{"id":668,"date":"2007-11-30T16:32:04","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T14:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=668"},"modified":"2009-12-28T16:33:08","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T14:33:08","slug":"bully-for-the-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2007\/11\/bully-for-the-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Bully for the Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Last Saturday night we went to a house concert performed by Laurie Ornstein<\/a>, an English teacher turned folk singer who has taken to busking<\/a> for a living during the protracted high school teachers strike. The concert was lovely \u00e2\u20ac\u201c full of new and classic protest songs, some rewritten to focus attention on the teachers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 current plight.<\/p>\n For those of you who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been following this wrenching Israeli development, the Secondary School Teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Organization (SSTO) has been on strike<\/a> for more money and better conditions for 45 days as of this writing. Kids from 7th through 12th grades have had no school, teachers haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been paid.<\/p>\n A second organization, the National Teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Union (NTU), which mostly represents elementary school teachers, settled with the government earlier in the year, meaning that K-6 kids are continuing with their regular school routine (though the NTU has threatened to join the SSTO strike in solidarity next week).<\/p>\n But despite my sympathy for the teachers and the clearly deplorable conditions they must work in, I cannot fully support them in their current work action. This puts me at odds with many of my friends who are teachers or who work in education. The problem is: the teachers demands are justified, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not willing to give back what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really needed to reform the system once and for all.<\/p>\n Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me wrong, the teachers have a legitimate beef and one that deserves our collective concern. With a starting salary for new teachers of just NIS 2800 ($700) a month and a maximum after 36 years of service of NIS 15,000 ($3,500), teachers in Israel are among the lowest paid workers in the country but have unquestionably one of our most important jobs. Attracting and retaining quality teachers simply cannot be done on the paltry wages teachers earn. Moonlighting is both expected and required just to get by.<\/p>\n In addition, teachers work in conditions that make it near impossible to educate a class. My younger son Aviv\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s class has nearly 40 children. How can you do anything other than play policeperson in a class that size?<\/p>\n The teachers have also lost over 8 hours a week of teaching time due to budget cuts over the past several years but are still expected to cover the same amount of material. This, said performer Ornstein at her house concert, turns classrooms into bagrut<\/em> factories. One student asked Ornstein, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153are you going to be teaching us sections e, f, and g?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d referring to what would be on the upcoming matriculation exams. Ornstein answered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to teach you how to read, write and speak English.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The teachers are therefore demanding higher wages, lower class size and a return of the hours taken away. All worthy goals. So why the impasse between the teachers and the government?<\/p>\n The government wants the teachers to agree to a broader reform of the educational system. This reform started with the Dovrat Plan<\/a> which was approved by the cabinet of then prime minister Ariel Sharon. The Dovrat Plan called for significantly higher wages but demanded that teachers work a full five day work week in a single school. It stipulated that teachers pass accreditation exams just like lawyers, doctors and engineers, and be regularly evaluated. Most importantly, it empowered principals to hire and fire based on merit, thereby weeding out ineffective teachers and rewarding rising stars.<\/p>\n The Dovrat Commission was headed by Shlomo Dovrat<\/a>, a businessman from the hi-tech giant ECI Telecom<\/a> who looked at the broken education system as something to be fixed by applying the kind of management and personnel expertise that built his own company.<\/p>\n Dovrat should have been the only game in town, but when Ehud Olmert assumed the prime minister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office, he put in place a new education minister, Yuli Tamir<\/a>, who unveiled her own watered down reform plan, one she said would place less emphasis on management and more on pedagogy. It still included the call to empower principals. The result nevertheless was that the impetus of the Dovrat Plan was lost and the teachers saw weakness which they translated into an opportunity to make their own demands without agreeing to the reform.<\/p>\n I shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say all the teachers. Many agreed with Dovrat and many agree with the new reform too. The problem is the head of the teachers union, Ran Erez, who Amotz Asa-El, writing in the Jerusalem Post<\/a>, calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153coarse,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ruffian\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hoodlum.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d To Erez, a school principal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s empowerment is his own disempowerment. His job is to keep as many teachers employed as possible, even if this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in the best interests of the system.<\/p>\n Erez reportedly went so far as to liken the Dovrat plan to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a reference to the deal Hitler struck with Stalin before setting his sites on the rest of Europe. Tough words from a tough guy who is known to hurl profanities in negotiations and never brought either reform plans up to a vote by the very teachers he claims to represent.<\/p>\n