36
Friday, May 23, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
• SUN SUITS • SWIM SUITS • SHORTS •
• SUN DRESSES • TANK TOPS • PANTS •
• SPORTSWEAR • SLEEP WEAR •
• DRESSES AND MORE!
11-kUBs,,Dflt
FRIDB-r
SATURDAY
SuNDF‘t
ocsikg
LINCOLN CENTER
Boys and Girls Wear
because your children are special! 10 1/2 & Greenfield
* • ,N.*:1?3 ,
?
\
• • •
i
European Design and Craftmanship by
project undertaken while a child is away,
so that he or she will have a better home
life to come back to.
Parents seeking to evade responsibility
for their problems are sometimes encour-
aged to send their children to boarding
schools by recruiters from Orthodox ye-
shivas who frequent disadvantaged areas
in search of pupils who can be supported
by Youth Aliya.
ince 1971, major investments —
far exceeding what Youth Aliya
has spent on disadvantaged
youth — have been made in
improving educational oppor-
tunities and social services in the
neighborhoods and towns that have been
the department's primary recruiting
ground. The Education Ministry initiated
its Educational Welfare Program in the
mid-1970s to boost remedial and enrich-
ment activities in local schools, and has
built dozens of comprehensive high schools
in disadvantaged areas. Community cen-
ters have opened in dozens of these locali-
ties since 1969 providing informal educa-
tion and cultural enrichment for children,
youth and adults.
The director-general of the Education
Ministry, Eliezer Shmueli, was one of the
founders of the ministry's own network of
boarding schools. He too felt that the time
had come to re-examine the overall role of
residential education in Israel, but felt that
coordination of this service by a central-
ized agency would not be practical. He
noted that today, the quality of the educa-
tional services found in many of the areas
from which boarding school pupils have
been drawn in the past are better than
those available in the youth villages
themselves.
Another source of improvement for
Israel's disadvantaged areas has been the
$650 million spent by Project Renewal
since 1977 in a massive effort to improve
physical conditions and social services in
these areas. This is a joint rehabilitation
project of the Israeli government and
Diaspora Jewry, acting through the Jewish
Agency. In the 82 neighborhoods and
towns now in the project, the most exten-
sive social investments have been in formal
and informal education, and new programs
have been developed to improve school
achievement levels, starting with early
childhood and continuing through high
school. The basic philosophy of Project
Renewal is that the depressed towns and
urban slums can and should be made to be
"decent places to live and bring up
children?'
Even though Project Renewal has won
high marks from an evaluation committee
composed of experts from Israel and
abroad, it has not solved all the social and
educational problems in these areas, nor
has it been organized effectively in all the
towns and neighborhoods that it serves.
S
But it has become Israel's most impressive
expression of commitment to the approach
that community solutions to social and
educational problems are preferable either
to bulldozing the problems away or to tak-
ing the most promising young people out
while letting others degenerate. The most
successful Project Renewal communities
have demonstrated that they can make
their areas attractive not only for their own
youth to return to after army service, but
also to people outside the neighborhood
who would have never before considered
moving into what was previously regarded
as a slum.
As strange as it may seem for a depart-
ment concerned with the social and educa-
tional future of Israel's youth, Youth Aliya
continues to ignore these developments in
its official policy statements. Pronounce-
ments issued in the past year by the head
of the department and by its director, Eli
Amir, continue to rest on the fundamental
assumption that opportunities for social
advancement and integration with the
mainstream of Israeli society cannot be
found - in the towns and neighborhoods
where the bulk of Israel's disadvantaged
population is concentrated — those areas
that are in fact the primary targets of Pro-
ject Renewal.
All this is even more puzzling consider-
ing that the Jewish Agency is responsible
for both Youth Aliya and Project Renewal,
but it has failed to coordinate or reconcile
their divergent policies and viewpoints. So
Youth Aliya continues to take the most
promising youth out of these areas, while
Project Renewal looks for ways to keep
them there so that they can progress and
contribute to the neighborhood as a whole.
A case in point: Former Youth Aliya de-
partmental director Meir Gottesman cites
the cultural advantages of residential
education for youth from deprived back-
grounds. "In the youth village," he writes,
"the youngsters, most of them from needy
homes, come to know and enjoy a variety
of activities they could never afford in the
city. Even if the opportunity were there
(community centers, etc.), they would prob-
ably lack the motivation and encourage-
ment from home to take advantage of it."
He also mentions sports activities, tutor-
ing and library facilities as opportunities
not available for these young people in
their home areas.
This statement was published in late
1985, and it would have been accurate in
the mid-1970s or earlier. But it ignores the
fact that one of the most substantial achieve-
ments of Project Renewal and the com-
munity center movement in Israel has been
precisely in providing the kind of oppor-
tunities that Gottesman describes, in ad-
dition to stimulating and educating the
residents of these areas to utilize them for
themselves and for their children.
The head of Youth Aliya placement ser-
vices, Yehiel Shilo, expressed similar views.
Where Do All Our Dollars Go?
Specializing in:
8575 CAPITAL
OAK PARK, MI 48237
542.1185
wood
marble
stainless steel
laminates
.