Why are Israeli teenagers so stupid?

The question, formulated more politely as "Why Israel failed in the PISA exams?", is the title of an article in today's fishwrap HaAretz. Prof. Irit Keinan * (from "Women Make Peace" movement), one of the top mandarins of the educational establishment, observes the paradox of Israel's very high investment in education and the very poor results. She writes that it should not be like that, since she KNOWS that children fail in exams because of poor facilities and lack of teaching equipment. And in Israel, education is well budgeted. The government school is frequently the only building in Bedouin tent encampments in the desert.

She discovers the solution to the paradox in the "bizarre alliance" between the right-wing political indoctrination and liberal multiculturalism. Ah! this may be an important insight! But no, she goes on protesting against the politicians in education, and proposes more humanities. To understand the idea, I try to identify the politicians in education and yes, the Minister is a politician, but under her, the bureaucracy is "technological", "professional", career-administrators with Ph.D.s in Education. What is what she wants? Whom she hates? Only she knows. **

Regarding humanities, yes, the latest directive is to emphasize mathematics, and a fifth advanced math subject has been added to the curricula. Is she against it? It is unclear.

I should moderate my criticism of the article because it provides a clear answer to the title question, why are Israeli teenagers so stupid and cannot match Equatorial Guinea *** PISA ranking. It is because Israeli educational leaders are confused and stupid. ****

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*   She has a nice smile.
** May be she does not.
*** Equatorial Guinea does not participate in the PISA.
**** There is another possibility, but it would invalidate the gist of my criticism. May be Israelis are not very bright, could that be possible? 

Melasma: The Sign of Death

Looking in the mirror I saw a brown blotch on my right cheek, in the same place where there was an identical blotch on my Father's cheek. It is melasma, also called hyperpigmentation, and it does not hurt nor causes any harm. Most elderly Jews in my street have more blotched skin than I do, but for me it is just the beginning. It signals an hormonal change: meaning, surprise!, I am getting older. Not dead yet, but already I am carrying on my face the dark sign of my decease. Be ready! On this optimistic note, I leave and sit at the sabbath table with my replacements. 

Israeli Mandarin Prof. Yaron is far from stupid, yet ...

Sammy Peretz reports in The Marker  (Hebrew) about the speech of a High Mandarin, Prof. Amir Yaron, Chief of Bank Israel, about Israel's public investment criteria. The Bank wants to select investments that most increase the GNP, and it has calculated the yields of investments in three key sectors: Infrastructure (each shekel invested  in roads and so increases the GNP by about five shekels), education (better equipped school facilities, highly qualified teachers, more pre-kindergarten hours and so) produces six times its cost, and investing in making the bureaucracy more efficient (more computers, more regulators and consultants, etc.) costs very little and each shekel yields ten, so he says. He prefers infrastructure, like Tel Aviv underground trains project (pic), even if it yields the less of the three investment alternatives, because it is well defined, is highly visible and reduces the time spent driving at rush hours. Who can disagree?

Yaron notes that Israel's population is one of the most educated of the world, and Israel's education budget is among the highest of the world in terms of GNP. Yet the latest PISA results show that Israeli students are among the worst, ranking lower than third-world countries. He wonders "What are those students doing all those years in school?" It is obvious that they are not learning, and we do not know how to spend  in education to achieve results.

He is aware that something is not working as it should, yet he repeats that unproved, untrue relationship between investment in education and economic development. Why? He knows that spending even more in education will produce no results, yet he increases year after year the Ministry of Education's budget to the point that Israel is number one in spending (and the last in PISA exams).

I shall not comment on investing in the bureaucracy. Yaron must well know that investing in regulatory agencies does not increase the GNP but reduces it. That is obvious except for those whose salaries are an item in the Budget, say, Prof. Amir Yaron. 

The Celestial Empire

The most important historical issue is the rise of China as a great power, possibly the greatest ever. Australia is in China's hemisphere and the nearest Western outpost, and is worried. Kevin Rudd, an Aussie sinologist diplomat, says that the Chinese people feels humiliated (it was colonized in the past) and to maintain relations on a rational, non emotional basis, the West should apologize.

On the other hand, John Mearsheimer, an American public intellectual, sees the situation in black and white: It is war and Australia must be part of the Western alliance. China knows only tribute-paying barbarians and enemies. Both speakers are very impressive.

I have been many times in China and like it. The first Israelis in China were TAHAL experts, they travelled in secret under different passports because we had no diplomatic relations. I wanted very much to go but they sent Dr. Moshe Mizrahi instead. He was the first to introduce Israeli heifers and establish a dairy farm. I was so bitter that attacked the project, saying that Chinese lack the lactose enzyme and will vomit the milk. I was wrong, of course, and the local milk industry has developed tremendously since. We could have maintained our primacy but did not. New Zealanders are there.

China was known then as facing famine, and the question was if they could feed themselves. What they did was to forbid second child. I told my counterpart that it was a very wrong policy, and I think I was right. Today they are in need of those unborn babies. I told them that Chinese poverty is a temporary aberration, they were a hardworking intelligent people, and Chinese prosper everywhere they are. They were very afraid of the future. And yes, they feared Western colonization and division of the country.

They have good reasons to fear the West and Japan. But they are easy to live with, should the West let them to. Whites (and Blacks even more, but they lack intelligence) have aggressor genes and cannot stay quiet.

Tacit Corollary: (1) Both American and Australian thinkers assume as certain that China and America are in (cold) war, (2) China's economic size equals America and will be two times larger in twenty years. It is unsaid that for America, it would be advantageous to precipitate the confrontation as soon as the conditions become propitious. 

In the Stress Lab

I spent four hours today in the Stress Laboratory of Civil Engineering Dept. with Michael aka Zack (pic). He is another of the elderly Russian Jewish geniuses that found refuge in the University of Ariel.







The subject is boring - the distribution and propagation of stresses in structures - but he added probability calculation which made it more intriguing. The students followed  Zack's "experiments" without much enthusiasm. Probabilities always fascinates me. 

The Solgar Military Drone

The Turkish military industry, and industry in general, is developing fast. The new drone can fly 10 km and shoot 200 bullets with good precision. It is impressive because the platform itself is light, unstable in the air and each shot causes a reaction that changes the position of the drone. Turkish industrial products are low tech but effective, and most importantly, inexpensive - we have many JCBs in the construction industry. Turkey disputes maritime rights with Greece, it is a latent shooting war. Bibi said that we are allied to Greece since Turkey nixes our gas pipeline near Cyprus. 

My Clients are Better than I am

The Regulator sent me a list of 25 demands: another interceptor, ten more non-return valves, two pumps instead of one (extra safety) and so on. I said OK we shall do it. My Client said NO, we shall not, we shall fight the expensive, senseless demand of this bureaucrat person. On second thought, he is right. I give in too easily.