Dr. Steven Bailey was co-founder of Shalhevet High School (Los Angeles) and a researcher, author and consultant in Jewish education, specializing in moral education and curriculum projects. He is a professional development workshop presenter and Co-Director of Quality Education by Design, www.QEDworkshops.com.
About 25 years ago, I was working on a research project investigating moral reasoning and behavior in Jewish day school students. In an Orthodox-affiliated community school, I asked an eighth grade class if they thought that gossiping was wrong. The unanimous response was affirmative, with many students bringing support from various halakhic and homiletic sources. Then I went into a high school class of another community school (traditional but non-Orthodox) and asked the students whether they thought that dating members of other religions was acceptable to Judaism. Again the response was unanimous in rejecting such a proposal, with various kinds of personal and values-based supporting evidence.
The next week I returned to the classes and handed out slips of paper. In the eighth grade I said: “Do not identify yourself on this paper. Please answer this question honestly, ‘yes’ or ‘no’: “Did you gossip about anyone to friend during this past week?” The results indicated that sixty-five percent of eighth graders admitted to gossiping.
In the community high school, assuring the same anonymity, I asked: “In university, would you date someone who was not Jewish if you were seriously attracted to that person and the person felt mutually attracted to you?” Forty-three percent of high school students admitted they would inter-date under the circumstances I described.
What accounts for the discrepancy between what the students unequivocally knew was “wrong” from their religious education and their actual or predicted contradictory behavior?
The differences reflect what researchers in moral development and religious education discuss as the disparity between what someone “knows” is right and actually acting on what they know; in other words, the discrepancy between knowing what one should do and the commitment to act consistent with that knowledge. How do we address this lack of commitment to act on what one knows is “right” through Jewish education?
The challenge
Before looking at some contemporary research on religious commitment that may help our quest, we need to clarify what we mean by “commitment” in the context of Judaism. The most useful working definition for this paper comes from the American Heritage Dictionary: “The state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to a course of action or to another person.” The key phrase for our purposes is “a state of being bound…to a course of action.” Judaism is a religion predominantly characterized by behavior rather than philosophy or dogma. It is also a “covenantal” religion, characterized by obligation and loyalty to Judaism’s written and oral values and teachings.
Thus, the task of teaching towards commitment in the context of Jewish education involves developing in the student a state of being bound, emotionally and intellectually, to act in a way that reflects the principles and values inherent in our covenantal relationship to God and Judaism’s teachings as reflected in the student’s Jewish education. Different schools, depending on their denominational affiliation and leadership, are going to define this “covenantal obligation” in different ways. But all are concerned with successfully transmitting a commitment to fundamental Jewish values and Jewish identity such that the future of the Jewish people will be strengthened and preserved.
All Jewish schools – regardless of denomination – believe in values of preserving Jewish identity, sustaining the future of the Jewish people through raising and educating Jewish children, supporting the continued existence of a sovereign Jewish nation (irrespective of politics), maintaining some Jewish customs and practices (including synagogue attendance sometime during the year) and the critical importance of life-long Jewish learning in some form. How do we connect the knowledge of these Jewish values and practices to actual behavior, present and future?
This, then, is the “crisis of commitment” in contemporary Jewish education. Parents spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on Jewish education, often at major economic sacrifice, to shape their child’s religious identity and assure the continuation of Judaism in the family. A school’s obligation to transmit knowledge and skills in the classroom is not enough to justify parents’ investment in the school’s mission of shaping the next generation of knowledgeable and committed Jews. Schools need to address their responsibility for connecting the school learning experience to the internalized formation of the student’s Jewish identity through the development of the child’s commitment to fundamental Jewish values and teachings.
This, then, is the challenge of educating towards commitment: inculcating a student’s commitment to Jewish values so that the values learned during their Jewish education actually direct their current and future behavior.
