Elementary school raises the flag for discipline

Every Sunday a school assembly will be held at which the Israeli flag will be raised and the national anthem sung.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
At least one Tel Aviv elementary school has decided that a return to old-fashioned discipline is the way to go for the future, reports www.mynet.co.il. After a problematic year marked with violent incidents, new Balfour school principal Tzipi Landau has decided that this year students will not be admitted on school grounds after 8 a.m.; eating will not be permitted outside classrooms; parents will not be allowed on school premises during school hours' and that every Sunday a school assembly will be held at which the Israeli flag will be raised and the national anthem sung. According to the report, Tel Aviv city councilor Ron Levintal raised the idea three years ago that the once-routine weekly assemblies should be re-introduced to Israeli schools, although nothing came of his proposal at the time. "We have raised a generation that does not know the words of the anthem and does not respect the values of the state of Israel," Levintal said. But now, Landau, who took on the job at Balfour at the beginning of this school year, has decided that the best way of dealing with the problems at the school is to re-introduce stricter discipline. "Pupils must arrive at the school by 7:55 a.m.," she wrote in a letter to parents. "At 8 a.m. the gates will be locked." The letter continued that parents would not be permitted on school premises after 8 a.m. either, and that eating would take place only inside classrooms.