“Hemda has changed the way that I see science,” says Eden Nisanov, a 17 year-old high school student from south Tel Aviv. “Thanks to my experience here, after I’ve completed my army service, I would like to study physics at university.”
The Hemda Center for Science Education, a teaching institution located in the heart of Tel Aviv, was established in 1991 following a report by professor Haim Harari, a world-renowned scientist, who slammed the level of science teaching in Israeli schools.
The situation deteriorated even more when the government reduced its allocations for science education due to increased security spending and the arrival of over 1 million immigrants to the country. From having the third highest level worldwide of science performance in schools, Israel eventually dropped to 27th place.
The Rothschild Foundation in partnership with the Tel Aviv government established Hemda. Supported by the Tel Aviv Foundation and chaired by Harari, it has played a leading role in enabling Israeli students to regain ground in science education. The center’s mission — to raise the level of the country’s human resources in the field of science and technology; resources which are crucial for research and development in academia, the military and high-tech industries.
In 13 short years, Hemda has already transformed science teaching in Tel Aviv from below average to levels of excellence previously unknown in Israel.
“Hemda is all about excellence and the highest standards of scientific teaching,” explained Tehilla Ben-Gai, executive director of Hemda. “In essence the high schools of Tel Aviv outsource their science teaching to us.”
Hemda serves high school students in Tel Aviv who choose to specialize in physics and chemistry. In the current school year the center is educating nearly 1,000 students from 17 schools in the city.
The center’s thousands of graduates, although still in their 20s, include senior officers in elite Israel Defense Forces intelligence and research units as well as high-tech entrepreneurs and executives and the most promising university postgraduate students.
The spacious lobby of Hemda Center stimulates curiosity and challenges both the senses and intellect. A giant chess set, a series of pyramids, which when taken apart are not assembled so easily, and a large dolphin with a point of balance that defies visual logic are among many games to whet the students’ scientific appetite.
“Our emphasis is on showing the wonders of science to our students by using equipment which brings science alive,” stressed Ben-Gai.
Such equipment includes a Van de Graaff generator, a device that creates static electricity. In a typical lesson physics teacher Dr. Eyal Cohen invites 17-year-old Bar Katz to the front of the class to touch the generator. The student’s thick mop of black hair stands on end and the class fall around laughing with wonder. Cohen has their attention now; they all want to know how such an amazing phenomenon occurs.
The teacher explains about the generator’s electric charges and is then bombarded by students’ questions. Curious teenagers surround Cohen after class, eager to delve more deeply into what they have learned.
Katz, an 11th-grade student, confirms Ben-Gai’s assessment of what the 21st century student expects from the center, which is presently expanding its activities by building a hologram laboratory, an acoustic laboratory, a spectroscopic laboratory and a remote control laboratory. “This place is cool,” he said. “I enjoy coming here because I learn a lot and its fun. The teachers are always surprising us and opening up new horizons. I’ve got friends in other cities who tell me that their physics lessons put them to sleep.”
Over the past three years the Hemda Center has trebled its intake and diversified the population base of students, who previously came almost exclusively from the wealthier northern neighborhoods of the city where extra tuition was the norm.
“The reason we had few students from disadvantaged neighborhoods,” explained Ben-Gai, “was that they had little grounding in math. So instead of starting our program for 10th-graders, we started taking in eighth-graders and offering junior high courses for talented students.”
As a result, many of the students are now new immigrants and Arabs, and there are special courses for the visually impaired.
In addition to Hemda’s state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment, the quality of its staff has much to do with the center’s success. Ben-Gai herself has a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Tel Aviv University and almost the entire teaching staff of 17 have doctorates. “We demand the highest standards of our teachers,” she insisted, “who are only offered yearlong contracts, renewable before each new school year if they meet our requirements.”
Hemda is open 11 months of the year and 18 hours a day with teachers not only giving classes but working in the laboratories and communicating with students through the Web. Promising students who cannot afford a home computer are helped to acquire one, as well as an Internet connection, through a special Hemda fund.
In addition, the Stanley and Pamela Chais Research Center within Hemda plays an important national role by providing courses for science teachers from throughout the country on “how to teach science.”
Largely maintained by the Tel Aviv municipality, Hemda has had a rapid increase of students, but not of city funds. The Tel Aviv Foundation, however, has mobilized its donors worldwide so that funds will be available to meet the growing needs of the city’s talented schoolchildren through the provision of additional classes.
“Hemda is proof that you can teach high school physics which is exciting and enriching while allowing students to excel in their formal government examinations,” Harari said. “It is also the proof that you can convince excellent people with Ph.D. degrees to devote themselves to high school teaching, if you provide them with challenges and outstanding facilities. We hope that Hemda will become a model for imitation and replication all around Israel.”