The focus of the one-day conference at the Aharon Ofri International Training Center in Jerusalem in September, 1999, was Education and Development. Experts in various aspects of education - formal and informal - addressed men and women working in the field, giving the current picture and their evaluation, and offering suggestions for the future.
The Ofri Training Center, the setting for the conference on the pastoral grounds of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem, has been active for ten years since 1989 as part of MASHAV, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Center for International Cooperation, during which it has been the venue of courses in the areas of education and development for participants from dozens of countries. The late Aharon Ofri, after whom the Center was named, had a long and distinguished career, serving as Israel's ambassador in a number of African and South American countries. He was a member of Israel's delegation to the United Nations, and even after retirement was active in MASHAV on behalf of the developing world.
"Our programs are provided in the belief that the basis of all nation-building and country development is accompanied by a modern educational system geared to local needs," says Uzi Israeli, Director of the Ofri Center. The Center, which deals with education in the areas of science and technology, agriculture and the community, as well as the sphere of adult education, operates in conjunction with the Ministry of Education. It has ties with formal and informal educational institutions, as well as with educational research institutions that have an interest in involving other countries in their own experience. Close ties are also maintained with business and industrial institutions that deal with the export of educational know-how. Some of the Center's activities are conducted in cooperation with international bodies such as UNESCO and the Inter-American Bank for Development.
Courses for educators rank high among the Center's special activities. From its inception ten years ago until the present more than 200 courses have taken place, both in Israel and in other countries, with thousands of participants who hold leading positions in their countries in the field of education as well as in society as a whole. The graduates of these courses provide close professional contact with high level officials in the sphere of education throughout the world.
According to Uzi Israeli, the Center presents the Israeli experience, with its problems, challenges and successes, and probes with the course participants possibilities of adapting positive aspects in their countries, with attention to local needs, and cooperation between their own educational system and that of Israel.
Shoshana Shoham, principal of an elementary school in one of the newest neighborhoods of Jerusalem, exhorted her listeners to consider whether education is going in the right direction. She stressed that a school must offer the necessary services so it won't lose its clients. "We must have a definite concept and we must be able to measure results."
Her school, which Ofri course participants visit, implements modern educational methods and approaches and includes technology and science from the first grade. Visitors can see children working with simple materials, preparing scientific models in readiness for entering the new technological era.
Professor Dov Shinar, who conducted a course jointly with the Ofri Center for 20 newspaper editors from Africa on the subject of administration of the written media, spoke about technological changes that have occurred in the last few years and what this means to education. "Until the end of the 1980s, we worked according to a certain development model in the area of communication, a model which now seems limited," he said. This traditional model, the professor claimed, has become outmoded in light of dramatic changes in the last ten years. The era of the Internet, the internationally-linked system of computerization, during which tremendous strides have been made in technology, especially the technology of communications, requires that we search for new models in our education system, he said.
Just what changes have occurred recently?
In education, despite weighty problems, there has been considerable growth. In the area of identity, in contrast to the call of the West and the East to "be like us," legitimacy is now being given to local identity, and many people in what was once called the Third World are now facing a dilemma as to where they belong - they are suspended between the global and the local track. The consequence of all this is that there is now a recognition of the need for the meeting of different worlds.
Speaking of what has happened in the Israeli educational system in the last ten years and how this could become a model for others, Dr. Daniel Milin stated that Israel invested some $200 million in installing technological advances in the educational system. Introduction of the Internet into schools, for instance, creates connections between Israeli students and those in other countries. At Sde Boker Ecological High School, an ongoing joint ecological program with students who are actually sitting in their schools in Brazil, USA and Australia allows students to share information, debate and together come to joint decisions and write papers.
The entire field of technology in education is in a state of dynamic evolution and the constant technological changes create situations that demand continuous learning updates. For these new requirements new methods of teaching had to be and have been developed. As a result of the inevitable mistakes that were made in the process of learning these new methods, much experience and many lessons have been gleaned.
