Who teaches our children how to choose? | Yael Nachon Harel
An opinion column examining the role of the education system in shaping students' ability to choose, against the backdrop of the upcoming elections. The author argues that school should not provide ready-made political answers, but rather develop students' tools to form an independent stance, listen to others, and cope with complexity. She warns against the influence of social media and political polarization on children, and calls for turning the classroom into a space for processing information and building identity, not for struggle.
An opinion column by Yael Nachon Harel examining the role of the education system in shaping students' ability to choose, against the backdrop of the upcoming elections. The author argues that school should not provide students with ready-made political answers, but rather develop in them the tools to form an independent stance. She quotes Rashi's commentary on the verse "and choose life" to illustrate the teacher's role as one who shows the way but does not walk it in place of the student. The author warns against the influence of social media and political polarization on children, who absorb messages from home, from their phones, and from TikTok long before age 18. She calls for turning the classroom into a space where one learns how to arrive at an answer, not which stance to adopt. The column emphasizes the importance of the ability to change one's opinion in light of new information, and the need for a democratic society capable of containing disagreement without erasing the other side.