Ilana Snyder

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Waiting for Gonski: How Australia failed its schools' by Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor

June 2022, no. 443 • 25 May 2022

In 2011, when businessman David Gonski was reviewing education funding in Australia, he visited two primary schools in Sydney’s west. At the first, he found the principal dealing with glass from a break-in the night before. As he sat in the school’s reception, he observed that the children arriving for school were from non-English-speaking migrant backgrounds. When they toured the school, the ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Undemocratic Schooling: Equity and quality in mass secondary education in Australia ' by Richard Teese and John Polesel

May 2003, no. 251 • 01 May 2003

This books has a number of admirable qualities. In times when open subscription to a social justice agenda runs the risk of ridicule, it is a brave book. It does not shy away from identifying the universities – specifically, the sandstones – as integral to any explanation of why Australian secondary education is inequitable. And both authors work in one: the University of Melbourne. The book a ... (read more)

'Neighbour against neighbour: The cycle of conflict in Israel, Gaza, and Palestine' by Ilana Snyder

June 2021, no. 432 • 26 May 2021

Listen to this article as read by the author.   The Middle-East conflict is perhaps the most intractable in the world. Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting for nearly a century over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The world has witnessed a never-ending cycle of tension and conflict, including a number of full-scale wars, with immense suffering on both side ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Dumbing Down: Outcomes-based and politically correct – the impact of the culture wars on our schools' by Kevin Donnelly

May 2007, no. 291 • 01 May 2007

Readers of The Australian could not fail to have noticed the numerous articles written by Kevin Donnelly over the last few years complaining about the ‘parlous’ state of Australian education. With extraordinary repetition, Donnelly has called for a return to a syllabus approach, the books of the canon and teacher-directed literature classes, where students are presented with universal truths. ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion' by Tom Segev, translated by Haim Watzman

November 2019, no. 416 • 23 October 2019

In Israel’s recent election, Benjamin Netanyahu desperately defended his position as Israel’s prime minister, but perhaps also as a free man, because he may soon face trial for corruption charges. As Israelis learn more about his lavish life style, many yearn for the days of David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), whom they recall as an ascetic statesman of vision and integrity. Netanyahu is seen as t ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Jean Blackburn: Education, feminism and social justice' by Craig Campbell and Debra Hayes

September 2019, no. 414 • 27 August 2019

In the foundation Jean Blackburn Memorial Lecture in 2014, David Gonski observed that Australian schooling was unfairly funded – that the money wasn’t going where it was needed. To our national shame, this is not a new phenomenon. Successive governments in Australia have adopted school-funding policies for which there has been little educational justification and which have contributed to the ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Antisemitism: Here and now' by Deborah Lipstadt

August 2019, no. 413 • 07 June 2019

Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is renowned as the woman who defeated David Irving in court after he sued her for describing him as a Holocaust denier. Her portrayal by Rachel Weisz in the film Denial (2016) ensured that Lipstadt and her landmark victory achieved even wider celebrity. Thousands of books have been written on the history of anti-Semitism, and Lipstadt has not set out to write ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'All The Rivers' by Dorit Rabinyan, translated by Jessica Cohen

Online Exclusives • 29 November 2017

In December 2015, Israel’s Ministry of Education banned Dorit Rabinyan’s prize-winning novel All the Rivers from the high school curriculum on the grounds that the story of a romance between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man ‘threatens separate identity and promotes intermarriage’. Far-right Education Minister Naftali Bennett backed the decision, claiming that the book not only encour ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Required Reading: Literature in Australian schools since 1945' edited by Tim Dolin, Joanne Jones, and Patricia Dowsett

October 2017, no. 395 • 28 September 2017

At the heart of Required Reading is a database called ALIAS (Analysis of Literature in Australian Schools). It includes all the reading material prescribed for senior secondary English and Literature courses in most of the states from 1945 to 2005. Like all electronic databases, ALIAS comprises a structured collection of items to view, navigate, and search. To make meaning from these items they ne ... (read more)

Ilana Snyder reviews 'Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish conflict over Israel' by Dov Waxman

August 2016, no. 383 • 21 July 2016

Two Jews, three opinions. Jews nod their heads in agreement when they hear those words, just as they chuckle knowingly at the story of the two Jews stranded on a desert island who build three synagogues – one for each of them and one that neither would visit on principle. Sometimes those differences of opinion can assume an unpleasant character. Since Trouble in the Tribe was published earlier ... (read more)