In the late 1960’s Rafi Aaronson, director of the Ministry of Education’s curriculum project, asked the committee members working on that project to establish criteria for the types of questions that were to appear in the student workbooks and the relationship between those workbooks and the teacher manuals. The following is an excerpt from the response that Nechama Leibowitz wrote as member of the advisory board.
Nechama’s full response in Hebrew appears in Pirkei Nechama, Eliner Library, Jerusalem 2001, pp. 653-656 and is reprinted here with permission of the publishers.
Dear Rafi,
The central aim of text study is to learn how to read a text, that is, that the text must induce the student to think, to make comparisons with the associations that occur to him, to ask and question. The point is that it is not the teacher but rather the text itself that stimulates the student; the text itself should bring the student to pose questions and to seek the answers (and it is irrelevant whether the text is a poem, a chapter of Tanach or a passage from the Ramban or Rashi.)
By what method can we achieve these goals? It is clear that the direction, stimulus and questions coming from the teacher must gradually diminish over the course of the years of study. In time, the teacher’s role is to become a facilitator – directing discussion by granting the floor, supervising so that the debate does not veer off topic, recommending study aids and supplying essential information that is unavailable to the student. Based on this, it should be fairly easy to agree on the methods. Let us begin with things to avoid:
1.Preambles, introductions and preparations towards reading the text, if necessary at all, should be kept to a bare minimum. The objective is for the student to learn how to read a text when there is no teacher directing the study. Ideally, therefore, no background whatsoever should be offered before reading the text. Open the text and read it!
2.“Small” questions, i.e., questions the replies to which are obvious, unequivocal, and purely informational, should be avoided. (This touches on the issue of student workbooks.) Similarly objectionable are “low-level” questions which do not require any deliberation, decision, or choices. My argument is not with the occasional question raised in class; I am, however, uncomfortable with the creation of a set of questions aimed at having the student prepare the text for class. Questions like these accustom the student to not think critically about the text that he is reading, to not hesitate, doubt or object to a difficult passage. Instead, questions like these teach the student to wait for the teacher’s questions.
I recall a class that I gave as a guest teacher, when I read a certain passage (I do not remember the subject, perhaps it was a chapter of Tanach). The text was particularly strange and extraordinary, even frightening. Naturally, I expected a volcanic outburst from the class, yet after reading it aloud I looked upon the class … behold, total silence!
I said: Have you nothing to say about this?
They said: “You have not yet asked us anything.”
I think that this is most characteristic. Text study has turned into an exercise of giving teachers the answers they are looking for (a.k.a., the “correct” answers) correct answers to the questions they posed. This is the exact opposite to the goal which I think you and I share.
Most workbooks as I know them, even if they contain “good” questions, do not educate towards the aim of the Arbeitsunterricht [the “active learning” movement popular in Germany – where Nechama grew up – in the 1920’s].
The student does not learn methods of work. I shall quote something from the fathers of the Arbeitsunterricht method: “Spiritual practical work trains the student to fulfill tasks in order to reach a certain goal through active endeavor and by overcoming difficulties and resolving conflicts.”
This is obviously just idle talk. However, it already hints that it is necessary for the students to begin to think about how to reach the desired goal; to think about the method of work.
What if the students do not understand?
The teacher must say: So what shall we do?
Suggestions will be raised by the students:
“Let us study the commentary.”
“Let us look in X.”
“Let us go back to Y.”
I saw this method in practice while observing Mrs. Avigayil Semmel at the Ruhama elementary school (where there are a large percentage of what are called today “special needs” children) in 4th grade.
The teacher: “So, what shall we do?”
The girls:
“We have to read it again.”
“We have to see what Metsudot [a commentary] says.”
“We have to go back to such-and-such chapter which we have already learned but have perhaps forgotten.”
What is particularly missing in workbooks is the lack of attention to a logical progression in the types of activities that are offered. The same considerations apply to 7th grade as apply to 10th grade. In every case it is the teacher asking and the student who responds. Even if a range of activities is demanded – checking commentaries, comparing and contrasting them, dividing up a chapter, connecting texts and concepts, etc., etc. – it is still the workbook or the teacher demanding, it is not the text demanding. The student never achieves the ultimate goal of the learning.
There are many ways and means – “tricks” (I am not ashamed to use this term) both in homework and in classwork which bring us closer to the goal where the teacher becomes “almost or entirely superfluous” (as the famous motto of one of the fathers of the “modern methods” goes) and the student comes to learn how to overcome difficulties by himself. I prefer not to go into detail about these at this point. All I am trying to explain is why the students’ workbooks in junior and senior high school (even if they contain very clever questions) do not bring us nearer to our goal, but rather distance us from it.
Regarding the educational goal that simple Jews call “the love of the Torah”, which is referred to by contemporary pedagogic literature as “the educational goal in the affective domain”, it seems to me to have been totally forgotten, and it even seems to me that the authors of the workbooks are ashamed of it!! (I may be mistaken – I certainly hope that I am.) As I have already noted, the general educational community is not ashamed to discuss affective education at all. One of the aims that drives the teacher in the educational world at large is to serve G-d. But why do we need the approval of educational theoreticians – we certainly know that if we do not educate towards the love of the Torah and its Laws during the Tanach lessons, when else shall we do it?
I have many more arguments against the method under discussion but I do not want to burden you with the reading of an even longer letter. Thank you again for your collaboration and patience to read all this.
Cordially,
Nechama