The Most Important Profession In The world

"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well."  Alexander The Great

The first scene of the poignant Turkish/French film Mustang, which in Hebrew was translated into “Wild Girls,” shows the end of the last day of the school year. A beloved teacher is parting from her young students. They stand in line to bid her farewell, and one little girl is crying. The teacher comforts her, asks her to keep in touch and to write to her.

From the comments of the students we gather that the young teacher is moving away from Trabzon, on the Black Sea in Turkey, to Istanbul a 1000 km away.

At the end of the film, the young student, whose life has become unbearable, runs away from home, with her older sister, in order to arrive at the home of her teacher, the only person in the world whom she trusts.

This may seem like an idealistic portrayal of the teacher, but there are numerous examples in life ,and in fiction, of dedicated teachers who devote their lives to their students.

The teacher has an immense role in in forming the personality of the young child. We could all think of  a teacher who believed in us, encouraged us or did not give up on us. Of course we could never forget that teacher.

At the university level the role of the teacher/advisor is different, but even there, especially at the post-graduate level, the advisor is very significant. Sometimes, for the student, the teacher is the only face of the institution, and the bond between the student and the mentor is often deep and meaningful, and could last a lifetime.

A good advisor could not remain distant and polite, in order to get the most out of the student he/she has be a hands-on mentor, which often means: demanding and strict.

In recent years when higher education has become commercialized and compete for students’ money, the ability of the teachers to do their best is compromised. When the  student becomes a client and therefore is always right, teachers are  pressurized to be popular, and popularity is often in contrast to being demanding.  And then there are the dreaded questionnaires, which ask for satisfaction feedback from the students/ customers.

Today being a teacher seems a bit like walking a tightrope. In order not to fall the teacher needs to keep his balance and stays focused. But that is only the beginning, a “real” teacher needs to be courageous, flexible, strong and optimistic.

At the end of a week in which our education system has  joined a reactionary tradition of banning books, for fear of poisoning the minds of our youth, it is easy for teachers to lose faith.

But the reunion at the end of Mustang, which shows that the little girl reached a safe haven at the home of her teacher, restored my optimism and  gave me hope. It reminded me again that no other profession is more important than teaching.

The essay appeared in the Times Of Israel 

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-most-important-profession-in-the-world/

From Lot's Wife To Malala Yusafzai

Today on Human Rights Day when Malala Yusafzai is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it is important to remember that until fairly recently even in Europe and in the US women were denied education.

In  the introduction to his book Equality for Some: The Story of Girls’ Education, Barry Turner states: “The female intellect is a recent educational discovery. Traditionally Western civilization has distrusted and discouraged clever women, initially because they were regarded as a threat to the spiritual well-being of the community.”

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-lots-wife-to-malala-yusafzai/

Blue Jasmine, A College Dropout Or A Gifted Anthropologist?

Although women’s education is not the main theme of Woody Allen’s movie Blue Jasmine, it is an important leitmotif --serving both as a characterization  device and as a moving force of the plot. In the opening scene on the plane, the heroine Jasmine tells the unfortunate lady who happens to sit next to her that after she had met her future husband she dropped out of university. She asks her neighbor whether she could imagine her as an anthropologist.

The neighbor does not have an answer, she has no idea who this rambling lady is, but Woody Allen has made a clever choice. Jasmine has not completed her education, still she is a gifted anthropologist. She becomes involved in a long standing field study of the rich and  famous. She does not keep a scientific distance from her subjects, quite the contrary. For several years she lives among them, carefully observes their movements and studies their practices, gradually she adopts  their norms and attitudes and becomes almost indistinguishable from them.

For years Jasmine has not worried about completing her education, as it served its purpose—marrying a rich man. However, when this chapter in her life abruptly and tragically ends, she is forced into a totally different field. Here she could no longer function as an anthropologist, she has no desire to study her new environment or adopt its customs. Thus she turns to education again hoping that once more it will provide her with the delivery she so desparately needs.

Unfortunately this time around Jasmine cannot be saved, going back to school proves too difficult in her current state of mind, and the connections that she obtains let her down.

Education (or learning), as it is presented in Blue Jasmine, does not have any intrinsic value; it only serves as a means for a specific purpose or as desperate prospect for a way out. I feel that Allen's disbelief in human nature has resulted in his cynical view of education in general and of education of women in particular.

This view of education brings back images of bleak periods in the history of Feminism; for generations women had to work much harder than men in order to be taken seriously. Moreover, their dedication was mocked or frowned upon by men (and sometimes by women). Until the 1980s gaining admission to either Oxford or Cambridge was much more difficult for women than for men, since their enrollment was limited to the only few openings in the women’s colleges.

Once they were admitted, their presence in these universities was not always welcome. Earlier in the century the poet and critic John Betjeman expressed a highly negative view of Oxford’s women who “drive out many good men from the clubs and societies they invade.” He even accused them of raising the standard of examinations since “they work so more doggedly than many of the men” The prominent feminist Edith Summerskill (an Oxford graduate, a physician, a Member of Parliament and a Minister of Cabinet), wrote to her daughter Shirley, a student in Oxford in the fifties that “it would be quite inaccurate to suggest that we were welcomed into the universities or into the public life”

 Blue Jasmine does not take place in the 1950s, a period when women were accused of going to university only to find a suitable husband, but in the present. Thus Jasmine must have attended university toward the end of the 20th century; I don't believe that at that time many women dropped out of school in order  to become  socialites.

