In 1999, noted educators Howard Gardner and E.D. Hirsch debated their distinctive views on curriculum development. Their debate can be viewed via this link. The following are responses of educators who discuss the implications of this debate for Jewish Studies curriculum development.
Table of Contents
Both Skills and Content are Needed – Devora Steinmetz
We Must Focus on Shared Jewish Literacy – Steve Bailey
Jewish Education Raises Different Questions – Pinhas Zuriel Hayman
Both Skills and Content are Needed
Devora Steinmetz
I always find it frustrating to see educational debate still being framed as an either-or choice between cultural literacy and critical thinking, between basic skills and problem-solving, between high standards and openness to questions and interpretation. Whether we are talking about literature or mathematics or Humash, to me it is clear that powerful, authentic learning encompasses both acquiring a solid body of content knowledge and basic skills and critical inquiry, problem-solving and interpretation. Not only are the poles of these dualities not in tension with each other, but, I would argue, each is an essential component that enables the other, and the combination of all of these dimensions of learning is what constitutes real learning.
Perhaps the easiest discipline in which to demonstrate this is mathematics, which is striking because mathematics, along with literacy, is one of the key battlegrounds in the back-to-basics versus thinking war that keeps rearing its head in both political and educational arenas. At Beit Rabban, the day school that I founded a little over a decade ago, we have convinced parents year after year that authentic mathematical learning — that is, carefully designed explorations in which even our youngest students put into practice the habits of mind that characterize real mathematical inquiry — builds powerful skills. And parents have been convinced not through educational arguments but through the fact that, despite (or, rather, because of) the time that their children devote to fascinating mathematical inquiry, they demonstrate basic math skills at a level far in advance of the standard curricular expectations. If it is nevertheless the case, as Hirsch and others point out, that research shows that schools which seek to emphasize thinking tend to fall short on basic skills, then I suspect it is largely because, all too often, we do not educate teachers, first, to have a powerful understanding of the subject matter that they teach and, second, to teach the subject matter in a way that is truly authentic to the discipline, so that powerful engagement with thinking and ideas goes hand-in-hand with powerful basic skills. Our current failure to teach basic skills in the context of rich, authentic learning experiences does not mean that we should give up trying to educate children more richly; it simply means, as we all know, that we cannot hope to change the way children are educated without radically changing the way we educate the people who are entrusted with teaching them.
What I find even more frustrating than the persistence of the debate between cultural literacy and critical thinking in the world of general education, though, is that this kind of either-or thinking has become commonplace in Jewish educational settings. While, traditionally, day schools prioritized content, over the past decades, many educators have begun to pay more attention to the idea that children should be taught critical thinking skills. Unfortunately, the attempt to focus on thinking almost always comes at the expense of learning significant content, with the often-articulated explanation that depth is more important then breadth, as if both the relative value of these dimensions, as well as the assumption that there must be a trade-off between them, are simply givens.
Accepting these trade-offs, leads to an impoverished educational experience. First, even if one’s main goal is to develop critical thinking, it seems obvious that students can only develop strong thinking by encountering significant content — that is, both a significant amount of content, and content that is selected because of its significance. Second, and perhaps even more important, I wonder whether students can develop a deep interest in the material or address important questions relating to the discipline without encountering significant content. That is, there is more than one kind of thinking skill, and the more sophisticated skills of analysis and discourse require a learner to meet up with more than sparse and sporadic content. And, critically, if we care about students’ disposition toward learning —which I take to be a given especially in Jewish education — I wonder whether we can hope to develop and sustain deep interest, engagement, and motivation without the encounter with a broad range of ideas, the experience of intensity, and the feeling of accomplishment that come with learning a significant body of material. And, finally, I take seriously the notion of cultural literacy, especially in an area such as Torah study, where the foundational canon (unlike the by now much-debated notion of a Western core canon) is well-defined. If we want our students to participate in the discourse of study and interpretation with other Jews across time and place, then we must give them the cultural fluency that enables them to do so. And cultural fluency encompasses significant content knowledge, solid basic skills, the ability to think critically and creatively, and the passion for learning that comes with learning richly from richly educated teachers.
We Must Focus on Shared Jewish Literacy
Steve Bailey
Prof. Howard Gardner argues that we should be teaching our students how to think critically, analyze thoughtfully and abstract philosophically. Prof. E.D. Hirsch Jr. posits that our educational focus should be on shared literacy of the facts and on knowledge common to our culture, rather than on achievement of generic intellectual processes.
To paraphrase a Talmudic dictum: “elu v’elu….” – “Both these and these are words of contemporary education.”
In deciding on the overall goal for my multi-year curriculum development project in a very large day school (1700 students), I needed to choose the approach that would graduate most students with “core literacy” in both Jewish knowledge and skills. In my project, I define “core literacy” as being comprised of knowledge and skills in three areas: cognitive, behavioral and affective. The cognitive reflects essential knowledge in areas of Jewish classical texts, laws and customs, holidays, liturgy, philosophy and ethics. The behavioral area reflects essential skills of Jewish practice such as Shabbat and holiday observances, prayer, kashrut, tzedakah, mitzvot and customs as well as ethical behaviour. Finally, the affective category covers the essential “Jewish spirit,” reflected in Jewish identity, meaningfulness and relevance of tradition, commitment to Jewish practices and values as well as a Zionistic commitment to Israel and the Jewish people. All of these goals reflect E.D. Hirsch’s focus of transmitting the “shared literacy” and knowledge of our culture. Of course, Hirsch speaks of American or Western shared literacy, but Jewish education has specific particularistic goals as priorities.
