The article presents three women who grew up outside mainstream schools in Israel, and a researcher who studies the phenomenon, to show how home schooling shaped their education, social life, army service, and parenthood. Their experiences range from structured home instruction to a more self-directed, unschooling model, and all three say they encountered skepticism from outsiders about whether they could learn at all.
Dora Levi Zinigard, 32, from Jerusalem, was in formal education only for kindergarten. Raised in Ariel by immigrants from the former Soviet Union, she says her father taught math, science and humanities, her mother taught English and other subjects, and relatives and outside teachers added music, art and other enrichment. She completed no matriculation certificate, yet studied at the Open University and later earned a degree at Bar-Ilan University. She says the army treated her as having almost no education, her KABA score was near the minimum, and she was recently rejected from volunteering with MDA and United Hatzalah because she lacks a matriculation certificate. Levi Zinigard, widowed five months ago and mother of four, says her children spent 11 years in home schooling before entering regular frameworks after her husband became ill.
Neta Shefron-Abraams, 31, from Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, says her parents removed her five older siblings from school after reading about the idea and meeting another family doing the same. She describes her upbringing as unschooling, with no fixed curriculum and learning driven by interest. She was mocked by children and adults who asked whether she knew basic arithmetic or called her stupid, and at her army induction she says officials could not process the fact that she had no school record, which left her with a very low KABA. She later studied at Tel Hai, completed a pre-academic program with honors, earned admission to social work studies, and says her own three children are now in regular childcare or school.
Midein Regev-Humash, 31, of Abu Ghosh, studied in an open school for two years before her mother kept her at home. She says people questioned her with barbed remarks such as whether she knew Pythagoras's theorem, but she later completed only one external matriculation exam, in dance. Her children are not home schooled. She says the model demands total commitment and that each family must decide what suits the child and the parents.
The article also quotes Dr. Inbal Cohen Miden, a home schooling researcher and educational counselor from Emek Hefer, whose three children all eventually moved into school. She says parents choose this path from “internal motivation,” not only because of school problems, and argues that learning at home does not mean sitting through fixed lessons. She says the financial and social costs can be real, but home schooling can work for younger children if the family is fully committed and responsive to the child’s needs.
