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'We reached vocational education because we were second-class. We don’t want to go back'
Photo: Shutterstock
Ben-Dror Yemini

Don't send us back to vocational education

Op-ed: The major change in higher education in Israel about 20 years ago narrowed the gap between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The return of vocational tracks could easily erase that achievement.

I got through the ninth grade in a general high school. In the 10th grade I began losing interest. I have no complaints to anyone. It was me. I preferred to go to the nearby courthouse, barely 200 meters away, and listen to the court sessions attentively.

 

 

The teachers were okay. They tried to "rehabilitate" me, unsuccessfully. I preferred what I perceived as freedom at the time.

 

And then, like many others, after a certain period as a street kid, I had to find "professional education." Because that's what a child discharged from the general education system deserves. I didn't exactly get along there either.

 

I looked at many people my age and of my generation. Many of them were sent to vocational education to begin with. It was clear that there was no other option, unless there was at that specific point in time an operation to locate candidates for a boarding school like Boyer in Jerusalem.

 

Later on, this time in university, we shared experiences of the vocational education. It was a sort of collective wound of young people from development towns and neighborhoods. It was the route designated for them, for us.

 

We managed to evade the future we were expected to have as "people of a profession," and it's not that anyone should be ashamed of their profession. It was mainly an issue of class consciousness. It was an issue of tracking which not only had class characteristics, but also ethnic characteristics.

 

So the renewed debate about vocational education includes emotional layers, and it's no coincidence that the Sephardic ministers presented a united front against the renewed intentions. Rational explanations about good intentions won't do here. Claims that a tinsmith earns more have nothing to do with it. Because for them, for us, it's sort of a scar. We reached vocational education because we were second-class. We got out of there. Don't send us back there.

 

Despite the impression created by the renewed ethnical discourse, which includes accurate and less accurate claims – something has changed. About two decades ago we had an education minister called Amnon Rubinstein, a pure Ashkenazi, who took action. He made a decision in principle to open colleges. In practice, he opened up the gates of higher education.

 

It wasn't simple. His opponents included not only arrogant elitists who were concerned about the invasion of barbarians, the graduates of the vocational education, but also Sephardic activists who thought that the colleges would only perpetuate the gaps between the periphery and the center and between Sephardim and Ashkenazim.

 

Instead, the opposite happened. According to a study published by Prof. Momi Dahan, in the past 15 years the gap in income per capita between Ashkenazim and Sephardim has been reduced from 40% to 25%. The major change in higher education in Israel can take most of the credit for this.

 

Gaps between different ethnic communities are usually characterized by gaps in the status of women. The higher the participation of women in the labor market, the bigger the gap bridging. And that's exactly what happened in Israel. Those years, the gap between Ashkenazi women and Sephardic women was reduced from 25% to only 3%. Another change which the opening of higher education can take most of the credit for.

 

Dahan's research pointed to increasing inequality between educated and uneducated Israelis, and that's exactly why reducing the gap in the field of education led to a narrowing of the gap between Sephardim and Ashkenazim.

 

On this background, the objection to the return of vocational tracks expresses a real concern that there will be a real retreat, after the achievements made in the reduction of gaps.

 

There are those who claim that for Minister Silvan Shalom and others, including myself, the objection to restoring the vocational education to its original splendor has to do with a scar. They are right. But it turns out that this objection has scientific justifications.

 

We were in a bad place. We have no desire to go back there.

 


פרסום ראשון: 11.12.14, 00:19
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