A Position Paper as the delegate representing Israel in Japan University English Model United Nation 2014.
The details of the Position Paper are as follows:
Country Assignment : Israel
Regional Bloc : Asia
Priority #2 : Improve the Quality of Learning
Committee : Learning Materials
A Position Paper as the delegate representing Israel in Japan University English Model United Nation 2014.
The details of the Position Paper are as follows:
Country Assignment : Israel
Regional Bloc : Asia
Priority #2 : Improve the Quality of Learning
Committee : Learning Materials
A Position Paper as the delegate representing Israel in Japan University English Model United Nation 2014.
The details of the Position Paper are as follows:
Country Assignment : Israel
Regional Bloc : Asia
Priority #2 : Improve the Quality of Learning
Committee : Learning Materials
Country Assignment : Israel Regional Bloc : Asia Meeting Room : #2 Priority #2 : Improve the Quality of Learning Committee : Learning Materials 1. Introduction
Israel is a country in Western Asia, which is located on the south-eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, between Egypt and Lebanon. It has around 8 million population which ethnic consist of almost 75% Jewish and 20% Arab (Central Intelligence Agency, 2014). The World Happiness Report 2013 published by United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network revealed that Israeli live in a happy and sufficient condition. Israel is listed on rank 11 th , with 7.301 point, out of 156 countries, while United States is on rank 17 th and Japan is on number 43 (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2013). Related to education, about 5.6% of Israels Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is used for educational purposes on 2011, which is around 13.6 billion USD from total 242.9 billion USD, and approximately 97.1% of its total population is literate, which is the highest among the Middle East countries (Central Intelligence Agency, 2014). In 2012, Israel was named the second most educated country in the world according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Education at a Glance report. The report found that 78% of the money invested in education is from public funds and 45% of the population has a university or college degree (Haaretz, 2012). Education in Israel is believed as a precious legacy which contains a lot of values from tradition of the past generations. The main purpose of the countrys educational system is to prepare children to become responsible members of a democratic and pluralistic society in which people from different ethnic, religious, cultural and political backgrounds coexist (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010). In order to achieve this goal, improvement and maintenance in the quality of learning especially by having sufficient number and appropriate quality of learning materials is fundamental. 2. Issue: Learning Materials
Demands of Teaching Materials Shortly after the State of Israel was founded on 1948, the education system has faced the enormous challenge of integrating large numbers of immigrant children from over 70 countries. The mass immigration which was started from the beginning of 1950s, mainly from postwar Europe, Arab countries, and was succeeded in the 1960s by a large influx of Jews from North Africa. Since 1970s to 1990s, a large number of Jews from former Soviet Union and almost the entire Jewish community of Ethiopia have also come to Israel. This huge number of migration has caused urgent demands for more classrooms, teachers, teaching materials, as well as special tools and methods to help absorb youngsters from many cultural backgrounds into the school population (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010). In order to overcome this problem, on early 1990s, the local government increased the national expenditure on education to around 10% of their GDP, roughly 5 billion USD of total 52.5 billion USD (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010). Several education policies and programs were designed specifically to meet the needs of the newcomers, including the preparation of appropriate curricular aids and short-term classes which purpose is to introduce immigrant pupils to subjects that had not been learned in their countries of origin, such as the Hebrew language and Jewish history. The Ministry of Education was also involved in an ongoing process of bringing educational standards in line with modern pedagogic practices, such as mandating gender equality, upgrading teacher status, broadening humanistic curricula, and promoting scientific and technological studies. Regarding to the improvement of learning materials, the Ministry of Education also developed curricula and textbooks, and producing programs for educational television. These programs were implemented gradually, beginning in the 1991-1992 school year (Sprinzak, Segev, Bar, & Levi-Mazloum, 1996). Viewing that education is important for the development of the nation, Israel has increased their expenditure for education from 5 billion USD to more than 13 billion USD in twenty years (1990-2011) (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010). Moreover, since 2007, Israel's Compulsory Education Law has also provided free and compulsory education for all children between the ages of 5 to 18, started from the last year of kindergarten up to 12 th grade of secondary education, which was previously applied to pupils only until 10 th grade (Kashti, 2007). In short, Israel have fulfilled the demands of learning materials quantitatively and currently improving the quality of the content of books or curriculum and advancing the media and technology used.