Background research
Let’s look at some related research. Over twenty-five years ago, in his pioneering work on moral development and moral education, Lawrence Kohlberg (Kohlberg and Candee, 1984) observed the gap between moral reasoning and moral behavior. He noted that “knowing” the right thing to do did not predict the “right” behavior. Rather, a mature level of moral reasoning was a pre-requisite for increasing the probability of moral behavior, but it was a necessary – but not sufficient condition — to produce the behavior. Throughout his career, Kohlberg’s interest remained on the development of reasoning rather than behavior, because he did not want to indoctrinate students in a particular system of ethics or religion; he wanted to promote universal ethics and good citizenship. Nevertheless, he noted that social and environmental factors, including religious education, influence moral behavior and these need to be studied.
A comprehensive review article on the topic of religiosity and education by Holdcroft (2006) provides support to Kohlberg’s initial observation. Eisenberg (Eisenberg and Mussen, 1989, p. 6) acknowledged that, although cognition and behavior are associated, “there is not a one-to-one correspondence between them. An individual with mature sophisticated concepts and judgments about moral issues may or may not ordinarily behave in prosocial ways”. Walker and associates (Walker, Pitts, Hennig and Matsuba, 1999) were concerned, as well, with the relationship between cognition and behavior. They called the disparity, “gappiness,” or the fact that moral action does not always flow from moral thought. As Kohlberg, they noted that morality has both intrapersonal and interpersonal components that must be considered when looking to link thinking to behavior.
What are these components? Internalization of social norms and values is often labeled as socio-moral development. Two general models have developed: the societal-transmission perspective (Bandura, 1977; Durkheim, 1925/1961) – which argues for society (through culture, family and school) transmitting values, and the self-construction model (Kohlberg, 1969, 1976) – which focuses on internal cognitive process that mature into social values of empathy and social concern. The contemporary position is that neither model is complete and that neither offers a complete account of the processes that accompany socio-moral development. Rather, the theorists recognize the interdependence of transmission of cultural and religious traditions as well as the individual’s internal interconnectedness to the group and its values (Rest, 1986).
Jewish education involves both the societal-transmission and self-construction models. Our teachers transmit knowledge of texts, law, values and ethics (transmission); and, at the same time, encourage students to think critically about moral issues in biblical narratives and in Jewish law and practices (self-construction). Through effective education, students tend to “know” what is right or wrong from a Jewish moral perspective. But how do we build the commitment to actually act on this internalized knowledge?
Teaching for commitment
A lead to an approach comes from a comment by Donald Weeren (1979). In response to the question: “Should schools teach commitment to religion?” he posits that one should not teach commitment to religion explicitly, but rather:
… teach religion in a context of commitment [italics mine]. Teaching commitment to religion implies taking responsibility for leading the antagonistic or undecided person to adopt religious convictions. Teaching religion in a context of commitment means that when religion is taught, the operative assumption of those involved is that it concerns what is of ultimate significance for man. That is what religion means, and for it to be taught in any other way is to denature it. (p. 226)
What Weeren suggests is that a direct, indoctrinating approach of “shoulds” is not effective in inspiring commitment. Rather, educators need to communicate the concepts and values of religion in context of a shared assumption that these principles and actions are of ultimate significance. In other words, besides teaching what we want students to be committed to, we need to transmit to students that “commitment matters.”
If we ask our students to be committed to Jewish identity, to marry and educate their children within Judaism, to advocate for the Jewish homeland, to treat each other with social sensitivity and compassion – we need to communicate those fundamental values in the “context of commitment.” Students need to ‘see and feel’ that these values really matter – they are of ultimate significance – to the school and to the teacher. To paraphrase Pirkei Avot, commitment fosters commitment.
One more research area to discuss before proposing an approach towards transmitting commitment: Krathwohl’s model of affective development. It is an area I wrote about in this journal (Bailey, 2007) when discussing how teachers might facilitate the experience of spirituality in their students. I argued that spirituality could not be taught directly – as Weeren posits regarding ‘commitment’ – but rather through indirect methods, based on the model of Krathwohl’s Affective Taxonomy (Krathwohl, et al, 1964). I suggested that teachers could move the student towards a meaningful and purposeful internalization of values and beliefs through sequential levels of activities, described in stages (interested readers can refer to the Jewish Education Leadership article for all five stages and how they can be applied).
