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Hundreds of thousands of Israeli children from the social periphery attend overcrowded and underfunded state schools, while the Israeli middle class takes care of itself through democratic schools.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli children from the social periphery attend overcrowded and underfunded state schools, while the Israeli middle class takes care of itself through democratic schools.

Firstly, it is crucial to mention the facilitators and speakers at the conference as the confusion begins already here. Amongst prominent businesspersons at the conference were Dov Lautman, Nir Bareket and Shlomo Dovrat, the latter two directly connected to the processes of privatizing public education. Nir Bareket initiated projects of school community involvement in Jerusalem, and in the past pushed for the opening of registration areas and school autonomy in the city. Shlomo Dovrat is the same Dovrat of the infamous report, who proposed to the previous government the wholesale privatization of the public education system in Israel. It is important to recall that although this report was cancelled by the current government, it is alive and kicking in other forms and formats. All existing plans of today are more or less Dovrat, i.e. all of them are founded on principles of privatization.  

Also participating at the conference was Mirav Arlozorov, a journalist with The Marker, who facilitated a panel featuring all invited guests. Two relatively well known American scholars further participated in the conference, and spoke about small schools as a part of educational initiatives. And of course, in addition to Minister of Education Yuli Tamir, two business people involved in privation of education attended: Eli Alluf from the Rashi Foundation and Yaakov Hecht from the Democratic Institute.

A rather strange mix of people. What is unclear to the general public is why the city of Bat Yam was selected to host the conference. Bat Yam Mayor Lechiani is perceived as one of the most important promoters ever of education in the city. What do Hecht and all the businesspeople, what to mention the concept of small schools, have to do with anything?

To make things clearer, we will begin with history. Three years ago, the Democratic Institute of Yaakov Hecht began to implement a very interesting project in Bat Yam, made possible by the Rashi Foundation of Eli Alluf. The project was intended to provide tools to middle school educators to create more humanistic surroundings for the children, on the basis of providing motivation in all areas of life and not only in the cognitive field. For example, if the child wants to excel at surfing, the educator will strengthen him in this. According to the democratic (but not only) theory, support for the child so that s/he will reach excellence, in any field, results in an increase in motivation in the areas of theoretical knowledge, including math, reading and writing.

Beyond the argument over the capacity of projection from one field to another, there is no doubt that levels of success must be examined objectively: did the children participating in the project improve their academic achievements? Were those children at risk of dropping out now out of danger? How many children who participated in the project are likely to successfully complete their high school studies with full matriculation? How many are not? Amongst all this optimism, I have numerous doubts. If the public education system does not result in success in academic studies, all of the ‘tricks’ done on the way mean nothing. There is no doubt that such a project can assist children in developing positive self image in various areas, but this doesn’t necessarily mean anything in relation to the studies themselves.

However, it is the way in which this project was built that is the problem, not the project’s content per se.

As the Rashi Foundation, which funds the project, is involved for a period of only three years, a need is created to search for alternative investors. If an alternative funder is not located, the project is liable to go down the drain.

Yaakov Hecht, who is busy building democratic schools throughout Israel as an alternative to the existing public education system, supports privatization as it would allow him to build schools outside of those existing in the public system. A majority of the democratic schools are meant to serve the interests of the middle class, increasingly frustrated with the chaos reigning in the existing public system. Hecht provides a solution: a small school and democratic communication between teachers, parents and children. Many people are attracted to this type of education as it appears more humanistic to them. However, in practice this actually further weakens the public education system that is being attacked from all directions. Hecht is now considered a “shark” in the education market, primarily as he does not pose a threat to anyone. There is no threatening social-political statement from democratic education. Apart from his involvement in the Bat Yam conference, he is not involved in the formal education system. He raises funds from donors and the parents – there is no threat here. Hundreds of thousands of children from the social periphery will continue to attend schools hit hard by budget cuts, schools in which the overcrowding is horrific, the lack of development budget is known throughout the system, and in which teachers have lost all hope in bringing change. In the meantime the democratic schools will continue to flourish, to bring a cure for middle class families, and the children of the poor will look on them from afar and feel jealous.