Textbooks In 2012, according to the Israeli Books Laws, the National Library of Israel registered at least 8,176 new publications, including 7,487 books, 273 CDs and around 3,500 periodicals (newspapers, local bulletins, journals, and weekly portion flyers) (The National Library of Israel, 2012). The number of new publication published is about 1,300 more than in 2011. For comparison, in 2011 the National Library listed 6,876 new publications. 6,302 of these were books of various kinds: government publications, commercial and private publications, research studies, non-fiction, fiction, religious texts and children's books in various languages, genres and styles. The number of books for children and youth has also increased from 660 in 2011 to 836 new books in 2012 (not counting 305 new textbooks), which by extend, about 11% of the total number of new books in 2012 (The National Library of Israel, 2012). Although, the number of textbook risen steadily over the past 5 years, there are still some issues, mostly about racism, contents error, and censored contents issue, found from local textbook.
Racism in Textbook An Israeli professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, in her book titled Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education published in United Kingdom on June 2012, described that numerous textbooks in Israel promote a negative image of Arabs and thereby categorized as a racism. With academic analysis supported by examples, images, maps, use of language and illustrations, Professor Peled-Elhanan, in her book, gives a whole new meaning to complaints about "teaching children to hate" in the Middle East (Peled-Elhanan, 2012). Every year, there are a lot of Israels young men and women are recruited into obligatory military service and are required to engage directly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Professor Peled-Elhanan mainly asked and questioned, how does Israels education system prepare and shape its young people to view, think and act regarding that conflict. Similar thought also proposed before by Dan Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University who studied 124 textbooks used in Israeli schools. In his 2004 article titled "The Arab Image in Hebrew School Textbooks", he also concluded that generations of Israeli Jews have been taught a negative and often delegitimizing view of Arabs at school. He claimed Arabs are portrayed in these textbooks as primitive, inferior in comparison to Jews, violent, untrustworthy, fanatic, treacherous and aggressive. While history books in the elementary schools hardly mentioned Arabs, the high school textbooks that covered the ArabJewish conflict, stereotyped Arabs negatively, as intransigent and uncompromising (Traubman, 2004). The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, now known as the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, a schoolbook monitoring organization, disputed this finding, calling their claim heavily politicized and distorted. The organization criticized Peled-Elhanan's paper, "The Presentation of Palestinians in Israeli Schoolbooks of History and Geography 1998-2003", which was based on seven schoolbooks, for being "highly selective in its use of source material, leaving out all references which contradict to the thesis," "a deliberate misinterpretation of facts" and "inaccurate, distorted, and even downright based on false evidence (Groiss, 2006)." The organization also said that there are no indoctrination against the Arabs as a nation, nor a negative presentation of Islam. Islam, Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to human civilization were presented in a positive manner. No book called for violence or war and many books express the yearning for peace between Israel and the Arab countries.
Content Error in Arabic Textbooks On the other hand, an examination of many textbooks used in Arab schools reveals concerning information about mistakes in language, syntax and grammar. Based on a comprehensive study of the language and contents in third grade through ninth grade textbooks by the Arab Cultural Association, it emerges that there are at least 16,255 mistakes, including 7,532 mistakes in math books, 3,939 mistakes in geography and history, and hundreds in Arabic language (Khoury, 2011). Researchers also spoke about the contents of the textbooks and the way they deal with Arab students' cultural and national identities. For example, it is stated that Jews and non-Jews live in the Galilee but the word "Arab" is never mentioned. Answering these complaints, the Education Ministry said the Arab education division and the textbook approval division at the ministry would further examine all the reported textbooks intended for the Arab sector (Khoury, 2011). They also noted that all textbooks approved for the sector had undergone a professional pedagogic assessment but they had not been checked for language under the ministry's auspices. Similar problems of more than 4,000 mistakes in language and syntax actually have been reported before in November 2009, however, the association said that the ministry only disqualified the books without introducing any systematic changes to them, and did not bother to re-examine the books intended for the other grades (Khoury, 2011). A new procedure of author certification regarding the precision of language used in the book has been sent to all of the books' authors and therefore hopefully will reduce the contents mistake from the next published textbooks.
