Haredi Education "Dragging Israel Into The Third World"

Israel is deceiving itself by financially enabling haredim to operate separate school systems that don't prepare their students to enter the Israeli workforce. It is laying the groundwork for what will push Israel back into the Third World. Perhaps we are foolish enough to let this happen, but the outside world isn't so dumb. It is holding the mirror up to our faces and saying, "Welcome to the third world, where you belong."

2015 will probably be the last year Israeli students will take international assessment tests. Why? Because Israel's coddling of haredim and its obscenely high rate of special needs students means that too small a percentage of Israel's students will be able to take the tests. And that disqualifies Israel from having its students tested.

This has all kinds of negative implications when it comes to marketing Israel as a business and R & D destination, and will probably significantly hurt foreign investment.

Writing in Ha'aretz, Meirav Arlosoroff explains where the damage comes from:

…Why? The international organizations that shape the research assessment aren't suckers, and they aren't willing to include in their rankings countries suspected of altering their results through selective participation of students. Countries where a significant proportion of students aren't tested aren't allowed in international assessments.

The upper limit for non-participants in the TIMSS is 23 percent of the tested age group. During the last TIMSS, in 2011, Israel was on the verge of exceeding the 23 percent mark. Of Israel's students, 14.9 percent of Haredim, 1.5 percent of special education students, and 6 percent of those on the regular track were diagnosed with learning disabilities, and did not take the test.

The percentage of Israeli students who do not participate in the international exams is twice the number than in the rest of the world. Children diagnosed with learning disabilities do not take the exam anywhere in the world, but in Israel they constitute 6 percent of the student population as opposed to 2 percent globally. This figure should warrant an internal investigation in the educational system over the potentially inflated diagnoses of learning disabilities, independent of concerns about international exams.

Second, the large number of Haredi schoolchildren who do not learn math, and hence aren't tested in the subject for either national exams (Meitzav) or international ones (TIMSS and PISA) is unique to Israel. While the educational system can address the number of children diagnosed with learning disabilities, it cannot address the number of Haredi children. The increase in their numbers will almost certainly ensure that by the next TIMSS exam in four years' time, Israel will have crossed the 23 percent threshold.

Thus, the separate educational system for Haredi children leaves Israel deep in Third World territory. Soon enough, we will be pushed out of the group of developed countries and be left where we actually belong – grouped with countries where between 15 and 20 percent of students do no learn math, English or sciences. Of course, these countries are poor and underdeveloped.

We need to be grateful to the world for giving us this slap in the face and hope that it continues to make our ears ring. It's no secret that a vast majority of Haredi schools don't teach the Israeli core curriculum, or at least a large chunk of it, and one can assume that whoever isn't tested doesn't teach or learn the material.

However, despite their failure to teach the core curriculum, Israel's Haredi schools receive between 55 percent and 75 percent of the government funding received by schools in the state system. The two largest school networks in the Haredi educational system – those affiliated with the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael party and the Shas party – received 100 percent of the funding provided to state schools, which are obligated to teach the core curriculum.

Israel is deceiving itself by financially enabling Haredim to operate separate school systems that don't prepare their students to enter the Israeli workforce. It is laying the groundwork for what will push Israel back into the Third World. Perhaps we are foolish enough to let this happen, but the outside world isn't so dumb. It is holding the mirror up to our faces and saying, "Welcome to the third world, where you belong."

[Hat Tip: HeathenHassid.]

Comments

[seymour]

The percentage of Israeli students who do not participate in the international exams is twice the number than in the rest of the world. Children diagnosed with learning disabilities do not take the exam anywhere in the world, but in Israel they constitute 6 percent of the student population as opposed to 2 percent globally. This figure should warrant an internal investigation in the educational system over the potentially inflated diagnoses of learning disabilities

I wonder which group is inflating the numbers

anybody willing to guess

[Yochanan Lavie]

Apologies to: Spirits In The Material World
------Sting & Police:

There is no political solution
To chareidi evolution
There's no Israeli constitution
Only expedient coalitions

Refrain:
We are speeding to join the third world
Are speeding to join the third world 3x

Our so-called rabbis shriek
With black robed arms flailing
New chumrot we must keep
Their "education" is a failure

Refrain

Why do the rabbis lie?
Living in the Middle Age
Will the Jewish State survive?
I just gotta shout "oy vey!"

