A poll conducted by Israel Hayom before Israeli high school students returned to school this week points to a disconcerting lack of general knowledge and familiarity with many subjects that are covered in their textbooks or appear frequently in the media.
A sample of 514 students from the 11th and 12th grades in the Jewish sector was asked various questions pertaining to civics, history and current events. The same exact question, incidentally, were presented by Israel Hayom to a representative sample of teachers in 2015, which also exposed problematic results.
The internet poll was conducted during the last week of August. It did not include students from the Arab sector so as to avoid influencing the results, mainly due to questions of a political or nationalistic nature – such as what happened on November 29, 1947; what are the names of Israel's wars; what is the Green Line; and what are the words to the national anthem, "Hatikvah."
The sample pool was divided equally along gender lines (257 boys, 257 girls). Among those questioned, 51% were from secular schools, 28% from national-religious schools, 13% from ultra-Orthodox schools and 7% from private schools. None of the questions were multiple-choice.
According to the results, as stated, a majority of the students lack knowledge in a number of subjects.
It might be a little hard to believe, but only 30% of the students were able to precisely write the first four lines of "Hatikvah."
Around two-thirds of the students questioned didn't know that the U.N. voted to recommend the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states on November 29, 1947; nearly half were unfamiliar with the Green Line, and almost half couldn't name the five books of the Torah.
The fewest number of students, just 7%, knew the date of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination (Nov. 4, 1995).
In a comparison of the students' level of knowledge to the teachers from the 2015 poll, the teachers generally exhibited better familiarity and knowledge in history and politics.
Regarding the national anthem and books of the Torah, for example, more than twice as many teachers as students answered correctly.