One of the components of this new development - the preparation of teachers in the field of computers - has become a model in the last years for all who deal with this subject. Contributing in no small measure to the incorporation of the new technology in schools is the industry of educational software, which has developed in leaps and bounds and has become an important source of export of the high tech industry. This high quality educational software is suited to the various types and levels of the population. The enormous experience gained by Israel from both wide use of new technology in educational institutions and teaching these subjects to multi-ethnic populations within the country and abroad has become an important factor in aiding developing countries in the distribution of know-how and in setting up their own computers in educational institutions.
Uzi Israeli noted that on a recent mission to Argentina, he visited a commercial company dealing with supply of educational material to local schools and was exceedingly pleased to discover educational software familiar to him from Israel. It turned out that one of the directors of the firm is a graduate of an Ofri Center course on Education for Science and Technology and her husband participated afterwards in an International Congress on Science Education in Jerusalem.
According to Dr. Benny Feinstein, preparation for education in the year 2000 is based on five requirements:
- Computers and the entire technology connected to them must be accessible
- Hardware and software must be updated constantly
- Study plans and teaching methods must be changed
- Teachers must be adequately trained
- The necessary budget must be assured.
Technology in agricultural schools was another topic tackled during the Aharon Ofri Study Center's one-day conference. There are in Israel's kibbutzim and moshavim some 30 youth villages and 40 regional schools for agricultural studies. The technological revolution of the 1990s affected the agricultural population, as is visible in the current methods of computerized milking of cows and drip irrigation, in the care of animals and in light industry, such as the conserving of fruit. Farmers use advanced agricultural technology, and fruits and vegetables are grown in computerized greenhouses. Agricultural schools are teaching these new methods, and, in effect, are becoming centers where farmers can get answers to their problems. In addition, such centers in agricultural districts can become cultural hubs, providing community activities, for the entire area. Adjusted to local needs, this could serve as a model for other countries, said Yisrael Weissenstern, of the Division of Agricultural Education in the Ministry of Education.
It is important to note that several educational systems in Latin America such as Peru and Brazil, are beginning to implement a model of rural and agricultural education based on the Israeli example of youth agricultural villages. In Argentina recently Uzi Israeli presented this model, which could answer the educational needs of rural areas in many countries, at an international congress under the auspices of UNESCO.
A not-for profit organization of 1,600 industrialists from some 88 industries in Israel is active in the advancement of connecting industry and education. Activities in schools for 5- to 18-year-olds involve teamwork, creativity and marketing courses, with subjects about industry included in the curriculum of elementary and high schools. Pupils visit industrial plants and workshops, do simulation work and originate new products. Shmuel Weiss, director the organization, said that a similar program for schools was "exported" to Portugal, and plans are afoot to set up another in Arab schools in Gaza.
Dr. Paul Kirmeyer, of the Ministry of Education, spoke about adult education: In Israel each year some 170,000 mostly new immigrants study in ulpan, a successful system of intensive Hebrew study. Parenting, too, is included in some of the study programs. The speaker told his audience that a number of requests have been received by the Ministry from the Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, inquiring about ways to organize instruction of their national languages. An Israeli expert participated in an international conference in Latvia on the introduction of local languages and edited the final report for the committee. Latin American countries have made similar requests.
Bar-Ilan University has launched an experiment: teaching via video conference. The project currently has a two-pronged target - an Israeli high school in a village near the Lebanese border and a school in France. In the Israeli high school the students are in large part new immigrants from the CIS who have an excellent knowledge of math - but are far from any institute of higher education. After the course - in which, incidentally, the students could see their teachers on the video screen and vice versa - the pupils are ready to take their university entrance exams.
According to Dr. Baruch Ofir, who expounded on the project, this distance education, accompanied by research, combines the human and technological angles. He admits, though, it is no substitute for a teacher, but rather complements the classroom figure.
Will there ever be a substitute for a real teacher? As we continue into the future of education, we will have to explore this question.