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| Photo: David Shamah |
If Israel is to remain the Start-Up Nation, it needs to make sure enough students are studying the science and math that are necessary for a career in computer engineering, cyber-security, virtual reality, and the other deep-tech areas in demand today, according to Karen Tal, who heads the Tovanot B’Chinuch program.
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| Tovanot kids at work at Herzog High School, Holon (Courtesy) Photo: The Times of Israel |
The country, she said, cannot afford to let any latent talent go to waste, even if the kids with that talent had the bad luck not to be born into middle-class and upper middle-class families.
The best approach to encouraging kids to study science and math is to build a community in the context of junior high and high schools, where volunteers who are successful themselves can act as role models to kids and show them that there is a better way,” said Tal. “Unfortunately, this job is too great for the schools to take on themselves, so we intervene – with the cooperation of the school, the administration, and the Education Ministry – to develop a program that will inspire students to see themselves as being capable of success themselves.”
That there is a need for Tovanot is
indisputable. Education Ministry statistics show that no more than 10%
of Israeli high school students take on the full math course load (known
as “five units” in Israeli high school jargon), which is generally
required by universities for students who want to major in computer
science and related subjects. In 2013, only 9,100 students studied math
in depth, the statistics show.
Most of those students attend the country’s
top high schools – the ones located in places like Kfar Shemaryahu,
Herzliya Pituah, Ramat Aviv, and the tonier neighborhoods of Jerusalem –
while many kids in the rest of Israel make do with the minimum math
they need to take in order to get their matriculation certificates and
graduate high school.
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| Photo: Dr. Dalia Guri |