Refrain

[Runner1983]

Not properly educating you children to effectively function in a modern society is child abuse, plain and simple. This is not Judaism.

[jancsibacsi]

It si not their fault it is the governments fault to let theese primitives dictate to them what to teach their children it is tottaly the israeli gov fault,since they go along with their ludicrous demands of educating the children according to their cultish dictates.

[Yoel Mechanic]

Seymour, I have no idea about the stats given.

But I think if bloggers here took account of the time they spend complaining, and then took 50% of that time providing free tutoring in math and reading, more progress would be made.

[ah-pee-chorus]

YL-

perfect.

the significance of this cannot be overstated. charedim will destroy israel if allowed. STOP FUNDING THEIR SCHOOLS!!! their house of cards wil collapse in 2 years. their lifestyle cant support tuition.

[seymour]

Seymour, I have no idea about the stats given.

But I think if bloggers here took account of the time they spend complaining, and then took 50% of that time providing free tutoring in math and reading, more progress would be made.

Posted by: Yoel Mechanic | January 07, 2013 at 10:57 AM

the problem is not tutoring the problem is that the parents do not want them educated

[Rocky]

In the meantime, the fatcats in the American Jewish establishment and their allies in Congress are more concerned about whether Chuck Hagel, Obama's reported choice for Secretary of Defence is pro-Israel enough. None of them have the courage to bring up the Haredi issue for discussion. Unlike the US, Israel is surrounded by countries that don't like it and that will pounce on it when it has been sufficiently weakened.

Of course the Haredi could just call the test organizers Nazis and be done with it. That is probably what will happen. The country appears to be too divided to take a unified stand against the Haredi. So maybe it will go the way of Weimar Germany.

I'm not running for political office, so I don't have to be politically correct.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thank you, APC.

[David]

In all of history, Jews have only EVER been known for their high levels of educational attainment, not the lack of it.

The Charedim are dragging us all down.

The failure of the Charedim to educate their children is a shocking, widespread and systematic form of child abuse and the Israeli (and other) governments must act to end it.

This gross violation of Jewish Law must be stopped.

[Luke]

"the problem is not tutoring the problem is that the parents do not want them educated"

Seymour:

I concur. Ultimately, it is the Rebbe that does not want them educated. Keep then under educated and you have them as peons for life. Just visit New Square or KJ to see this in action. Sad. Luke.

[Dave]

Bibi for Bankruptcy. A new slogan for Israel's upccoming election. Except it probably wouldn't work in Hebrew.

[Mike]

YL- Your second awesome Sting and the Police parody within the last few days. Great stuff.

The haredim are going to run that country into the ground unless something gets done, and fast. 2015 is not that far away...

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks, Mike.

[Yoel Mechanic]

the problem is not tutoring the problem is that the parents do not want them educated

Posted by: seymour | January 07, 2013 at 11:01 AM
--------------------------------------------
Obviously one will have to be creative about this. You think that hammering away at chareidim will do some good? ... um..maybe...
well, maybe there is actually something that can be done in real life.

[Jeff]

Not properly educating you children to effectively function in a modern society is child abuse, plain and simple. This is not Judaism.

Posted by: Runner1983 | January 07, 2013 at 10:41 AM

Yep:

29a (Beraisa): A man is obligated to teach a trade to his son;

R. Yehudah says, anyone who does not teach his son a trade, (it is as if) he teaches him robbery.

-Kiddushin 82

But why should they pay attention to that? They only follow those authorities who tell them what they want to hear:

R. Nehurai: I will not teach my son any trade, only Torah, for one enjoys its reward in this world, and the principal remains intact for the next world.