Suppose private education were banned tomorrow. What would happen next? That question is not entirely academic. Progressives hate private education with all their might and they would absolutely move to crush it if they had the resources.
Here in Israel, there is essentially no system of private education. At the primary and secondary level, there are a few schools that aren’t run by the state, but they’re so marginal that they have no effect on society. Instead, there are several basically separate state school systems for different “sectors” – namely, a secular school system, a religious school system, and a separate school system for Arabic-speakers. Haredi children typically go to schools that have some level of government involvement, but I don’t count them in this because their schools are primarily for religious training and they notoriously don’t learn subjects like mathematics.
At the higher level, the state has identified a handful of institutions that it recognizes as “universities.” There is also a much bigger network of “colleges” that are usually run by municipalities. There is one private university in Israel (it’s considered a “college” because the government doesn’t call it a “university”): the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.
For all intents and purposes, there is a wall-to-wall consensus in Israel opposing the disintegration of public education into a mixed public-private system like America has. Even the national-religious community, which suffers the most under public education because religious parents see their children indoctrinated with evil foreign values, is unable to conceive of any alternative to total state control of education.
Here’s a recent short article from Arutz 7:
(IsraelNN.com) A report released Wednesday by the Adva Center for Equality and Social Justice in Israel has accused wealthy Israelis of creating, within the public school system, a separate education system “rich only” children, in which the activities of the schools are largely financed by parents. By parents donating money directly into the school, a natural selection has been created between children whose parents have money and those who do not.
The report claims that the state contributed to this situation by allowing the schools to accept the funds, by failing to enforce integration in junior high schools between strong and weak social classes, by opening registration areas, by encouraging private enterprises in the schools and by not imposing sanctions on schools which do not teach the required subjects. The result, according to the report, is that students in each school essentially study a different curriculum, which has a serious impact on their level of achievement. The curriculum is largely determined by those who invest money into the institutions.
How wrong is it that parents have moved to secure a better education for their children? Education is a service, just like any other service, and it’s subject to the same economic laws of supply and demand. These parents desired a better product for their children than the state is able to provide. So, while still paying for the state’s poor product, they put their own money into improving it and getting a better education for their children. In doing so, they in no way harmed anybody else’s education; on the contrary, children whose parents don’t contribute are probably helped inadvertently when some parents donate to improve their children’s schools.
If this were me, I’d proudly be guilty as charged of having created a separate education system. And I hope those parents continue to do what they are doing. Equality does not work and it is a false and immoral goal.
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So everyone in Israel goes through public education, and every citizen has to do some sort of national service, do I understand correctly?
What effect do you think this has on Israelis as a whole, regarding how they view the role of the State? For example, how common is libertarianism in Israel compared to America? Is the ‘ground’ for such a worldview simply less fertile there, because of the larger role of the State?
So everyone in Israel goes through public education, and every citizen has to do some sort of national service, do I understand correctly?
In theory. But realistically, there’s a large underclass of Haredim whose schools teach them very little of what we would consider “education.” Military service is formally mandatory, but pretty much anyone can avoid it by getting declared unfit in one way or another. Haredim get exempted for their yeshiva study. Muslims aren’t called to be drafted at all. They do publish statistics every year about what percent of the draft-age population actually serves, but I can’t remember them now from last year. I’d guess it’s around 50%. Note also that anyone who doesn’t serve in the military is exempt, period. Many people choose to do national service, like virtually all religious girls (not Haredi) except the few who actually serve.
What effect do you think this has on Israelis as a whole, regarding how they view the role of the State? For example, how common is libertarianism in Israel compared to America? Is the ‘ground’ for such a worldview simply less fertile there, because of the larger role of the State?
This country has no tradition of principled libertarianism like in America. There was formerly a liberal (ie, classical liberal) party within the Zionist movement (General Zionists) that split several times. The economically moderate / rule of law branch of it found its way into Likud, which is actually a merger of Menachem Begin’s Herut party (descended from the Etzel) and the Liberals, after they ran together as a bloc called Gahal. Its most well known member today is Dan Meridor. The anticlerical branch keeps popping up and then getting submerged every generation or so: Dash in the late 1970s, then Shinui in the past decade. Now it’s submerged and its supporters are voting for either Yisrael Beiteinu or Kadima.
In some ways, certain liberal ideas have been introduced to Israelis with some ease over the years because Israelis have not had a hard time accepting anticlerical liberal parties as “centrist,” as long as they don’t really go to one side on the defense / foreign policy issues. But it’s not easy to translate liberalism (again, I mean in the classical/European sense) well into this society because the founding members were socialist Russian Jews and they built this country as a southern outpost of socialist and Russian culture. Moreover, it doesn’t translate easily to the Jewish tradition because basic liberal concepts that come from Christianity, like the separation of church and state, are not important in Judaism. Consequently, most Israeli liberals tend to be the most irreligious and even anti-Jewish types, the branja, the people who basically despise their own country and wish it were situated so that BeNeLux could be relabeled BeNeLuxIs.
Is this because of the larger role of the state in Israel? Yes – Israelis are only accustomed to classifying activity into two categories: things the state mandates, and things the state prohibits. Americans are able to conceptualize the intermediate category: things that are neither prohibited nor mandated and thus are allowed. But I’d say both the large role of the state and the lack of principled libertarianism here are mainly caused by the absence of libertarian/liberal tradition.
Thanks; from a conversation I had last summer with a young Israeli immigrant to Canada, I had gotten that impression. He had just gotten out of the military, and he found our society strangely open, somehow, he indicated. Too open; he preferred the sort of social discipline that national service imposes, he said.
There’s also a certain openness to Israeli society that would shock Canadians. In Israel it’s socially acceptable to ask near-strangers how much money they make and how much they pay in rent, to offer completely unsolicited advice about sensitive topics, and generally to get up in each other’s business as if we’re really all cousins. I have told people here many times, “I’m not comfortable sharing that information,” or even, “That’s none of your business,” and been given the most confused looks.
Even in the military, the dividing line between officers and soldiers is a year or two. The officers have to take various measures – kind of like game – to create “distance” so they can maintain an air of authority. But that doesn’t stop every soldier’s mother from having her son’s officer’s cell phone number – and calling it when she doesn’t think he’s being fair with her little boy.
Oddly enough, the “How much money do you make?” question is something where Canadians and Americans differ; we’re a bit more relaxed about that up here, and the year I lived in the States, I once made a faux pas when I asked my roommate about it. Fortunate, his was gracious enough to realize I was an ignorant foreigner, and he schooled me about that.
Personally, I like the American reticence, and I feel less comfortable about divulging such information than I used to.
Wow, I never knew or noticed that about Canadians. I wonder what caused the difference between them and Americans.
I don’t know, and I find it surprisingly counter-intuitive; one would think that given our somewhat greater closeness to our British roots, that there would be MORE reticence on the part of Canadians to discuss such things. Instead, it turns out the opposite to what one would expect. Curious, indeed.
The British are not really reticent as a whole, but certain classes are. The class distinctions being totally different and much less defined in north America, any reticence comes off as individual taste rather than reflecting one’s class.
True, I think it’s more of an upper and middle class thing over there, to be more reticent, whereas the working and non-working types are likely less so.