Censored Human Reproduction Chapter in Biology Textbooks In 2012, the Education Ministry has asked textbook publishers to remove chapters related to human reproduction, pregnancy prevention and sexually transmitted diseases from science textbooks which are used in state religious junior high schools as well as from their teacher manuals (Datte & Skop, 2013). Chapters on human reproduction dont accord with state religious school systems educational doctrine for junior high schools, says Education Ministry. This change also will be the first distinction of science textbooks used in religious and secular schools. Furthermore, removing the chapter on reproduction means that the religious students will not learn anything about reproduction scientifically, unless they take biology in high school. Every major textbook publisher in Israel confirmed the details of this report. Chairwoman of Meretz Zahava Gal-On said in response to the report that the ministry's decision "to censor 'damaging' topics from the curriculum in state-religious schools, such as the human reproductive system or references to the female body, is not only ridiculous, but also worrying." "More than 200,000 children today are in the state-religious education system, which is 200,000 future citizens of the State of Israel who will grow up with ignorance and with the sense that the human body, or to be more specific, the body of the woman, is something dirty," she said. Gal-On added that the education minister and everyone behind the 'terrible' decision should understand that there is nothing embarrassing or damaging in descriptions of ovaries, "but that the education system is something very shameful." (Datte & Skop, 2013)
Educational Television Educational Television (ETV), a unit of the Ministry of Education that was established on 1965, produces and broadcasts scholastic programs for use in school classrooms and educational programs for the entire population (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010). The project of teaching the new immigrants and the whole nations through television program was actually initiated by agreement and support from UNESCO (Cassirer & Duckmanton, 1961). At the very beginning, several programs were planned mostly about language, religion, economic and health education. Besides, there were also programs like civic education, culture, news and international knowledge to widen the Israeli comprehension and nationalism spirit. They currently broadcasts around 215 hours of programs every week and collaborates with education professionals at universities and teachers seminars in developing new teaching methods. In the end of 2013, the channel rebranded as The Educational Channel, and now focuses on their new children and educational programming schedule from 5 AM Israel Time, as well as adult educational schedule from 8 PM Israel Time. In addition, the channel also has recently started to upload its shows to their official YouTube channel before they broadcast on TV. Dedicated to providing lifetime learning, ETV gears its production to people of all ages through enrichment programs for preschoolers, entertainment programs for youth, educational courses for adults, and news broadcasts for all. 3. Conclusion
In summary, Israel is one of the most powerful educated country in the world showed by the fact that 45% of its population has a university or college degree. Approximately 97.1% of its total population is literate, and these achievements are a long term effort that has been initiated long time back after the state was founded. Several problems, such as the high demands of learning materials due to large number of immigrants came, are able to be solved by effective money management and systematic policies. The number of books including textbooks are increasing and sufficient enough, yet there are still several problems with the contents. Alternative way of learning materials are also invented, for example, the very well-known educational television channel which able to widen the local people knowledge despite of their age. Israeli government, especially the Ministry of Education, has done a very effective and efficient decision to develop and increase the quality of national education year by year. They are not only tried to study the issues and problems found regarding the learning materials, but also doing several cooperation with both international organization such as UNESCO and local universities and professors. Critics and opinion from every elements are listened and considered as a feedback that could improve the on-going system. References
Cassirer, H. R., & Duckmanton, T. S. (1961). Educational Television in Israel: Report of a UNESCO Mission. Jerusalem: UNESCO. Central Intelligence Agency. (2014, May 29). Israel. Retrieved from The World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html Datte, L., & Skop, Y. (2013, September 3). Religious Israeli schools censoring human reproduction from textbooks. Retrieved from Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.545015 Groiss, A. (2006). Comments on Nurit Peled-Elhanans paper: The Presentation of Palestinians in Israeli Schoolbooks of History and Geography 1998-2003 . Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace . Haaretz. (2012, February 1). Israel ranked second most educated country in the world, study shows. Retrieved from Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-ranked- second-most-educated-country-in-the-world-study-shows-1.410415 Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2013). World Happiness Report 2013. New York: United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2010). About Israel - Education. Retrieved from Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Education/Pages/Education.aspx Kashti, O. (2007, December 25). Knesset extends Compulsory Education Law to 12th grade. Retrieved from Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/news/knesset-extends-compulsory- education-law-to-12th-grade-1.235897 Khoury, J. (2011, May 9). Israel's textbooks in Arabic are full of mistakes, study finds. Retrieved from Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-s-textbooks-in-arabic- are-full-of-mistakes-study-finds-1.360617 Peled-Elhanan, N. (2012). Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. London: Tauris Academic Studies. Sprinzak, D., Segev, Y., Bar, E., & Levi-Mazloum, D. (1996). Facts and Figures about Education in Israel. Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Education. The National Library of Israel. (2012). Statistics for 2012. Retrieved from The National Library of Israel: http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/library/depositing/statistics/Pages/lgd- statistics_eng-2012.aspx Traubman, L. (2004, February 6). Reports on Palestinian kids hatred grossly exaggerated. Retrieved from Jweekly.com: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/21668/reports-on- palestinian-kids-hatred-grossly-exaggerated/