The third level of Krathwohl’s model is: Developing commitment to the value or to the practice. At this level, students begin the internalization process of the particular concept or value. This requires, says Krathwohl, a developing commitment to the value as demonstrated by both an acceptance of it as worthy and preference for it in relation to other behaviors. To be of worth to the student, the experience needs to be personally relevant and valued over other incompatible values or behaviors. The two key characteristics of commitment, says Krathwohl, are a) deeming the value or behavior as significant and central to the student’s life, and b) preferring it over the conflicting value.
Personal significance
Applying a similar approach to facilitate the experience of commitment to the fundamental values and practices of Judaism, as defined by the school, the teacher would need to communicate the worthiness of the principle, by communicating its personal significance to the student and present a persuasive argument for preference of this principle over competing ones in the present and future.
An example: I mentioned earlier that there are some shared principles that most Jewish schools, irrespective of denominational affiliation, would agree. Let’s take this statement, which is likely to be found in some form or another on most Jewish schools’ mission statements, as a working example: “We are dedicated to instilling in our students the importance of honesty, respect and fairness as fundamental Jewish values.” I would venture to say that virtually all schools have units that teach these values, using Biblical, mishnaic (Pirkei Avot), aggadic and halakhic sources. Most schools have posters on walls with pithy quotes that point to the virtues of honesty, respect and fairness.
One important manifestation of this value in the last decade is the active focus, through special programs and projects, on decreasing bullying in schools, as an expression of the value of respecting others. According to what we have said, however, it is insufficient to teach units on the values of respect and social sensitivity – even if taught in creative and enjoyable ways augmented by activities – and to hang dozens of posters on walls. Successfully transmitting these facts and successfully organizing activities is necessary, but not sufficient, to facilitate commitment (as Krathwohl defined it) or to predict, in a reliable manner, present and future behavior reflecting these values.
Even after the student has learned about the centrality of ethical behavior to Judaism and responds positively to the value, this value needs to be internalized – to become part of the student’s developing character — according to Krathwohl’s “commitment” level. What needs to be done?
Krathwohl posits that the teacher’s self-disclosure (expressing to students what the teacher sincerely believes) is a key variable in the success of internalization of a value, such that the student feels it is critically significant to him or her personally and that this value supersedes other competing values. What this means in practical terms is that the attitude and openness of the teacher in affectively conveying the significance of “the importance of respect, social sensitivity and fairness as fundamental Jewish values” is a key variable in facilitating “commitment” in the student. The student needs to “feel” that this value really “matters” to the teacher; that the teacher is personally committed to this value. Commitment fosters commitment.
A concrete example
Educators reading this will demur:”… of course students know I value respect and social sensitivity!” – but I would suggest that students may ‘know’ that but they don’t ‘feel’ the commitment. How does ‘commitment’ look? Consider these two scenarios. In one classroom, a teacher observes a child from a newly immigrated Russian family being subtly mocked by some girls in class because of her accent. The teacher asks the child to stay after class and asks: “Are you being bullied by those girls?” The typical teen-ager is going to say “no, it’s okay” because she is afraid of getting the others in trouble and causing herself more grief. Then the teacher says, “You know the school has policies against bullying, so if you feel bullied, you can go to the principal and it will be handled.” Although the teacher has not ignored the issue and feels he has acted professionally, has he facilitated commitment to the value of respecting one’s fellow to either the victim or the perpetrators? I think not.
