That the co-winner of this year's Intel-Israel Corp. high
school science prize used to be named Pavel comes as no
surprise. More surprising, David (formerly Pavel) Kovalev is
a 10th grade student at a religious high school in
Jerusalem.
Kovalev's high school is part of the Shuvu network of
schools for children from Russian-speaking homes. When
Kovalev, whose family originally settled in Migdal Ha'emek,
began to look for a high school, an ad in a Russian-
language publication for Shuvu's Jerusalem high school
caught his eye. After a visit to the school, Kovalev was
convinced by the atmosphere in the classrooms he visited. "I
could tell right away that the students were very serious
about learning," he explains.
Rabbi Reuven Kaplan, Kovalev's principal, places great
emphasis on science education. Last spring, for instance,
when Gregory Kupchik, an experienced science teacher from
Siberia, inquired about a job, Kaplan immediately hired him,
even though the school year was almost over and the school
had no openings. To make sure that he would not lose
Kupchik, Kaplan found him work tutoring over the summer.
Kovalev was Kupchik's tutoring project last summer and, over
the summer, he designed a new computer language for graphics
and animation. The Intel panel described his work as
deserving a start-up company of its own.
The emphasis on math and science characterizes the entire
Shuvu system. Using immigrant mathematicians and scientists,
Shuvu developed its own math curriculum for elementary
schools, which is considered the best of its kind in the
country.
For three-quarters of the children in the Shuvu system, the
Shuvu school was not their first here. In a just completed
survey of parents in four Shuvu schools, 76% responded that
their children were receiving a better education than
previously, and 84% that there is less violence in the Shuvu
school.
Over 90% of these notoriously demanding parents (most of
whom hold academic degrees) described their children's math
and science education as good or very good. Sixty-four
percent reported that their child's exposure to Jewish
learning has increased their own Jewish identity (as opposed
to 72% who describe their children's previous state-school
education as having had no effect).
Many studies point to Jewish identity as the most important
factor in determining the success or failure of aliya.
The students in the Shuvu network, many of whom, like
Kovalev, had little previous Jewish knowledge or identity,
are obviously far removed from traditional chareidi
students. Yet most of Shuvu's $10 million annual budget is
raised from the American religious community and the
network's leading administrators are all yeshiva-trained.
That the chareidi world has created out of whole cloth a
system that excels in secular studies should itself
discredit some of the stereotypes about that world's alleged
contempt for secular studies.
SPEAKING of stereotypes, it is interesting that Shas's
Pedagogic Resource Center has developed educational
materials in sciences, language arts, and Jewish studies
that are being copied by educators around the world,
according to Dr. Moshe Leibler, the Yale and MIT-trained
chief educational psychologist for the Shas network.
Such sophisticated curricular materials belie the familiar
caricature of Shas schools as backwaters of ignorance
dedicated to perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
That picture, incidentally, is more than a little racist. It
assumes that the thousands of non-religious Sephardic
parents who have registered their children in Shas schools,
which typically have far inferior physical conditions than
those in neighboring state schools, are oblivious to their
children's education or life chances.
Interviews with those parents, however, reveal a far
different picture. Far from being unconcerned with their
children's education, they have concluded that a system
which imbues students with respect for themselves and
others, enthusiasm for learning, and is free of the endemic
violence of the state schools is far more conducive to real
learning.
Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, the holder of science degrees from
Stanford and the Technion, and coauthor of Old Wine in New
Flasks with Nobel chemistry laureate Ronald Hoffman,
recently toured Shas schools in Netanya, Hadera, Jerusalem,
and Petach Tikva.
In Petach Tikva, she viewed a math lab in which thousands of
dollars were invested to make concepts such as fractions
tactilely and visually real to students, and specially
designed science equipment illustrating the principles of
mechanics.
At Beit Margalit, a new girls' school in Netanya, which I
also visited recently, principal Yaffa Shanks related how
one of her first initiatives was to hire the best elementary-
school science teacher in the Netanya region. Shanks proudly
described the curriculum linking science with halachic
concepts, as well as a project in which every girl is
writing and illustrating her own book.
Shimon Yitzhak, principal of the school in Hadera,
confidently assured parents that the thinking and learning
skills developed in the school ensure that none of its
graduates will be relegated to the remedial- education units
in the army.
