A Woman's Own: Homework, high school and other headaches

I really did not picture parenthood this way. Before the kids enter school, nighttime is often a time of bath, books, stories, and play. At 8PM, all gets quiet and my spouse and I can have some quiet breathing time to remember what the other one looks like. But as soon as school starts, the dream of creating a family life slowly fades into the distance. My kids are doing homework until way past my bedtime, and there is never, ever a release from pressure. I find myself telling young mothers who are deliberating over work and home balancing that the balance is easy when the children are little. It's when they get into school that they really demand your time. That's when we have to teach them all the subjects that teachers drop in our laps.

This past weekend, I learned that I was not alone. At a lovely Shabbat lunch with several other families, I heard one parent after another describe evenings poring over textbooks about calculus, history, biology, literature and road safety. "My kids cannot do the homework themselves," one parent said to the complete agreement of all others at the table. So I'm not alone, I thought. Parents everywhere feel like they are left to teach their kids what should have been taught in class. Homework is assigned not as a quick review or for some reflective thinking. Homework is possibly the only place where kids may actually learn. But that's up to the parents.

This is sad on so many levels. It's not just an indication of how behind Israel is in educational thinking generally. After all, world trends have been moving away from homework for over a decade, a result of a series of studies showing that homework is both counterproductive and destructive to family life (see for example, The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing by Alfie Kohn.) More importantly, it is another in a long line of disturbing indicators that the Israeli school system is crumbling under its own weight.

This reality hit me just as several important studies were released offering glimpses of the faltering Israel educational system. In as study released last week by the International Educational Association (IEA), Israel ranked in 25th place out of 49 countries in the math abilities of its 9-13 year olds. Singapore ranked first, and Taiwan second, then South Korea and Hong Kong. What's worse, last year, Israel ranked 20th, and in 2003, Israel ranked 19th, indicating a long-term downward trend for Israel. International comparisons in science yielded a similar long-term downward turn for Israel.

Today, another study released, this time by our own Ministry of Education, showed that fifth grade Israeli children are on average, failing math. The average score on a nation-wide standardized math test this year was 56.9 - far lower than the already unimpressive 67 average of last year. In science, the average grade was 68.8 - at least a pass, though not by much. In all of these scores, Arab students lagged way behind Jewish students, indicating that education continues to reproduce societal inequality.

Perhaps even scarier was the section of the study that dealt with school violence. Fifteen percent of respondents experienced violence in the previous month - including everything from shoving, hitting, to severe beatings. Another nine percent had experienced scapegoating, or being isolated and stigmatized by their entire class, over the previous month. Another four percent were being regularly blackmailed for their money or food, with threats of violence.

Reactions from education officials were quick to come. The first was from the system's number one bully himself, Ron Erez, the head of the high school teachers' unions, who blames these results on last year's extended strikes, as well as on Education Minister Yuli Tamir. Too bad for him the system actually started tanking way before the strike, and before Tamir was even minister. Tamir in turn blames the finance ministry because it's all about budgets. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, Israel actually spends more money than some European countries do on education, illustrating that it is not a question of how much money is available as much as it is how the money is actually spent. And naturally they all blame "kids today" - you know how it is, with a little added finger-wagging for the Internet, Ipods, cellphones, and instant gratification. But the final tsk-tsk is reserved for, of course, parents. We all know how parents today are all so into themselves and their careers and don’t pay much attention to their kids. Yes, sigh, parents today.

The third study that caught my attention this week, however, has little to do with grades and everything to do with Israeli culture generally. According to the World Health Organization, tenth graders in Israel rank third out of 41 countries in levels of anxiety. That is, in measures of anxiousness, restlessness, depression, and rage, the only two countries in which teenagers are in a worse state than Israelis are Slovenia and Turkey. Some 53% of girls and 36% of boys suffer from anxiety - and it's worth noting that this seems like a girls’ problem even more than a boys’ problem.

These rates of anxiety have some serious health consequences. These kids were reporting regular headaches, stomach aches, and back aches, as well as the obvious emotional issues. Moreover, among younger kids in grades 6-8, Israel comes in second place world wide. Dr. Yossi Harel of Bar Ilan University, the head Israeli researcher of the WHO, says that Israeli kids do not seem to be having their emotional needs met in school.

It seems to me that there are a lot of needs that Israeli schools do not meet. Kids are getting poor grades, they are subjected to obscene levels of violence that is increasing each year, they are anxiety-ridden and suffering from ill-health, and whatever it is they are supposed to be learning is increasingly being taught to them by their parents. Schools in Israel are at best irrelevant and at worst a health hazard for kids.

In short, the schools in Israel are a failure. Plain and simple. Our lovely country is now 60 years old and it's time to face the truth. When it comes to education, we have completely failed. It’s time to shut down the system and try again.

Universal public schooling is a cornerstone of democracy. School is meant to offer kids equal opportunities for success in life. Sending kids from all different backgrounds to one school system is intended to give kids, no matter where they come from, the tools that they need to build a good life for themselves, and to enable them to become active, energetic, productive members of civic society. But as schools fail to do this, kids become increasingly reliant on their home lives to become prepared for everything from a quiz on ancient Mesopotamia to pre-med exams. In other words, the failing school system is not only bad for kids who suffer all sorts of ailments as they shlep by, but it ultimately has enormous detrimental effects on society as a whole. Bad education, at the end of the day, spells the end of democratic cornerstones of equality, freedom, and social mobility - or as someone important once said, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Tzipi Livni announced today that education is going to be at the top of her list of priorities. It better be, because there is quite a bit at stake. I hope she does not just create another committee, like the doomed Dovrat commission whose findings were trashed by politics and bureaucracy. I hope she starts by shaking up the system at its core, dismantling old structures, breaking apart practices built on antiquated assumptions, and restructuring an entire educational vision from the ground up.