Weekly Commentary: The Hammer-Wielding Child in the Education Production
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Dr. Aaron Lerner 16 February 2024

Israel's survival hinges on the success of its educational system.

Two fundamental policy changes have crippled the system for years: Giving
parents' veto power over the placement of their children in the system and
automatic promotion, particularly from the first grade.

#1. Giving parents veto power over the placement of their children in the
system.

Earlier generations of students with severe behavioral problems in Israel
could be moved to special classes in the school or the city at the
discretion of the system.

Today, parents can veto such initiatives and the frequently do.

As a result, a single child can continually disrupt a class.

And this problem is pervasive in the system.

It is literally as if a child armed with a hammer is smashing the
educational "product" for the entire class.

Popular solutions are doomed to failure:

Increasing the salaries of teachers won't change this.

Spending tens or hundreds of millions of shekels on either supervising or
training teachers to deal with a child who is "wired" to disrupt the class
also will not stop that child from continuing to disrupt the class.

Smaller class sizes can give the illusion of success, as shown in
school-wide or system-wide data, since the move increases the probability
that a particular classroom does not have such a problem child present. The
students in the classroom with the disrupting child remain hopeless.

The current policy is a tremendous burden on society in many ways:

The disruptive child is not provided the venue which can make the child into
a productive member of society.

The other children fail to realize their capacity to learn in the classroom
since so much of the classrom time is wasted by the disrupting child.

Parents are subject to the financial burden of hiring tutors to cover
material which otherwise would have been properly taught. This is not only a
financial burden but also a source of inequality as engaging in this
activity to compensate for the failure of the educational system requires
that parents are both aware of the problem and its solution and have the
financial capacity to try and address it.

The failure of the educational system to remove disrupting children from
regular classes deters people who could be excellent teachers from engaging
in the profession while also causing teacher burnout for those who do.
Teacher burnout dramatically increases the turnover of teachers, which means
both a waste in the resources invested in training teachers and also a
reduction in the average years of experience of the educators in the system.

To be clear: this is not to say that an individual teacher should be able to
unilaterally cause a child to be assigned to a special class over the
objections of the child's parent. There most certainly can be a procedure
for assessing a particular child which relies on a series of assessments to
ensure that, despite the objections of the parents, the child cannot
continue in a regular class.

If this is such a great idea, why hasn't there been a pilot program?

Our society is media-driven. If a child is moved to a foster home against
the will of a drugged-out alcoholic single mother who stays out all night,
the odds are good that the authorities involved in the action will find
themselves slammed on one of the popular radio programs featuring the poor
mother wailing about the terrible social worker, by name, who removed the
child from the sympathetic mother's care.

Taking away the veto power from parents would cause a media frenzy which no
politician, administrator, or anyone else involved in the system is
interested in dealing with.

A change in this policy would require leadership which is willing to "fall
on the sword" and bear the consequences of doing the right thing despite the
short-term consequences.

I say "short term" because a change in policy would have almost instant
results.

Children who are "disruptive by choice" would opt not to be disruptive,
leading to an almost instant improvement in much of the system.

Each year would see additional gains as the cumulative years of schooling
not encumbered by disruptive children increases.

#2. Automatic promotion, particularly from the first grade

Earlier generations of first graders were not promoted to the second grade
unless they successfully acquired a certain set of skills.

Today, children are promoted automatically through the system, handicapped
by the lack of critical basic skills.

The old policy of holding children back achieved two things:

Many children managed to acquire these critical skills in the second year.

Holding the child back made parents aware of a problem in a way that could
not be ignored. Parents who otherwise denied that their children had special
needs often came to their senses when they were alerted that their child was
failing to advance properly in their second year of first grade.

Changing this policy also requires bold leadership.

I sincerely hope that broad recognition of the Jewish State's nightmarish
situation will provide the opportunity for bold changes.

Now more than ever, our destiny depends on how smart and productive we are.

We simply cannot afford to continue policies which prevent us from realizing
our capacity.

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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

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Arab-Israeli relations

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