Education Requires Teachers, Not Talents

The school year opened with a strike by the Secondary School Teachers' Organization. The background for the strike is the huge shortage of teachers, especially in scientific subjects, and the new idea from the Ministry of Education: to bring in "talents" - engineers or researchers without teaching certificates - who will be employed as contract workers and introduced into classrooms without any pedagogical training. Prof. Michal Zion, head of the Biology Teaching Training Program at Bar-Ilan University, writes about this:

I am not a talent and I don't want to be a talent! When I finished my doctorate in cancer research, with the best grades and a patent that was registered then and still helps cure many people today, I decided I wanted to invest in education. I got a teaching certificate and taught biology in high school for eight years. Then I specialized in science education in academia, and I influence education from there.

The education system lacks thousands of teachers and kindergarten teachers. The populist proposal of the Ministry of Education to bring in talents without teaching certificates who will work as contract workers contradicts the very idea of education as a specialization. How can we allow our future generation to be taught by those who may be experts in their field, but have no background, no pedagogical skills, and no tools to convey their expertise and educate our children? Is education not an expertise?

This proposal will not only fail to cure the ills of the education system - it will further damage the existing status of teachers. Since the talents lack teaching certificates, they will not be employed by the Ministry of Education, but as external contract workers. This means, in practice, privatization of the education system. Contract workers and the system have no commitment to each other. They can be fired at any moment, and they can also run away after a few lessons, discovering what every beginning teacher knows - standing in front of a class of students is very difficult. They also have no benefits or further education fund, and teachers' salaries are not good as it is. It further lowers the already low status of teachers and kindergarten teachers, those who have proven themselves as the backbone for children, especially in recent difficult years, during the COVID period and in war.

The solution is simple: double the teachers' salaries. Encourage good people to enter the system, who will study for a teaching certificate, undergo pedagogical training, and become experts in the field of education. Encourage constructive competition that will weed out those who are unsuitable. There are many outstanding teachers and kindergarten teachers - they will stay. More worthy and good people will come who understand how important education is. They will know how to develop various types of thinking (critical, creative, metacognitive, and more), they will know how to impart the proper value base (personal responsibility, mutual guarantee, ethics and morality, love of country and people, sustainability, and more). They will know how to prepare our children for the future, with the challenges it holds. This will happen through real action and not populism.

The author, Prof. Michal Zion from Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Education, is considered a world expert in the field of open inquiry. She heads the Center for Development and Support of Biology Laboratories in Schools, a joint project with the Science Division of the Ministry of Education, which serves as an engine for inquiry learning in biology in Israel.