Molly Aden, former senior vice president at Intel, in the panel held as part of the Hafis Forum for Education
"If we don't change the education system from the ground up, we will have hundreds of thousands of unemployed," said Molly Aden, former CEO of Intel Israel and Senior Vice President of Intel Global at a panel held as part of the Education Lottery Forum.
"The term startup nation is a double-edged sword. We are reaping the fruits of seeds sown 30 years ago and it makes people complacent. There are many negative indicators that show that for many years the level of science and technology studies has deteriorated. For twenty years, the field of studies related to high-tech was neglected. We must double the number of graduates of five units in mathematics and science, and for this purpose the five times two program was established. But we also need to raise everyone's level", said Aden.
"The world is advancing at an incredible technological pace and therefore we must prepare the children for a world where all professions will be high-tech, if only because the professions that exist today will disappear from the world. There will be no need for insurance agents if everything is done through the computer, and the cashier at the supermarket will also be redundant because you can do it yourself with the help of technology, and of course there is talk of the cars driving themselves and maybe that way there will be far fewer traffic accidents. If we don't prepare the students for this reality - we will have hundreds of thousands of unemployed and we will have to outsource the high-tech professions to other countries", warned Aden.
According to him, improving the education system could lead to the solution of the three main problems of the economy - economy, security and social gap. Therefore, a national initiative is required that includes the Ministry of Education and the schools, but also the surrounding circle - the foundations (the Trump Foundation, the Rashi Foundation and others who are partners in the five times two project: "If a breach similar to the one that exists in the education system would have happened safely, everyone would have been alarmed a long time ago. A decrease in the absolute number of outstanding students is a disaster. Here, several governments have let things pass and have done nothing," added Aden, who complimented the current Minister of Education Naftali Bennett and said that to the credit of the Ministry of Education, we are already seeing a change: there are positive trends that they have invested a lot of work in."
The CEO of the Amal network, Royat Dom, said that the crisis has been recognized in the network for a long time: "Most of the schools of the Amal network are located in the periphery. Today we teach the highest trends - robotics, software engineering. I believe that a real change must be made in the education system. If you check the situation in the elementary schools, you understand the source of the shortage of graduates of five units in mathematics. We need to take the students to the industry, to the job market. The voluntary bodies and companies do a lot of things, such as the five times two project and other programs, but this is not enough, government budgets are also required. There should be a national statement, a statement by the government that it takes things more seriously, and it should be done with the cooperation of teachers and academics."
Dom described the teaching method used today in the network's schools. "We have whole schools that learn from iPads, but they don't replace the teacher and principal, but use them in a way that interests the students, that the students are partners, they write the papers, they can share with students in other schools. We believe in open spaces, not coaches in 19th century schools. You see the gaps between our schools and the blackboard and chalk, we opened the schools to modern spaces, we opened the classroom boundaries. We turned the children into Stratafists. They develop, think outside the box. Information can be obtained today on an iPad. The world is flat, all the knowledge and information is already there. The child needs to be taught to take the information and process it. The teacher cannot be used as a conduit for the transmission of knowledge. It should be creative, interesting, the children should be involved in the study material. That's why we entered into cooperation with the Technion and industry. The children are connected to Intel, IBM and Apple, they learn what is happening in the industry and the needs of the labor market, they are taught to produce products with high value."
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Response to Tal:
I really didn't like the content of the quoted things. Tal Kenan's analysis is very superficial in my opinion, it is flawed at the level of the heart and contains distorted claims and shaky conclusions. I don't buy either the thesis or the approach. If you want, I will elaborate a little more.
To Tal, and the other readers of the site
What is said in your quote is very true. In addition to this, the lack of encouragement of the students in Israel to study scientific careers stems from their parents (who tell them to be "like everyone else", their teachers (who tell them that it is "too much for them"), and the culture to which they are exposed (who tell them that they will become millionaires for nothing and start their own company or better yet to leave school and start singing). This phenomenon is quite common, that is, a fairly significant part of the population (I don't know which one, but significant enough that it's not worth turning a blind eye, because I see it quite a lot). In this way, the students strive for mediocrity.
Now I asked: Do the additional factors I mentioned above affect Jewish families in the US on the same scale as Jewish families in Israel? less? More?
In my opinion, these additional factors are quite an important factor, and you should stop and think a bit before jumping to an easy conclusion: unequal opportunities.
Dew
So, what does he say? That those born in Israel have fewer opportunities than those born in the USA? The opportunity gap in the US is much bigger than the gap in Israel.
I didn't learn anything from your quote, I'm sorry.
I would like to bring you a quote from an interview at The Marker with the American-Israeli investment manager Tal Keenan, which I think summarizes our problem in Israel, the problem is not only in education, there are more significant factors. Here is the quote:
""Israel has created a mediocre Judaism. Genetically we are no different from American Jewry, but in terms of the result - educational achievements, national (Jewish) product per capita, command of languages and understanding of the world - we don't even come close to it. The national product per capita in Israel is 37-39 thousand dollars per year. This is similar to the European average. Jews have never been proud of being part of the average. We don't notice that the national product per capita of an American Jew is 110-120 thousand dollars. So it is true, the American Jew does not serve in the army, he lives in an open environment and does not have a war on his doorstep, and the difference in the national product per capita between Israel and the USA is partly due to the fact that we pay a price for mediocrity and lack of peace. Perhaps this is a reason worth adding to the fact that it is worth striving for and taking risks for peace. Many times when we determine a position regarding peace, we do not take into account the price we pay in terms of life.