Consider the same situation in another classroom. This teacher sees the same bullying in her classroom on a number of occasions. She does not need to ask the victim anything. She stops a regular lesson and says to her class:
I am very upset and disappointed to see that some girls in my class are hurting the feelings of a classmate. I know that you have learned this is wrong, but it is still going on. I care about every one of you in my class and when someone insensitively hurts someone else, I have to tell you I will not tolerate that in my classroom. Everyone deserves basic respect in this classroom – it is a trait that I value highly — and there is no justification for mocking or making fun of another. If I see it occur again, I will have those girls meet with me and explain why they think it is ok to be hurtful to others rather than compassionate and supportive of each other. Now, I hope I will not have to mention this again… let’s get back to work…
This may sound confronting and harsh, but notice that the teacher is unequivocally communicating a value that explicitly shows her students that respect matters to her. This is genuine self-disclosure on part of the teacher that is a necessary ingredient in fostering commitment to a value. Also, the teacher is pointing out the significance to the student of the value of respecting others by labeling its incompatible behavior of “hurting the feelings of a classmate” and she clearly communicates that one needs to choose the value of respect over causing hurtfulness. Both these statements are communicated unequivocally, passionately and unconditionally, from a genuine value held by the teacher. The two elements of a) self-disclosure of the significance and relevance of the value, and b) its preference over competing behaviors, are the variables that Krathwohl posits will facilitate commitment.
Generalizing the principle
This is a relatively straightforward illustration. What about the more intangible values of pride in one’s Jewish identity, sustaining the future of the Jewish people, supporting the continued existence of a sovereign Jewish nation, maintaining Jewish customs and practices in one daily life? How do we foster commitment to these values?
Here are some questions educators need to ask themselves as they transmit the essential concepts and values of Judaism to their students:
1. What is my own true commitment to the value I want to teach? Am I equivocal, irresolute and self-doubting about the significance of what I am teaching or am I passionately and unwaveringly committed to the value as an essential fundamental of Jewish life?
2. If I am honestly committed to the value, am I willing to share my genuine feelings with my students about the issue and communicate explicitly and fervently how passionately I feel about the value – how deeply the value matters to me?
3. When I teach the value to my students, do I present it in a way that students themselves honestly feel it relevant to their real lives (not just an abstract Jewish idea) and that it is significant enough for them to take seriously and to internalize it into their philosophy of life, now and in the future?
4. Am I willing to demonstrate my commitment to the value such that I constantly refer to it and its significance throughout my relationship with my student, in the classroom, in the hallways and in the community?
If we are serious, as educators and Jews, about fostering commitment to fundamental Jewish values so that they will be internalized by our students and, in turn, transmitted to the next generation, we need to put in the conscious time and effort to foster commitment. Commitment fosters commitment.
References
Bailey, S. (2007). Can spirituality be taught? Jewish Educational Leadership, 5:2, pp.14-17.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Durkheim, E. (1961). Moral education. New York: Free Press. (Original work published 1925).
Eisenberg, N., & Mussen, P. H. (1989). The roots of prosocial behavior in children. New York: Cambridge University Press. p.6.
Holdcroft, B. (2006). What is religiosity? Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, 10:1, pp. 89-103.
Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence, the cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research (pp. 347-480). New York: Rand McNally.
Kohlberg, L. (1976). Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-developmental approach. In T. Lickona (Ed.), Moral development and behavior: Theory, research, and social issues (pp. 31-53). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Kohlberg, L., & Candee, D. (1984). The relation of moral judgment to moral action. In W. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behavior and moral development: Basic issues in theory and research (pp. 52-73). New York: Wiley Interscience.
Krathwohl, David R., Bloom, Benjamin S., and Masia, Bertram B. (1964). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook II: Affective domain. New York: David McKay Co., Inc.
Rest, J. R. (1986). Moral development. New York: Praeger.
Walker, L. J., Pitts, R. C., Hennig, K. H., & Matsuba, M. K. (1999). Reasoning about morality and real-life moral problems. In M. Killen & D. Hart (Eds.), Morality in everyday life: Development perspectives (pp. 371-407). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Weeren, D. (1979) Religious Education and Secular Education. McGill Journal of Education 14, pg. 226.