Israeli parents tend to coddle their children. This may be understandable: if you don't know whether you will see your child again tonight, you will be sure not to send him off on a sour note this morning.
Objectively speaking, this response may be exaggerated or unwarranted. Perhaps more discipline would be better for the children. However, the security situation cannot be ignored.
Some families come from third-world countries in which the concept of schooling is relatively unknown. Those parents cannot act as role models for the advantages of education.
Some parents may feel a great deal of external pressure. They expect the school system to provide the children's discipline, behavior, and manners as well as their education. They are happy when the school takes over a great deal of this responsibility and ignores them.
The lack of respect for teachers may also reflect the situation in which the school is expected to act in loco parentis as well as providing the child's education.
Some parents become aggressive when asked to cooperate. Teachers are intimidated and hesitate to contact them, so children feel that they can do as they please.
Some school administrations actually feel that they should deal with these issues, and get upset or defensive when the parents discipline their children. Some parents back down and allow the school to raise the children.
Some school parents' associations are very powerful, and they dictate to the school how to act. In some cases, this may affect the role of the school in raising children.
Clearly, Israel's unique situation makes it very difficult to judge the right way for the school to act based on international considerations.
Israeli parents sometimes carry their small children's schoolbags to school. It does not occur to them that children who cannot be responsible for their own schoolbag may not be ready for school. LINK READINESS
Some parents help their children with their homework. That's good. Other parents help the children fill in the answers. They dote over their children, at the child's expense. Perhaps it would be best to remember this new maxim:
Read more about Israeli schools
Read more articles by the same author about education
Read about Israeli forums
Read about Jewish and Hebrew forums
Are you required to read this webpage for a course? Do NOT print out the article. It is copyrighted.
Your exercise for this article is as follows:
Copyright © David Grossman. World rights reserved. This article may not be printed, forwarded, reproduced, or copied in any way or in any medium without written permission from David Grossman.
