Dennis Fox’s Weblog

Laurie Ornstein, an old friend whose song in support of Bedouin organizer Nuri El Okbi I’ve mentioned before, spent yesterday singing protest songs outside the Ministry of Education in Beer Sheva. Her one-woman action was in support of the Israeli teacher strike, a response to horrendous under-funding of Israeli schools.

Laurie teaches English in both Jewish and Bedouin schools. She has a column in today’s Haaretz, which includes this reminder of Israel’s two-tiered society”

Most Jewish-sector schools, mine included, lack sufficient classroom or office space. If teachers are to spend preparatory hours in school, they must have proper work space. Nor are there sufficient conference rooms for meeting with pupils or parents, not to mention lunchrooms.

If things are bad in the Jewish sector, they’re worse in the Arab sector. While some Bedouin pupils and teachers finally have new school buildings, many are still studying and working in crowded trailers with primitive infrastructure. I recently visited a new trailer school in Bir Hadaj, which had no running water in September. There is water now, but the toilets are still not functioning. Classes of 40 are the norm in most Bedouin schools. How can people function in such deplorable conditions?

Technology is not a luxury today. Access to information is knowledge and a window to the world. There are still many schools today lacking the infrastructure for Internet. Many Bedouin schools do not even have regular phone lines.

Given my opposition to high-stakes testing in the US, this part interests me also:

In its response to the widespread feeling that the schools aren’t doing their job, the Ministry of Education has become obsessed with assessment. In the end, the high schools are seen as little more than training institutes for Meitzav and bagrut (matriculation) exams, which now too often take precedence over teaching the subjects themselves. Under pressure, many teachers feel they have little choice but to focus on exam skills to achieve high scores. Again, in large classes, the needs of both weak and strong pupils are often not addressed, as teachers teach to mid-level. Special needs pupils are left struggling.

A related article in Hebrew, in Yidiot Ahronot, includes a couple of photos, including this.

Go, Laurie!

Technorati Tags: Bedouin, Israel, Laurie Ornstein

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 10:20 am and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.