T. Belman. Haaretz thinks schools should “emphasize the liberal values that are the cornerstone of any country that seeks to be enlightened and democratic.”. They object to Bennett requiring values such as our Jewish heritage and identity and our love of land to be reinforced.
The state education system needs to emphasize the liberal values that are the cornerstone of any country that seeks to be enlightened and democratic.
The school year is set to open today, with an emphasis on “values.” Among the initiatives Naftali Bennett has announced recently, some of them drawn up before he ever dreamed of being education minister, one stands out — a program “to strengthen values in the education system.” But in a polarized society like Israel’s, it’s advisable to ascertain which values he means and the steps he is taking to promote them.
Past experience and Bennett’s own remarks show that the risk of religious-nationalist indoctrination greatly outweighs the probability of a pluralistic policy. Bennett and his colleagues aren’t interested in promoting dialogue with people who represent a variety of different views, or in addressing a complex, multifaceted reality.
At a press conference last week, the minister announced a budget increase of about 50 million shekels ($13 million) to strengthen values in the education system. “I don’t believe in blurring identities; values are above all else,” he said. “Every child in the country needs to be familiar with the heritage he comes from … Only thus, when you have a strong identity, are you ready to accept the other. I don’t believe in making a milkshake, so all students in Israel come out as a pink liquid.”
But the “education system” Bennett is talking about includes neither Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox students, whose values apparently don’t need any reinforcement, nor Arab students, whose heritage is better left unmentioned. And the “values” he is talking about are primarily “strengthening our heritage” and “educating for love of the land,” as per his religious Zionist Habayit Hayehudi party or organizations close to it. The ministry’s “The Other Is Me” program, which is identified with Bennett’s predecessor, Shay Piron, has turned out to be more a matter of declarations and slogans than an effort to draw different people closer together.
As an example of the “identity-forming journeys” he seeks to expand, Bennett cited the “Israeli Journey” program, run by the Mibereshit organization. This organization’s past leaders include senior members of Bennett’s party, and it is not noted for its openness to questions or to opinions that deviate from the consensus.
The use of outside organizations like Mibereshit isn’t an innovation. For many years now, the Education Ministry has preferred to have teachers in state nonreligious schools, who are familiar with their students’ social and cultural milieu, deal with values as little as possible. This responsibility has instead been handed over to a network of private organizations, most of them Orthodox, which benefit from public funding but are subject to very little supervision. More than once, they have entered classrooms without parents’ knowledge or without parents receiving full information about them.
Bennett’s “strengthening identities” program isn’t meant to serve as a basis for dialogue among the various groups in Israeli society, but to promote one and only one worldview, one that undermines Israeli secularism. The state education system doesn’t need such preaching. What it needs is to emphasize the liberal values that are the cornerstone of any country that seeks to be enlightened and democratic.
Dis-empower both extremes!
Liberal values will destroy Israel and the Jewish community.
“democratic, liberal and enlightened” are all Torah ideas. Not the perverted version preached by the delusional leftist progressives that make no distinction between victim and oppressor, me and other, right and wrong. Does Haaretz believe secular Jews have no heritage, no history, no commonality with their fellow Jews other than “liberalism”. If that’s the case, then what’s the difference between a secular Jew and any liberal atheist? What is it for them to be Jew that is distinguishable from any of the ilk, not of Jewish persuasion? The answer sadly is, that they have redefined being a Jew from what it actually is to simply an adherence to progressive liberal values erasing entirely (in a pathetic futile attempt) the difference between us and them. They have failed to learn from history that for the non-Jew there is no distinction whatsoever between them and any other Jew of whatever persuasion or color. These are un-Jews masquerading as Jews and never having the slightest inkling of what it means to be Jewish. So no wonder they object to their children being educated into knowing what it means to be a Jew. Sadly the Israeli education system has from inception taught that Israel came into existence in 1948. Any thing Jewish prior, perhaps with the exception of the Holocaust, is non-existent. No wonder there are so many “Israelis” and so few Jews in Israel. Kukos to Bennett who is trying to change that. Long overdue!