Mickey picked me up at my hotel at 10 AM for what turned out to be an amazing walking tour of Tel Aviv. He and his wife walk or bike much more than they use their car. This was a Friday, which means it’s equivalent to our Saturday. Just like our Saturday, Friday is a day that most people have off but the stores are very busy. Saturday in Israel is like our Sunday and most stores are closed and is the least busy day of the week. Sunday in Israel is like our Monday, the first day of the work week. So the song in Israel should be “Thank God it’s Thursday” since Thursday is the last work day. Somehow TGIT doesn’t have the same ring to it as TGIF.

We walked along a busy shopping street on our way to the open air markets but had  to make a very sad stop first. One of my “3 bears” was sick. Papa Bear, my Mac Book Air is my workhorse (is it a horse or a bear?). Mama Bear is my iPad, good for reading while lying in bed checking emails, reading a book, or playing a game. Baby Bear is my iPhone 4 that is also my security blanket. It’s either in my pocket, right next to my bedside while sleeping, or no more than a couple of feet away when showering. I reach for it constantly for just about everything and it keeps me grounded. By the way, the gender of the Bears is not relevant, just the size. Baby Bear’s power switch had become defective. I could just barely (sorry) turn it off and it was even harder to get it back on. Fortunately, there was an authorized Apple dealer nearby. They could fix it for 300 Shekels or about $80. I reluctantly gave my farewells to it. They said it was possible but unlikely to be ready that afternoon. They were closed on Saturday and should have it on Sunday.

All that afternoon, I was reaching for Baby Bear to take pictures. Here is just some of what I saw.

A packed market with open stalls selling fruits, fish, nuts, junk toys, spices, etc., including by far the largest carrots I’ve ever seen

A young long-haired Jewish “guru” occasionally letting out words of wisdom with about 20-30 people crowded around.

Bearded Jews coming up to people asking them to put bands around their arms as part of a Jewsih ritual. Mickey asked one of them if he thought I was Jewish. The response was “of course”

Hebrew was everywhere of course, but English was almost everywhere. Also, Arabic was on the road signs and you could see a lot of Russian. All in all it was an assault on the senses. It’s exactly what I love the most about travelling. I love the “museum of the streets” even more than the museums in the buildings. We basically walked from one end of the heart of Tel Aviv and then back to see if Baby Bear had been healed. Unfortunately, he would be away  from where he belongs until Sunday.

We met up with Mickey’s wife Orly as she was getting out of her half day teaching art to first graders. She teaches at one of the most interesting schools I’ve ever heard about. It’s called the Democratic School and is part of an international movement (see http://adhd.htmlplanet.com/democraticschools.htm). Stuidents get to choose what to study and how they want to work. Teachers are given a great deal of freedom and much less emphasis is placed on grades and testing. There are two schools affilaited with this movement in my hometown of Ithaca, NY, two in Pennsylvania and many in Israel. It sounds like a wonderful place to work and a school that must be heaven for students whose personality fits (which probably fits many children).

I told her about the two main trends in education in math in the US. There’s the stimulus-response behaviorist advocates who start with children being a blank slate that needs to be filled with the correct way of thinking about the clearly defined thousands of small bits of information. On the opposite end, there’s the constructivists who believe that children come with experiences and needs that are unique. Each person needs to work within social settings to explore and discover concepts with strong adult assistance. She responded that that conflict is indeed the same in Israel. The conflict is everywhere and in every subject, not just math.

The Democratic Schools obviously advocate in a strong way the second, constructivist approach. The US testing movement that currently dominates is a movement towards the behaviorists and at least partially away from the constructivist approaches in the math standards of 1989 and 2000. However, it is still possible to keep a solid constructivist approach within the shell we have in the US.

Mickey estimated we walked about 10 kilometers. I had a needed nap back at the hotel and woke up groggy to go to Mickey’s house for dinner. His mother is in a stage of memory loss and has a full-time woman from the Philippines who takes care of her at his mother’s house. This is an excellent arrangement, you can feel how much she cares and is effective with her.

Mickey and Orly had two of their three children home and they were very impressive people. They have a 24-year old son in a 12-year program to become a pilot. Their daughter is 22 and studying bio-medical engineering. I would study bio-medical engineering just for the name but needless to say it sounds like incredibly hard work. I didn’t get to meet their 18-year old. Mickey cooked a great meal, soup, several vegetables cooked just right and chicken. I don’t remember him cooking like that when we shared an apartment in 1972 in Montreal.