Bored at School
Posted: September 8, 2011 | Author: boredofdeputies | | Tags: education, hasmo, immanuel, jcoss, jfs, king solomon, rabbi, school, student, teacher |Leave a comment »
by Bored of Deputies
The Bored are delighted to begin our series of mini-reports on our Jewish community. We suggest that those of you who are new to our social commentary peruse our twitter feed @BoredofDeputies to best appreciate our conservative take on UK Jewry.
This week as the leaves start to brown, UK Jewish parents are nattering in over-priced uniform shops across North West London ….Young boys are practicing the “kippah rip and stuff” (a reflex manoeuvre involving the removal of the head covering at break time to improve ones ability to head the ball and kiss girls)… and those same Jewish girls are folding skirts to establish the alluring balance between showing knee-cap and avoiding detention. These wholesome activities can mean only one thing…. A new Jewish school year is upon us.
But with Demographic, Socio-Economic, Philo-religioustic and Hadrachaic challenges at the top of our community’s agenda, what is the future of our Jewish Schools?
Infrastructure
First a statistical perspective. Jewish schools continue to be built each year and the proportion of Jews attending is increasing whilst the number of mainstream Jews continues to fall. When the ‘attendance proportion’ peaks in 2015, we will start to have increasing numbers of schools for decreasing numbers of pupils. The Bored are delighted with this projected development as Jewish parents have been crying out for smaller class sizes and more personal attention.
Thus, our plan is to increase the 41 primary and 14 secondary schools year-on-year, a mammoth task in anyone’s book. Fortunately, we can call on a huge database of narcissistic donors desperate to have their names on enormous plaques.
These philanthropists understand that there are already empty seats in Jewish classrooms and this problem is set to increase. Soon those places will be taken by gentiles as state funded education must fill its seats. Nonetheless, the givers will keep on giving as long as their names are on the wall and nobody lets any Reform Jews in. Ever.
Teaching
To tackle falling numbers of Jewish teachers, we are looking to create a new scheme to tempt university leavers back in to schools. The Programme “Teach Second”, understands that many Jew-niversity graduates are looking for a job in one of the “Mother-in-law 3”; Finance, Medicine and Law. However, since Deloitte only take 1400 graduates per year, there are at least 20 Jewish graduates leftover in each cohort and we want them to fall back on a cushty job at Jewish school for a couple of years. Our slogan is “Teach Second – its better than property or wasting holiday days on chaggim.”
Curriculum
All faith schools have to tackle a key thorny issue in the classroom, Science vs Religion, Biology vs R.S. or to put it a third way, History vs Literature. The debate around the teaching of creationism continues to polarise our society.
Studies show that the average child first challenges the existence of a higher power around the age of 13. Thus, The Bored propose that on day 1 of year 9, pupils are instructed to choose between creationism and fact and streamed accordingly.
The faith stream will study R.S., Drama, Art, Music and Denial while their non-believing colleague will learn Maths, Economics, Physics, Cynicism and Hopelessness. The resultant intra-school divide will also help prepare them for community life.
We have also received a great deal of criticism of the quality and nature of Hebrew language education in our schools. Parents feel children learn very little Hebrew that is useful outside of school, for example renegotiating the terms of their off-plan apartment in Netanya. The Bored are sensitive to these issues and see three options:
1) To change Israel’s lexicon considerably so that “Sheket”, “hand me your organiser” and “stay behind after the lesson” are key day-to-day phrases.
2) Actively engage the 40,000 Israelis living and working illegally in the UK to offer 1-2-1 tuition to each kid with the most profile unemployed Israeli Avram Grant managing the process with his sunny disposition.
3) Teach Arabic and/or Russian instead.
The Bored are aware that some of our innovations are not palatable to the masses. But as long as 50-60 year old cynical men continue to swallow them, we’ll continue to hold them.
Next week: entry criteria….