Us highly educated Israelis wonder about the training of the younger generation.
On the one hand, the dominant image of the primary and secondary education available to most students is depressing in the extreme. Low salaries cannot attract decent students to enter the profession, existing teachers appear to be over-unionized and under-qualified, and the students' results on international tests have dropped from those of earlier years.
On the other hand, more than one-half of the country's universities appear in most rankings of the best in the world. Salaries are also low in this sector when compared to those in Europe and North America. We all know about good scholars and scientists who have gone elsewhere for more promising careers. However, there are usually more good candidates than the available positions, not only at the top universities, but also at the others and in the burgeoning category of colleges.
Among the signs of success in higher education are the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Intel that have located corporate research centers in Israel.
An article entitled "Jewish Genius," by Charles Murray in the April edition of Commentary Magazine includes a comprehensive discussion of historical and biological elements that may explain the signs of intellectual success over the ages. It reminded me of a conversation with a Korean friend. He told me that his nation had a high incident of literacy for a thousand years. I congratulated him on a record more impressive than that of any European nation, but reminded him that my nation was writing the Bible 2,500 years ago. At the time, I did not realize that my half-Korean, half-Jewish grandson was observed to be reading before his second birthday. Better than his father, who we did not notice reading until after his second birthday. Both began without parental efforts. Maybe both kids were equally capable, and the more capable younger parents were quicker to notice what was happening.
If one wants to find the most intense Jewish investments in schooling, the place to look is that of Ultra-Orthodox boys. Many of them begin school at 3 years, when they learn to read. By the end of primary school they are finished with the Bible, for which they have had to learn the Hebrew equivalent of Chaucerian English. Depending on the congregation, they may be conversant in Yiddish as well as Hebrew. By the equivalent of junior high school they are into the Talmud, which requires fluency in Aramaic as well as Hebrew, and a capacity to read the Hebrew alphabet as we know it, as well as the script used by Rashi and other commentators of the Middle Ages.
The utility of ultra-Orthodox education is less commendable. Typically there is no science, secular history, or literature aside from sacred texts.
An American anthropologist (himself religious but not ultra-Orthodox) observed a group of ultra-Orthodox 12-year olds in an Israeli yeshiva. He found himself jealous of their knowledge, which dwarfed his own. Yet he came to suspect their breadth. When he asked them to draw a map of Israel, none of the group knew what he meant by a map. None could name Israel's neighbors. One thought that the Philistines were still a problem. When asked to indicate how long it takes to travel from Beer Sheva to Jerusalem (83 kilometers), several said that the biblical Abraham had done it in three days, and since he had the Lord's help it must take longer now (Samuel Heilman, Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry ).
My late father-in-law told a story about riding a bus in Jerusalem. When the hourly news broadcast reported something about Libya, an ultra-Orthodox man sitting alongside of him asked "What is Libya?" "A country in Africa," was the response. The next question was, "What is Africa?" Erich began by asking the man if he had heard about Egypt. "Of course. What a question. We all know that we were slaves in Egypt." Assuming that the man actually knew how to locate Egypt on a map, and something about directions, Erich told him that Libya was just to the west of Egypt.
I recall a conversation with an ultra-Orthodox man who I perceived to be well educated. I commented that my experience with religious Christians was that they often had an intimate knowledge of the Bible, but did not know the stories of Tamar. I suggested that the unpleasant elements of the stories, one a story of seduction (Genesis 38), the other a story of rape (II Samuel 13) explained the lack of knowledge. Religious Jews, I assumed, knew the stories insofar as they read the Bible ritually every year. He seemed puzzled, and asked, "Who was Tamar?" He reminded me that it was forbidden to study the Bible alone, without a qualified teacher.
A study of ultra-Orthodox women by Tamar El-Or carries the title, Educated and Ignorant. It emphasizes the paradoxical contrast between a community that provides its members with intensive schooling and is organized to exclude outside influences.
Some of the ultra-Orthodox go on to one or another field of secular education, with or without abandoning their communities. Others study sacred texts for their whole lives, marry early, and send their many children to the schools thought to be appropriate. Their incomes typically consist of the government grants to yeshiva students and what the wife earns as a teacher or in one of the other occupations considered appropriate. They contribute to the statistics of low average family incomes, especially in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak.
The hope for the secular majority may lie in the Coleman Report, a product of the US Office of Education in the 1960s. It found that formal schooling was secondary in its importance for intellectual success. The stronger influences came from parents and friends. It did not inquire about genes.
Posted by Ira Sharkansky at May 06, 2007 09:39 PM