I was invited, as a blogger, to cover a Netanyahu press conference today, where he will be announcing some sort of revolutionary Education program. I’m more of a Feiglin/Marzel man myself, but I was honored to have been invited. Unfortunately, I can’t go.

But I do have some advice for Netanyahu for improving the education system in Israel.

We were in the park yesterday when one child, perhaps 6 or 7, was wildly swinging one of the toys in the park in a way that was extremely dangerous to anyone else playing or walking nearby.

My wife went over and nicely asked him to stop, explaining that what he was doing was very dangerous to the other children, especially the smaller children.

Instead of stopping, this little kid had the Chutzpah to say (and say it in a way that was extremely Chutzpadik) that the small kids shouldn’t play there, and he will keep doing swinging the toy however he likes. She should go to another other area.

Personally I was shocked. I couldn’t imagine a kid his age talking back to an adult like that. He should have been terrified when an adult came over to him and told him to stop.

My wife, as an Israeli, was used to it, and didn’t let up until the child stopped his very dangerous activity.

I don’t know if he learned that behavior in school, at home, on the street or on TV (I’ll be discussing TV in another post soon), but it is certainly behavior that needs to be corrected.

School starts tomorrow. Every year, teachers report on the increase in insolence they see from students in school. What I saw yesterday was a very bad example as to how young it’s starting.

If Netanyahu wants to fix the education system, one of the first things he needs to fix is the attitude and behavior of the students. A child who isn’t respectful of his elders is not going to learn, and is going to be disruptive to the rest of the class. Where that needs to be taught, I don’t know, but I hope it is something he mentions today in his press conference.