Adisu Massala

Adisu Massala (Amharic: አዲሱ መሰለ^? Addīsū Messele, Hebrew: אדיסו מאסלה‎, born 16 June 1961) is an Israeli politician.

Background

Masala was born in Ethiopia in 1961, and made aliyah in 1980 after crossing the Ethiopia-Sudan border to take a plane bound for Israel. Once in the country, he studied social work and mechanical engineering at Bar-Ilan University, gaining a BA and went on to work as a social worker. He also became chairman of the United Ethiopian Jewish Organisation.

He was elected to the Knesset in the 1996 elections on Labour's list. However, he was one of three MKs to break away from the party to form One Nation, led by later Labour Party leader Amir Peretz. Adisu lost his seat in the 1999 elections and has not returned to the Knesset since (in the 2003 elections he was fourth on the party's list, but they won only three seats).

Views on education

The school dropout rate for Ethiopian Jews is higher than that of the Jewish population at large, according to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee-Brookdale Research Institute. Eighteen percent of Ethiopians age 14-17 either drop out or attend school irregularly.

Adisu blames the dropout rate on an educational system that places a large number of the Ethiopian students into religious schools, whether or not they are religious, and into poor-quality boarding schools.

Additionally, he described a problem with the language instruction:

"Reading comprehension is a problem.... Common sense indicates that the great difference in culture and codes has implications for language learning," Masala said. "But the teaching method is uniform and identical for all groups of immigrants. The program doesn't take into account the culture and traditions of one community or another." ^[1]

References

1. ^ Israel's Success in Teaching Hebrew Linked to Ideology Los Angeles Times, 30 May 1998 (republished on the One Nation website)

External links

• Adisu Massala on the Knesset website (in English)