Here is a modest proposal for reform in the Israeli school system. Its cost will be measured in millions of shekels, certainly not in billions. It involves neither the construction of major infrastructure nor an overall reorganization of the system. It is based on respect for the teachers in Israel and confidence in the wisdom of their students.

The principle is simple: Teach the children to read. Even the implementation is not complicated. All students in the public schools and public-religious schools in Israel, from first to 12th grade, will have four hours of study per week during which they will read selected books in a small group, under the guidance of a teacher.

This is not a Hebrew or language lesson, but a reading lesson: reading aloud in the lower grades, reading in turn or silently in the higher grades. The basic condition, responsible for most of the cost, is that the lessons be held in groups of only six students ?(for those with difficulties and learning disabilities there will be smaller groups?) in a quiet room with the door closed. The equipment required is a desk, chairs and a copy of the book for each child. That?s all.

	Advertisement

In this framework, in the course of all their years of schooling, students will read about 120 books from a core list. It will constitute the basic bookshelf of their childhoods. The list will be drawn up by a wise and varied public group, which will include parents and teachers, intellectuals and cultural leaders, scientists and artists and representatives of the students themselves. It will also include a good librarian ?(there are many?), and perhaps the one and only Itamar Levy as well.

About half the book list will be composed of the great works of the Hebrew language. For example, 20 of the most wonderful chapters of the Bible, such as Exodus 23 and Isaiah 40, the entire Ethics of the Fathers, several poems from the Golden Age in Spain, a novel and a novella by S.Y. Agnon, and a taste of Natan Alterman and Yehuda Amichai. The list will include 30 novels, great Hebrew stories and poems, several plays and essays ?(a particularly important genre for developing the ability to express oneself?) and about the same number of excellent translations into Hebrew from world literature. Arabic speakers will be able to read texts in their mother tongue, alongside their Hebrew translations.

The second and flexible half of the list will change from time to time, according to the character of the school, and will include books for adolescents in Hebrew and in translation ?(at least one Nahum Gutman and one Erich Kastner, hopefully?). Contemporary literature, a few good opinion pieces, one or two screenplays and important and accessible reference books. Every year the list would be refreshed with selected current titles, including an excellent issue of an Israeli periodical.

No matriculation exam will hover over the heads of the students, there will be no squeaking of chalk on a blackboard, no charts and displays. Quietly and with concentration, with the guidance of a teacher or a student who has been properly trained, the children will read one book at a time, from aleph to tav. The teacher?s duty will be to make sure they have understood every word and concept. They will hold real books in their hands − not printouts or computer outputs − which at the end of the year will become their property.

The students will be asked to write something after they read, but under no circumstances will they ?analyze? the text, search for ?literary methods? or parse verbs or underline parallel structures. They will be able to react as they see fit, to admire and to argue, to write a poem or essay of their own. They will not be graded for their work, which will be examined according to one criterion: proper Hebrew. That?s all.

We can reasonably assume that the adolescents will produce subversive texts in the wake of their required reading, and like their big brothers in the literary supplements they will try to rebel against the canon. But it will be too late: They will rebel in excellent Hebrew, and even when they want to shatter the contents, to kick at the narrative or turn the rules of syntax upside down, they will discover they are taking apart something with which they are profoundly familiar. In the evening, in front of the computer, the morning reading will infiltrate blogs and chat rooms. More and more young people will be caught lying in bed with a book.

The Internet will be a friend rather than an enemy of this program. Every text on the core list, to the extent that its copyrights permit, will be uploaded together with varied links. For high school students the list will also include up-to-date books about new technologies in their global contexts.

There will be several interesting side effects. English studies will benefit because anyone who has an excellent command of his mother tongue learns foreign languages well. Teachers of history and geography will be pleasantly surprised. Performance in mathematics and sciences will improve because an excellent knowledge of reading reinforces systematic thinking and logical perception. Later on, the students? ability to express themselves and to argue will soar. The gap between their good natural understanding and their ability to implement it by expressing themselves well and using a rich vocabulary − which is familiar to anyone who teaches at an Israeli university − will be closed to some extent.

After a few years, and with a modest investment, the quality of the speeches in the Knesset will improve, and its members? range of citations and associations will be enriched. They may even listen better. Secret BBC quality levels will sneak into Israeli television programs.
Commonly used foreign terms will be replaced by Hebrew. Young people will have a better knowledge of where they come from, even before they decide where they are going. Even the language of the Hebrew talkbackers will become more polished, their arguments will become more sophisticated and their barbs will become far more clever. A vision of the End of Days? Not necessarily. Only of knowing how to read.