"Import" English teachers? Same Dov-rotten thinking!

Israel to import English teachers

No doubt, but politicians and educational bureaucrats should be kept away from the educational system!

Not all that long ago, supremely confident, then Israeli Minister of Education, Limor Livnat proclaimed that the Dovrat Education Restructuring Plan was going to save Israel's education. And if you want the low-down on that, read this. Lots of money was wasted on the plan, which was unimplementable, meaning impossible to implement, besides not having any pedagogic advantages.

Now the new minister, Yuli Tamir and Education Ministry Director-General Shmuel Abuav are competing with Limor for presenting the world's worst education plan. Yuli, at least, is thinking small. She only wants to shake things up in the English Department. She thinks that "importing" teachers will solve the shortage. That's a laugh. And the best I can say about it is that, it's healthy to laugh.

There's a long history in Israel of trying to increase the number of English teachers. They've tried almost everything. One of their favorites has been to offer paid re-training courses to new immigrants to certify them as English Teachers. The percentage of graduates of these courses actually teaching five years later is very, very low. Some development areas offered "incentives" to teach there, but most teachers who tried, fled.

Israeli kids are not easy to teach, especially since the school system sticks to the "politically correct" heterogeneous classes. That means that even in subjects with vast spreads of ability and prior-knowledge, like English, a teacher can find him/herself attempting to control--forget about teaching--over 35 kids who range from fluent English to non-reader in native Hebrew. Consider that they start "learning" English in elementary school, barely three hours a week, if there's no school trip, special event, holiday etc. It's supposed to be "fun."

This continues sometimes until early high school, when finally the "false starters" are separated from the survivors. Fluency is valued over accuracy, so it's almost impossible for new English teachers to come from the system.

Yes, the English teaching population is getting older. Young people would like to do anything but. Conditions must improve along with curriculum. "Importing" teachers won't help.