Our overriding responsibility in Judaism is to transmit our heritage of laws, ethics, sacred teachings and practices of Judaism through identification with our people’s history and study of our holy texts. We want our students to be responsible and loyal to our Creator as shown through the way they live each day and to be identified with the People and State of Israel. As educators, we also need accountability by means of assessment of individual student achievement in acquiring this knowledge and skill. Both these goals are best accomplished through what Prof. Hirsch would call a “high-octane curriculum” which is designed to produce high literacy in one’s shared culture.
Certainly we want to teach our students to study texts critically, think deeply and develop analytic skills, as Gardner argues. Often this approach has support from the traditional method of “eyun” over “b’kiyut.” It is a method that advanced yeshiva students thrive on. But they are perhaps 30% of a school population. The reality is that most students are not advanced and to invest their limited hours of Jewish education in intellectual casuistry may be doing them a disservice. All students should learn to think critically and analyze in-depth, but this must be as a tool to cultural literacy, not as an end in itself. Given our vast history and literature, we do not want students to graduate with borderline illiteracy. Without a rich, broad and variegated fund of Jewish knowledge, we can graduate students with superior intellectual abilities but with a narrow and superficial knowledge of Judaism.
For our brightest, committed students, both Gardner’s and Hirsch’s goals are equally attainable. For these upper-third, committed students, the educational focus can be on the cognitive skills and processes that motivate independent learning, for these students are likely to independently seek knowledge for its own sake and they require the tools needed to do this. But for 70% of our day school students, whose families are weakly committed and whose personal motivation is fragile, our primary goal needs to be the effective transmission of a broad, meaningful fund of core Jewish knowledge and shared cultural literacy.
Jewish Education Raises Different Questions
Pinchas Zuriel Hayman
Wither Western education goes, so goes Jewish education. Modern educational theories and trends dominate our society, and Jewish educators – on the whole, a well-informed and thoughtful population – are never far behind. We want the best for our children, and if the experts say that the new math will provide it, we’re in. However, Jewish Studies are not Western disciplines: Bible, Oral Tradition, Prayer, Midrash, Halachah and Jewish Thought are all either Oriental texts, or based upon them. To adopt Western educational approaches in a Jewish educational environment is akin to wearing a three-piece wool suit in the Sahara – stylish but singularly inappropriate.
The debate between Howard Gardner (The Disciplined Mind) and E.D. Hirsch Jr. (Cultural Literacy, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them), is yet another inadequate context for the discussion of Jewish educational needs. Both Gardner and Hirsch operate in general, Western educational contexts. To transpose any of their proposals on their own to Jewish education is flawed from the beginning. General education is centered on functional skills and cultural expressions. Jewish education is centered on sacred texts which have innate, overriding value and stature. General education is a function of Western written traditions. Jewish education operates from a primarily oral, not written tradition. General education operates in a utilitarian context, measuring “outcomes” that are applicable in daily life, while Jewish education teaches that learning is a value in itself, independent of “outcomes.” A classic example of the clash between Western and Jewish educational priorities is the attitude toward learning by heart. Modern Western educationalists have consistently roasted rote learning as unnecessary, at best, and primitive, at worst. Jewish educational traditions categorize sources which must, or must not be learned by heart, as a reflection of their origin and function in halachic society – “d’varim she’bichtav i ata rashai l’omran b’al peh, ud’varim b’al peh i ata rashai l’kotvam.”
What sources are available to us for the construction of a more indigenous taxonomy for Jewish education? To mention but two: Maimonides summarized the Jewish approach to Jewish Studies curricula in his Hilchot Talmud Torah, chapter one, paragraphs 11-12. On the basis of the Talmudic tradition from Babli Kiddushin 30a, he categorizes learning into three types: Mikra, Mishnah and Talmud. Mikra is the divine text learned by careful reading, Mishnah is the oral legal text learned from one’s Master by exacting repetition, and Talmud is one’s own derivations from and contribution to Mikra and Mishnah, after reasonable mastery of both. In the modern context, we would define this sublime trilogy as: literacy in basic source materials, awareness of common best practice, and the ability for independent cognition in new circumstances. The Maharal and his school went further, defining the ages and accomplishments required at each stage of study.
Would any Jewish educator deny Hirsch’s claim that fluent knowledge of basic texts is a fundamental requirement of education? Do we not all agree that an educated Jewish child not only knows the Bible – he knows and experiences Biblical texts as a direct contact with God in history? Do we not all agree that an educated, observant Jewish child knows Mishnah, learns Talmud, lives Halachah and practices prayer? Do we not all want our children to walk the paths of Pumbedita and feel embedded in the soil of the Land of Israel? What Hirsch calls “cultural literacy” is, for the Jew, a fulfillment of the divine command.
On the other hand, Jewish educators cannot make do with the production of knowledgable illiterates. Graduates of Jewish schools must not only be aware of a basic content inventory, they must be able to learn unseen sacred texts on their own in an adult, thoughtful and probing way – well above Gardner’s “disciplined mind.” This ability is only acquired through the practice of graded, defined skills in a reasonable quantity of textual studies. Modern crises in Jewish education center around the failure of some institutions to empower students with such abilities.
As a consultant to the world of Jewish education, it would seem to me that we should be deriving our models for the education of our children from scholars of Torah, and not from the saints of Western academia. In the end, the product of our schools is the reflection of our own chosen values – and of our determination to implement these distinct values within an overwhelming foreign culture.