"In Israel and also in the Jewish world, they like to look at Israeli high-tech as a diamond that represents the Israeli economy. I agree that it is a diamond, but only 200 thousand people live this diamond. What happens to the other eight million? And here I come to the matter of the gaps in Israeli society. I am less bothered by the gap between rich and poor. In every society there are rich and poor. What bothers me is the gaps in opportunities. If you were born in Tel Aviv to an established family, you have a completely different set of opportunities than someone born in Kiryat Shmona to the 'wrong' family."
Ofer, you are absolutely right. In my opinion, we should also add the fact that in Israel large parts of the population earn a lot and on the other hand do not pay taxes, they provide an unfortunate example to many who think that a modern state can be maintained here in the Middle East which threatens in an inclusive way.
We seem to be in for a strange future of more brilliant scientists, machines that do everything, craftsmen of various kinds, and lots of people who can do none of these and have no way to contribute more to society other than being the crowd.
Tomer,
You are wrong and huge. First of all, it's funny that you eliminated the study of mathematics like this beyond being a tool to calculate how much excess you should get or which structure of a bridge is more stable. Just for your information, I will mention that the human race has been studying mathematics per se for more years than it has been studying the structure of matter, the properties of light and, in general, most of the nature that surrounds us.
Even if we narrow our view to mathematics as a tool, it has basic principles that are more or less common to every field. Whether you want to be a psychologist, engineer, accountant or doctor - you will need to know what a derivative is. Let's be honest - it's not like high school teaches you advanced tools that will only be effective if you go explore black holes. Even in five units it is about the base of the base of the base.
Your approach, where the child knows best what is right for him, is ridiculously wrong. First, factually: a child does not always know what is good for him. If you let the child decide for himself what to eat, there is a 95% chance that you will get a child who will eat every meal with bamba and chocolate with a glass of cola or grape juice. How many of these kids will win Olympic medals when they grow up in your opinion? If you let the child decide whether it is appropriate for him to brush his teeth and shower every day, you will find that the vast majority of them will not be very interested in it. Do you think the best thing we can do for our children's health is to raise them dirty and with rotten teeth?
In addition, children need stimulation. A lot of kids won't know what they like if they don't try it. I can give myself as an example: I and all my friends were quite unruly children. We needed to be shown the beauty of math, science, etc. to understand that it interests us, and today we are all academics and successful entrepreneurs. But as a pushover kid who got into trouble every day, I had no idea how much beauty I would find in science if I just bothered to learn it.
And last but not least, the world is changing as you mentioned. But the change is not "hey, now we are all free and non-conformist and everyone is a free soul". The change is mainly that we are flooded with hysterical amounts of stimuli. You are welcome to go to Google and ask him about attention disorders. Today's children need guidance more than ever, because they can spend their lives with delusions of "I'm going to invent the next Facebook". This thing works for one hundred percent of the population, and the rest will find out at the age of 35 that they are not going to become millionaires from nothing, that they have no skills and no education and have nothing to do or contribute.
No one is trying to force every child to grow up to be a mathematician. The idea is just to bring us to a standard in developed countries, where parts (note, not all, parts) of the population develop the necessary tools at high school age to engage in scientific and technological professions as an adult. Since our world is such that today the scientific and technological professions occupy a larger part of industry and society than cobblers and porters (whose dignity is in their place), the share of the population that is eligible to be part of the scientific/technological front should increase accordingly. In most of the world this is what happens. With us - for some reason - it is small.
Nothing will help, we are raising a nation of people who lag behind the world. Something needs to be done about it.
A great deal of energy has recently been invested in trying to convince and push people to study for a matriculation of 5 units in mathematics.
There is a feeling of panic in the matter, because of the decrease in the number of learners.
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Mathematics is a tool. It should not be a goal in itself.
If a person's spirit brings him to the study of geography, or dance, or biology, each of these requires a different mathematics.
Trying to teach everyone the same math is no longer compatible with the times, when people start to listen less to what they are told and follow their own desires more.
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You should trust today's children to learn what it takes to achieve their goals.
It is better to support them and less to try to tell them what is right for them.
It doesn't work anyway so it's a waste of energy 🙂
He is not wrong. In modern society if it gets there, since it may return to the Middle Ages due to the migration of peoples and because it has reached the wall, the safest solution is the most dangerous. An employee who tries to reach retirement will be highly educated and poor.
The company should be of self-employed entrepreneurs. On the other hand, it is not clear to me how we will all become entrepreneurs.
In addition - I heard that Saudi Arabia invests 59 billion dollars in education. This is 4 times Israel's defense budget. I may be wrong. The formations were still turned upside down and the Gulf countries invest more than Israel in education. You can see the drop in the world university ranking. In addition, there is absolutely no place in our culture for the humanities academy and it is being cut. If we take a country that has done us bad like Germany, where the approach to the citizen is that the country benefits from investing in him.
Molly Aden is a man with many rights, but his roots are not in education, so he has difficulty locating the real problem. Not in the guilty education system (although there is always room for improvement and correction) but in the culture in which the children grow. It is increasingly becoming a culture of donism, decadent dungeons and superficiality, of greed for money and lack of values, of gross momentary pleasure. In this situation, even the smart and talented among the children grow to be adults lacking depth and narrow-minded. It is also appropriate to say that hi-tech does not predict everything, and woe betide us if we lose the versatility that is so essential for mutual fertilization and mutual enrichment. In summary: culture and values.