"What about the quality of those who will remain (teachers)? Their quality is falling rapidly because of low-level teachers' colleges and an absence of leadership inspiration. "

More than her colleagues in the top ranks of the prattlers, Livnat represents the absence of constructive thought in the planning of Israel's future, because her areas of concern are not determined by political considerations. It can be said, then, that she embodies the fall from Herzl to Herzliya Pituah, the affluent community named after Theodor Herzl. When she took over as education minister, she promised a reform that would include the playing of the national anthem at school and the reinforcement of Jewish tradition. The anthem initiative - a silly drumming up of national spirit - is today remembered only because of the jokes that comic Yatzpan got out of it.

Nothing good happened in education, certainly not in culture, for which Livnat is also responsible. While loudly silencing every contrary opinion in the ministry, she has neglected the education infrastructure. This is the first time in the country's history that not a single new classroom is under construction, her promises notwithstanding. The "core project" - general studies to enhance the common denominator in national knowledge - was burned in the ultra-Orthodox fire. The new "revolution" is a joke. A five-day week is only the continuation of the cancellation of the long school day, whose renewal the Knesset's Education Committee this week postponed until 2010.

Livnat has failed more than her predecessors to block budget cuts. But this industrious woman - she recently literally fainted from working too much, both in her ministry and in the corridors of Likud power - has accomplished little even in matters that are not decided by money. She has lots of committees, and the recommendations of previous ones that are now moldering in desk drawers. Now she is brandishing the proposals of high-tech man Shlomo Dovrat, who is trying to help her lubricate the dismissal of redundant teachers. What about the quality of those who will remain? Their quality is falling rapidly because of low-level teachers' colleges and an absence of leadership inspiration. She allowed the important classification system, based on countrywide testing, to falter because of anarchy in the school administrations. Under the guidance of Prof. Yaakov Katz, the chairman of the ministry's Pedagogic Secretariat, the list of basic concepts in heritage, Zionism and democracy became a ludicrous project that borders on sheer ignorance.

While proposing to the Herzliya Conference that parts of the West Bank be annexed, she again demonstrated an acquired leadership failure in disqualifying pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim from being awarded the Wolf Prize. She pushed her way into his case lacking the required emotional intelligence, in a field as complex as education and culture. Nor is there anyone under her to push things. Her director general, Ronit Tirosh, is a yes-woman who nevertheless has been deprived of most of the powers that usually go with her job. It's hard to blame Livnat. She couldn't bring to the job what she has never had: a true affinity for culture and education, a personality that is inspiring in areas that cannot actually be "learned" even in intensive work.

From Herzliya to Caesarea, memory is short. At the economic conference of the elites held at the golfing town in the summer, she admitted the failure of the reform she had declared when given the sensitive portfolio. On the same occasion, the born reformer whipped out the idea that children would start to read and write in kindergarten, and by first grade would already be learning English. She promised autonomy to the municipal education systems, along with other things. The people who can best check Livnat's remarks are the parents, of course. Are their children learning English in first grade? Can they read and write, if the parents themselves didn't teach them? Are they learning anything in first and second grades, contrary to what a granddaughter who is well known to this writer stubbornly maintains?

Indeed, Livnat is the most glittering symbol of the failure of the present government. She has no Palestinians or terrorism to pin the blame on, only the treasury. She lacks the ability to become a highly regarded education minister, as someone with a more consummate personality could be, despite budget constraints. Livnat and the conceptual fallacies that her failure reflects are the reason. But "don't worry," she said when recovering from her fainting spell last month, "I'll be around for a long time yet."