"We're at a historic crossroads in the education system with far-reaching economic and national ramifications. I believe that we can rise up, and we can take off. We can make education take off as we did with the economy," said head of the opposition, Likud chairman MK Benjamin Netanyahu in his "The best to education" presentation at the Globes Israel Business Conference 2007 today.
Netanyahu went on, "Every reform depends on three things. The first is leadership to provide vision, political power, and courage. Even if we pay the price - and we're paying a heavy price - there are many more changes still to carry out. The hard part is to begin, and today the tills are full, which enables us to deal with our education problems and social gaps. We can carry out education reform and we must do it."
Netanyahu said, "Education is the best means to close the gaps between Israel's children. The more years of schooling you have, the easier you can get a job. If you have 16 years of education, there's almost no unemployment. We must give children the best teachers in the classroom. The main problem isn't a budget increase. I know that that's the usual way to think about the problem, but that isn't the underlying problem. You can see that Israel's spending per child has increased."
Netanyahu added, "How to do you recruit good teachers? Pay them? Not necessarily. Recruiters of good teachers do one basic job: they take one narrow sheaf and focus on the outstanding students, filter them, and the chosen students are trained until they become teachers. When they become teachers, they don’t stop learning."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 9, 2007
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