The Ministry of Education will reportedly allow teachers to express their political opinions in the classroom, as part of the "Israel moves up a grade" program being pushed forward by Education Minister Shai Piron (Yesh Atid).
Under the new guidelines teachers will be given a freer hand in their class of impressionable young students, and will be able to determine the topics of their instruction in 25% of the hours of their annual educational curriculum, reports Channel 2.
The new move, which allows teachers to hold discussions in class on political topics and express their opinions, follows closely on the heels of a recent case in which a teacher tried to force leftist ideology on his students.
The civics teacher in Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, was set to be fired on Monday after a student complained about his slipping leftist ideology into classroom lessons. The teacher, according to the student, tried to convince students to dodge the IDF draft, and further announced his support for Hadash, the Israel communist party.
In a letter to Piron, who later called the teacher in for a meeting, the student wrote "I am supposed to join the army in less than a year, and my teacher is telling me that the army is immoral, and that anyone who joins it is forced to do cruel things," adding that according to the teacher Israel "belongs to the Arabs, and as far as he was concerned, the Jews had no business being in Israel at all."
While the student added that "according to Education Ministry rules, politics are to be kept outside the classroom," those rules apparently are about to change.