Critics would argue  that Blue Jasmine is one of Woody Allen's best films, and  I am quite certain that it will win numerous awards. And yes, it is true that Cate Blanchett is brilliant as Jasmine and Woody Allen's  homage to old Blanche from Streetcar Named Desire is touching. However, we should not forget how hard we worked to get to where we are today and leave the 1950s behind. So at the risk of sounding humorless, I say: "it's not funny" and demand not to be  sent back there.

Lot’s Wife And The Danger Of Curiosity

At a conference devoted to the influences of the Old Testament on Hebrew literature, a speaker discussed Lot’s wife (Genesis 19, 26) as a source of poetic inspiration. In Hebrew that dramatic story is summed up in 6 short words: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

I have been so used to these words that their actual meaning was almost lost. But re-examining the sentence I thought about the danger of curiosity and the high price of the desire to learn.

We learnt  in school that Lot’s wife was punished because she disobeyed God. Yet, in Genesis 19, 17 God says to Lot: “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee.” There is nothing in the text about Lot's  responsibility to warn his family not to ldo so as well. Moreover, although God talks only to Lot, he is not held accountable for the actions of his wife, and she is the only one who is punished.

It is intriguing that the Bible states that the wife (who remains nameless) looks "behind him,” and not behind her. It seems that Lot is very much part of the action.

Curious, eager to learn, and independent: those have always been the qualities of women in pursuit of knowledge and education. They fought to advance themselves in their societies and strived to contribute to their communities. But those were also the exact reasons why Paternalistic societies have regarded education as dangerous.

Only yesterday I suddenly saw the source of and the justification for the zeal and conviction of those men who made sure that education would not be available to women. From the account of the Fall we understand that knowledge is synonymous with disobedience. But in the case of Adam and Eve they were both punished. I never before had traced the beginning of male oppression to the unjust act of God, who punished a woman for a non-sin, in Genesis 19.

Until fairly recently women  in Europe and in the US were denied education, in the introduction to Equality for Some: The Story of Girls’ Education, Barry Turner states: “The female intellect is a recent educational discovery. Traditionally Western civilization has distrusted and discouraged clever women, initially because they were regarded as a threat to the spiritual well-being of the community” 

It wasn’t thank to God of Genesis 19 that Western women won their battle for education, they did it all on their own.

But in other parts of the world, women and girls are not so fortunate, a good example is the  Saudi Arabian film Wadjda. It tells the story of  a bright girl who is determined to win money to buy a bicycle she’s forbidden to ride. She hopes to accomplish this feat by winning a Koran competition. Learning, she trusts, would bring about independence and freedom of mobility. But when she honestly and naively admits that she intends to do with the money, she doesn't get the prize.

Riding a bicycle has been a feminist symbol of self reliance since Victorian time: at that time the safety bicycle became available for skirted women. While bicycle gave them physical independence, education had given them some measure of mental independence and self control.

Wadjda is not different from the hundreds of school girls who were kidnapped on April 14th from the Girls Secondary School in Nigeria. In the name of God, His male executors on earth have taken upon themselves the mission to eradicate education from their country.

In the Biblical story Lot moved on leaving his wife behind, we could no longer afford to do so.

PS  And of course I should not forget Malala Yusafzai.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-m-blaustein/malala-yousafzai-girls-e...

Could You Please Put Your Phone Away

For several years until my daughter moved to the US, we had enjoyed a joint custody over our beloved Pomeranian Sophie. We started this happy arrangement the moment we brought her home when she was only one month old. As she grew older, it was clear that Sophie’s two mothers used totally different educational approaches. I was the strict disciplinarian, and my daughter was much softer. Sophie, a very intelligent dog, adjusted: in my home she ate only dog food and at my daughter’s she shared all her meals with her mother, all the while barking and making her wishes known.

Since I believe in “live and let live,” I said (almost) nothing, but the problem arose when my daughter and Sophie sat together for dinner at my place. Then Sophie would stand by my daughter, bark tenaciously, and demand food. Suddenly she became that anxious and dependent dog, and forgot all about the, much calmer and happier, arrangement at our home.

I was reminded of Sophie’s anxiety when I saw the difficulties that my students had in controlling their smartphone use during class. Schools all over the country forbid the use of phones, and it seems to be a necessary rule for high school students. However, until recently I had believed that it wasn't needed for college students. I assumed that grown-ups who have been making such an effort to finance their studies ( At my college a yearly tuition is over 30000 nis, while a working student would earn between 2000—4000 nis) would focus on getting the most out of their money. Sadly I was wrong, in class, instead of learning, my students were using Facebook, and Whatsup (in Hebrew of course) constantly keeping in touch with their friends.

To help them see the light, I tried first the educational approach, I reminded my students how hard they work for their degree (I often see them working at the different restaurants around town), they agreed, but kept on checking their messages.

Because of Sophie I understood how the smartphone, which was lying right in front of them, made my students anxious. I realized the difficulties they had in controlling the urge to check their phones, and how this dependence negatively affected their ability to learn. Moreover, it finally dawned on me that the smartphone with its dictionary, and the other useful learning devices could ultimately destroy my students’ concentration.

I have to admit that I am as addicted to my smartphone as my students, but of course I never take it out of my bag during class. I concluded that this would also be the best solution for my students.

It took some time and practice, especially since I started enforcing the no phones rule mid semester. At first I had to personally remind each student to put the phone away. I hope it is not only my imagination, but I see some improvement in my students' engagement in the lesson.

My daughter would probably disagree, but I am convinced that my approach to Sophie’s education was correct. It was beneficial to her mental well-being, and in my home Sophie was a calmer and happier dog. I know better than to even hint that humans are in any way similar to my little Pom. But I testify that I sense a new yet familiar calmness in my students. I hope that now we could finally go back to learning.