The quality of education in Israel declines every year. Parents and teachers have lost their authority- and kids have lost their respect for parents and teachers. Israel stands no chance of facing up to the challenges of the future unless we can reverse the trend.
Headlines such as these scream at us on an almost daily basis. Luckily Israelis are used to hearing all sorts of threatening and depressing news items. ..and then forget them.
400 years ago many civilized peoples accepted the notion of the divine rights of kings. The idea was that kings had absolute power and authority over his subjects. It was a religious sin to resist since a king was answerable only to God. Similarly a husband had virtually absolute authority over his wife, parents had absolute authority over their children, and teachers over their pupils. This theory was reinforced by the wording of the Biblical commandment to honour parents. Many traditional societies go further. The Christian apostle Paul is quoted as saying “Children, obey your parents.” In many parts of the world it is still accepted for parents to choose their children’s spouses or their children’s occupations, and children automatically defer to their parents’ wishes in many matters.
However, to the extent that these practices were supposedly based on the Fifth Commandment, Jewish belief and practice is in fact very different. Yes, Jews and non-Jews alike are enjoined to honour their parents but the obligation is defined and limited. According to R. Moshe Isserles, for example, a son is not obliged to listen to his father if the father objects to the son’s choice of a wife. And on the positive side a child’s duty to honour his parents is generally limited to matters concerning the parent’s welfare.
Judaism considers that the duty to show honour, reverence and respect for one’s parents, even after their death, is but one part of required behavior in the family environment. Some commentators explain that this Fifth Commandment is deliberately sandwiched in between the obligations towards God and those towards one’s fellow human beings.
On the other hand, in the famous quotation from Talmud (Kidushin 29a) a father is required to teach his son Torah, to help him find a wife, to teach him a craft and instruct him how to get on in life. And the Talmud goes on to say that if a father does not teach his son a trade then it is as if he taught him to be a bandit! Parents then are obliged to do their very best to help shape the child’s moral and physical welfare.
So in Judaism the family is a unit where all members have interlocking duties and obligations. Love is not mentioned in Talmud Kidushin. However in Talmud Sota 49a it says that a father’s love is directed towards his children, and that of the children is directed to their children. One cannot assume that parental love will be automatically be returned by a child. The Talmud therefore teaches us that honour and respect is the maximum reward which should be expected in return for parental love.
And how does this connect with the quality of education? The problem is that the world has been changing continuously for the past 5,000 years and so the challenges faced by a parent in educating his children are never the same as those faced by his own parents. It is often said that an army is trained to fight the last war because it cannot predict the next one. The same is inevitably the case with parents and many educators also. The physical, social, economic and technological changes which have occurred in our own generation have undoubtedly been greater than during any preceding generation. It is difficult enough to comprehend the changes, let alone teach a new generation how to cope with them.
Beyond this, if the western world once considered respect for one’s elders as one of the greatest virtues, today this is certainly not the case. German philosopher Immanuel Kant “started the rot” in the 18th century when he insisted that respect for oneself is no less important than respect for others. He argued that to respect someone requires the conviction that their value is absolute and irrespective their usefulness. Today, largely on account of the internet, children are taught to search out the truth for themselves, by themselves, to express their opinions and certainly not to respect teachers and elders as if they possessed absolute values. It is a revolutionary and unsettling change.
It is a challenge which can defeat almost any but the wisest of teachers and parents. And it can defeat the traditional systems of measuring academic achievement. It is, I think, no longer possible to be certain that traditional scholastic milestones or behavioral patterns tell us what we would like to know about the progress of our children. It is too early to condemn their performance. Maybe we have to love and honour our kids a little more so we can learn a little better how to judge them. And maybe we should be careful before condemning the achievements of our educational system.
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