Yesterday a new school year began in the Ukrainian and Israeli schools.

Unfortunately, many schools of Ukraine came into this year understaffed. At the same time the Ministry of Education is going to dismiss nearly 4,000 teachers as part of an education system reform. Do you know that about 20% of school teachers in Ukraine are people of retirement age? Each year, the Ukrainian pedagogical institutes graduate thousands of teachers of different specialties, but the salary of 1.5-3 thousand hryvnias does not attract young people.

At the same time, there is a contest for school teachers’ positions in Israel. Do you think that there are great teachers' salaries? No, strikes of educators and even students are regularly held in Israel. It's all about prestige of the teaching profession. Successful people quit their former work places - with good salaries and leadership positions - in order to go to work at school. And competition among such candidates is five people at one place.

All these people want to work with the younger generation of Israelis to do something significant for the whole country. For example, the executive director of a major Israeli computer company Avi Nathan has recently quitted his job and begun to teach mathematics at a usual Israeli school. However, his colleagues, his family have supported him. Avi will receive a smaller salary, his record will return to zero, but he will educate a new generation. This fact is an incentive for him.

Tell me, how many stories do you know, when directors, fighter pilots and military officials quit their career to go to work at school? I know a lot, but all of them are about Israel. There is a special training center where former engineers, veterinarians and managers learn the teaching profession. Moreover, everybody will not go to work at school, but only one of five. And such people are becoming more and more: in the last few years about 4 thousand Israelis decided to change the type of activity radically. Thirst for knowledge in the modern Jewish state is stronger than thirst for money.

I have been to many countries and seen enough of different relationships. But the most reverential attitude to children I have met is in Israel. Here children are loved and respected: a kibbutz school is not much different from any of the capital, besides it is not about financial support, but namely about attitude to people.