[etni] Schoolhouse blues: No vision, no supervision

Schoolhouse blues: No vision, no supervision
Haaretz - August 24, 2007
"In another year or two I'll take early retirement. It won't be because of burnout, or because I've lost interest in the students. On the contrary. I will retire because I won't be able to look myself in the mirror any longer. I cannot continue living in a system that has forgotten that education also refers to values, not just to quantifiable achievements; that we are supposed to try to fix the world and not acquiesce to reality. This gap, which has increasingly grown in recent years, is what will break me."
Naomi (not her real name), an elementary school principal in the Dan region, pauses to consider the significance of her words. Her school belongs to the Israeli "mainstream": a state school, a student body around 500, middle class. With 15 years under her belt as a principal and another 20 as a teacher, she says: "There is almost no room left for optimism. The strength to carry on can be drawn only from internal motivation. Working in the school system has become a very lonely job."
The picture she outlines - bits from a reality of overcrowded classrooms and cutbacks in instruction hours, meddling by parents and semi-private bodies - contrasts starkly with the one depicted by Education Ministry heads. The gap is so great that at times it seems like one is dealing with alternate universes. This is also why she agreed to be interviewed under a pseudonym. She's got another year or two until retirement. 

(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.etni.org/news/schoolhouse_blues.htm  )


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