<HTML>I have been following the discussion about teaching gemara in Jewish Day
Schools with earnest, as I feel that it is a topic sorely neglected (I
received an MA from Azrieli graduate school of Jewish Education and
there was not one course offered that was devoted to teaching gemara). There
are many ideas to which I would like to respond, but I will suffice for the
moment with one thought.
In response to the discussion about the need to teach skills, this past
year at Ramaz, the Talmud Department has experimented with b'kiut
programs,in addition to the in-class learning. Basically, the students are
expected to learn b'kiut on their own - most of them use the English Art
Scroll - and then have a quiz which tests their knowledge of the content
of
the daf as well as their ability to work with the text of that daf.
It seems that overall the program has been successful, for a number of
reasons, as told to me by the students themselves:
1) The students feel they are "covering ground" which helps to abate the
feeling of being stagnant that sometimes accompanies the in-class
in-depth
skills learning.
2) The students seem to be getting a better sense of the "derech
-gemara" -
in other words what gemara is all about - the forest as opposed to the
individual trees - which, it seems, can only be appreciated through
exposure to large amounts of gemara.
3) Most importantly, though, the students are doing this totally on
their own and this type of investment gives many of them a closer personal
connection to the gemara. This manifests itself in that I see many of
them
not only ask questions, which they normally do, but also often find the
need to "defend" the gemara by answering their classmates' questions.
My point is, that although this b'kiut program is by no means skills
based (although we do quiz on reading the b'kiut as well), it is a valuable
supplement to the in-class skills focus, and can fill some gaps left by
the skills approach.
Menachem Linzer
Talmud Faculty
Ramaz Upper School</HTML>
