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Good Schools Aren't the Secret to Israel's High-Tech Boom

(Wall Street Journal) Naftali Bennett - I am often asked how a country the size of New Jersey became a global high-tech force. Israel lists 93 companies on Nasdaq - more than India, Japan and South Korea combined. In 2016 investors sank $6 billion into Israel's more than 6,000 startups. During my two years as minister of education I have come to understand that our secret weapon is a parallel education system that operates alongside the formal one, where our children learn to become entrepreneurs. The first component is our heritage of debate - it's in the Jewish DNA. For generations Jews have studied the Talmud, our legal codex, in pairs instead of listening to a lecture, engaging in debate. They analyze issues from all directions, finding different solutions. Multiple answers to a single question are common. The second component is the peer-teaches-peer model of Jewish youth organizations. The third component is the army. Because we are constantly defending ourselves from Islamic terror, young Israeli adults must literally make life-or-death decisions every day. Real-life tasks show young adults how much they are capable of achieving. The writer, a former high-tech CEO, is Israel's minister of education.
2017-03-24 00:00:00
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