The teachers strike / The real social struggle

Tomer Goldfarb is the future of the Israeli education system. He teaches math, civics and learning strategies. He teaches children with severe learning disabilities. He comes to school wearing a dress shirt and pressed trousers to serve as a model for his junior-high and high-school students. The most important thing for him is that they become good, honest citizens. He doesn't know what he will tell them after the Hanukkah vacation. If he defies the back-to-word order, what kind of an example will he be setting? If not, he will feel defeated and humiliated.

When Goldfarb and his life partner, also a teacher, went on strike, he never imagined it would be for so long, but from the beginning he knew it was important. "This strike has come to wake up the state," says Goldfarb, 32. He is currently supporting himself as a waiter in Eilat, where he lives. "We went on strike to foment a genuine revolution, to make our country take responsibility for education and decide what kind of citizens it wants to raise."

Goldfarb's monthly teacher's salary of NIS 5,400 has not eroded his ideals. His faith in the education system and the state has been shaken because he has to teach learning strategies to 34 struggling students, instead of the 12 students for which the program was conceived.

And there are many other problems. The Arabic class in his school has 60 students, classroom hours are cut constantly, and he is expected to teach social studies, instill values and help prevent violence. In addition, everyone is pushed into taking the matriculation exams and to be doctors instead of providing good, appropriate education frameworks to those who cannot or do not want that.

No one believed union head Ran Erez when he called the teacher strike a social struggle. "Martin Luther Erez," he was called after the recent rally in Rabin Square. He was perceived as a politico even when he sat on a panel in Sderot this week with representatives of organizations for students, retirees and people with disabilities.

But Goldfarb is eminently believable, and there are many teachers like him. They are in the headquarters for public education that was created at the beginning of the strike, separate from Erez's Secondary School Teachers Association. They demonstrate in town squares and main intersections and have broad public support. They pursued Prime Minister Ehud Olmert even to Annapolis.