The Rashi Foundation, from its perspective, functions as the second Ministry of Education. It donates money and is assisted by the matching funds it receives from the state. The foundation is not obligated to be accountable to anyone, it selects for itself the projects in accordance with mysterious criteria that no one understands outside of the logic of charity. And after three years of support by the Rashi Foundation, a sort of start-up, it adopts the known “now get by on your own” logic, which destroys any possibility of continuity; the weaker the education framework or project, the less the possibility to raise funds for its continuation, and this is the reason why many projects begin and after three years are closed. 

The Ministries of Education and Finance support initiatives such as these. This allows them to repeat endlessly that despite the budgetary cuts, “there are projects”! The project has become a substitute for permanent budgets and a means for covering deficits. There always were and will be budget cuts, and all the projects together are insufficient to cover the deficit. The reason for this is simple: there are not enough foundations and millionaires in the world who can cover the accumulative deficits due to cutbacks in the Ministry of Education budgets, what to mention an upgrading the education system. If we were to determine a zero point, we can say that relative to the Ministry budgets ten years ago, we are today at minus 35%; all of the donors together do not represent more than 5%. As long as this minus continues to grow, the percentage of support from all the foundations and donations will decrease.

From here comes the logic of support for three years. If the Rashi Foundation would provide ongoing support to a project, it would have insufficient funds for all the projects it supports. But why would the foundation provide long-term support for fewer projects when it can sell itself as the number one funder of education with a large number of projects? The political power of the Rashi Foundation derives from its ability to move its capital in every direction on the basis of three year investments. It should be noted that although it declares itself as the funder, it is never the sole funder. Municipalities, government offices and others contribute matching funds. For example, the Bat Yam Municipality provided money of its own to the Democratic Institute, and in parallel the Ministry of Education also donated. However, the Rashi Foundation will be the knight of donations, and why? Because that is the logic of privatization. Private capital is worth more, in its symbolic meaning, than the money to which children are already eligible to receive from the local municipality and the Ministry of Education.

In other words, the conference was intended to encourage additional donors to the project of Hecht.

So why did the two American scholars appear at the conference? There are two reasons, and the first is the obvious that if you want to dub a conference as international, you must invite Americans. There is no real intention to learn something from them. Of course Hecht can say that he agrees schools should be small, as all of the democratic schools are small. However, it can be assumed that this is not the intention of the American guests, who perceive themselves as continuing on the path, in one way or another, of Professor Syzer, one of the greatest American educators of the last generation, who built small schools for children who openly dropped out from the American public education system. I do not know if the guests deal with this same type of population. However, what is clear is that no one at the conference intends to divide the huge high schools of Bat Yam into smaller schools, nor does the Ministry of Education intend to do this anywhere else in Israel. Such moves would require fantasy budgets in this era of cutbacks to the very essentials.

The businesspeople, strong supporters of the privatization of everything, have no doubt that this should be supported as the main panel of the conference was entitled “Contribution of the Culture of Entrepreneurship to Educational Success: Is its Existence Facilitated?” Simply, what this sentence, coded in business-speak, says is: why weren’t Dovrat and his friends allowed to completely privatize the educational system? Why is he being bothered, and who is getting in the way?

Those getting in the way of privatization, in the meantime, are the teachers. In a partial, imperfect and unimaginative way, but the teachers are still getting in the way. The political, economic and media systems surrendered long ago.

And finally, to Bat Yam Mayor Lechiani, what is he looking for? Lechiani, another strong supporter of privatization and the Dovrat Report, announced not long ago that he would like to separate from the Ministry of Education and build an autonomous education system in his city. What he does not say is that this would result in long-term damage to education in his city. It is sufficient that another mayor be elected, one for whom education is not so important, in order to return the little accomplished in the city back in time. Education cannot simply be a city matter, as each city will independently select its path with no regard for vision, social change and the provision of equal education for all children.

So my sole recommendation is that if you come across additional conferences of this sort, beware: they are trying to hide from us something ugly.