee’s recommendations to improve the state of children and teenagers at risk and in distress, and for the first time we devoted serious attention to this important and sensitive issue, and even allocated hundreds of millions of shekels to fund it. No other Government ever bothered to invest such amounts in preventative care of the very young, before the creation of the need to invest enormous amounts in fixing that which could have been prevented.
This year, we decided to transfer an additional half a billion shekels to academic education because of the tremendous importance we attribute to higher education, to nurturing excellence in Israel society and to bringing back scientists and researchers who work in academic institutions overseas. Some of the most excellent and richest academic institutions in the world are overflowing with Israeli researchers who completed their doctorates, and who achieve illustrious accomplishments, and sometimes reach standards which pave the way for the scientific progress of the entire world. It is a failure on a national level that the most brilliant of our researchers conduct their academic research in universities around the world. It is inconceivable that we would accept the departure of these brilliant researchers rather than make a tremendous effort, even if it involves investing many resources, to bring them home.
This was a year of genuine change in the education the State of Israel provides for the most important component in ensuring its existence – for its children, its future. For all that occurred this year, it is fitting that we express our gratitude and appreciation to you, my friend, Minister of Education Professor Yuli Tamir, for your true partnership and cooperation, the results of which fill me with great pride.
Yuli, I alreaqdy know what I won’t be doing after the elections, but I would be happy to see you serve as Minister of Education in the next government as well.
Distinguished guests,
We have, in fact, done a great deal to extricate the education system, at all its levels, from the deterioration it has been experiencing, but unfortunately it is not enough. The truth must be said: we still have a long journey ahead of us. Only last week we received a very unpleasant reminder of this: the low results of Israel’s students in the standardized Meitzav exams.
Anyone who works in education – and you all have an advantage over me in this regard – knows that generous budgets and a great many resources are not enough to lead to a blossoming of our education system. I have heard and have also recently read of a number of proposals and promises of a significant and comprehensive breakthrough in the field, “apparently under the influence of the upcoming elections”.
Distinguished guests, I do not believe in magical solutions, not in general and certainly not in this case. I believe in hard work; I believe in the profound commitment of the Government and of the education system to the process; I believe in changing the national list of priorities with regard to education; I believe in strengthening the status of teachers, but also of strengthening the status of the principal and his authority; I believe that the teachers’ organizations and the education system must and can join hands; I know that we can do things differently, better, more successfully. Education is not a passing fad; there is no magic involved; and there is no room for new comprehensive reforms every two years. We started on a new path, and we must continue on it.
I wish to address the teachers, educators and school principals:
In my opinion, an educator is one who, first and foremost, leads. The nursery school teacher who stands before her nursery school charges, the teacher who stands before his students, the principal who leads her teachers and students – all of them are educational leaders, and the State is obligated to provide them with the tools to continue leading, both in terms of material resources and in terms of values.
Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all times, defined this combination very aptly when he determined what he believed to be the goal of education: “The goal of education must be: individuals who excel in their independence – of thought and deed – who nevertheless view serving the greater good as their primary mission in life.”
I know it is not easy to change. However changing the existing paradigms and patterns of the education system is necessary for the future of our children. We must ask ourselves tough questions regarding our children’s education:
In a global world in which our children amaze us with their ability to navigate the information superhighway, a world in which knowledge is more accessible than ever, should we focus on providing knowledge or should we provide them with the tools to acquire knowledge and understand its significance?
Is technology the domain of only some of the children of Israel or should we bridge between the social and geographic peripheries with it so that every child in Israel receives an equal opportunity in education?
Is a teacher meant solely to provide knowledge or should one have a sense of dedication and vision to provide our children with the “tools for life”?
When I speak of dedication and vision as an inseparable part of the contents of the backpack on the backs of our educators, I mean constantly strengthening our national roots, constantly nurturing the connection of each individual in Israel with his past, his country, his duties as a citizen, with the values of volunteerism and assisting one’s fellows, with real solidarity between the various sectors of Israeli society.
When I speak of values, I mean those which will remind us who the real heroes of a civilized society are, and, ladies and gentlemen, you will not find them on the reality television shows broadcast on our screens every night during primetime. These shows – their content and the tremendous popularity they attain – arouse penetrating social questions, and at the same time gloomy regret.
I wholeheartedly believe in the mission Mort Mandel adopted – with the assistance of my beloved friend who has passed on, the late Professor Seymour Fox – and which is now under the leadership of Annette Hochstein. The bottom line is that there is no substitute for leadership based on personal example.
There can be no excellence in education without excellence in the leadership of the education system. A school cannot be good with a bad principal, and no class can excel if the teacher is bad. Therefore, nurturing leadership in education is a critical step in upgrading the education system. The Mandel Institute took the bull by the horns. It did not join a long list of lovers of Israel who provided impressive amounts of money to build homes, cultivate gardens and acquire equipment. The Mandel Institute is the clearest example of nurturing excellence in the level of leadership as the basis for improving education in the State of Israel.
The education system in Israel will soar again if principals and teachers improve. I was young and now I am old, and I never saw a failed school or weak students when their teachers were excellent and the school principal was outstanding.
This is the focus of the Mandel Institute’s work. Even now, the Institute’s contribution to the education system is impressive and encouraging. And we are only at the beginning of the journey.
We have recently been examining the possibility of cooperating with the Mandel Foundation with the goal of nurturing excellence in the Civil Service and training an administrative reserve, while at the same time investing in the “Atidim – Public Administration Cadets” project. I am pleased that the Foundation’s representatives expressed their agreement in principle to examine this step, and I thank them again for this.
I am proud to call Mort and Barbara Mandel my friends, and most of all, I am proud of their tremendous contribution to education in the State of Israel.
My dear educational leaders,
As a young man, I was privileged to be counted among the public of teachers of Israel for one year. I remember my excitement when I stood in front of my students at the Yishuv Amikim Regional School for the first time. Forty years have passed since that first day in that small classroom, but I will never forget the feeling I had when I saw those 18 pairs of eyes gazing at me and waiting for me to speak.
I did not need that year in Amikim to understand how important, influential and fateful a teacher’s work is. I was aware of this as a student, as a parent and as mayor of a town which devoted tremendous resources in and great attention to strengthening education. There is no mission as important as this. There is no vocation as obligating as this. The Government of Israel is slowly marching on this path alongside all those to whom education and knowledge are vital.
It is customary to say that improving education takes time, a great deal of time. This is not necessarily true. I believe in rapid change, and there will be rapid change. The change of the education system will be faster than the change of the political system and the patterns of governing in the State of Israel, the deterioration of which is a decisive basis for some of the failures which darken all our achievements.
On a personal note, I am saying goodbye to you all, but I am not leaving you. I am relinquishing my position for others. Many of them will be good, dedicated and caring, but none will love you more than I do.
Goodbye.
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