I’d like to offer a few comments about the posting from Rafi Eis and the course designed and now being taught by Dr. Shawn-Zelig Aster at YU.
1) I agree that the lack of standards and aligned testing represent two deficiencies in Jewish education in the US and we would do well to address these problems. It is in addressing the problems that we encounter a third and more significant deficiency, classroom instruction. Assessments will never be useful tools in education if educators don’t know how to understand results and what to do about them in the classroom. Because of this, I am significantly more concerned about instruction than I am about standards and assessments.
2) While it is easy to say or imply that in most day schools students are given social promotion and “move up from grade to grade regardless of progress,†I’m not sure that this is the reality. I know that in the four schools in three different regions of the country in which I have worked this is not the practice. To claim that students entering high school are “suddenly surprised that the previous years’ were insufficient†also seems inaccurate. In my experience students and their families are keenly aware of their academic strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the curriculum as they enter high school. The implication that students leaving elementary school are misled into believing that they have strengths in what are objectively, areas of weakness is troubling. Most (all?) high schools have entrance requirements and students know exactly where they stand as they apply to these schools.
3) I cringe when I see any reference to the “shorashim†method of teaching put forth as the desirable approach to achieving mastery in Torah text study. At best, this approach should be the “fall-back†position when a true Ivrit bâ€Ivrit program cannot be implemented. I recognize that this is too often the reality, but this also comes back to the problem of instruction. Many teachers, including those who are fluent in Hebrew are more comfortable teaching in English. Some feel that it is more important for a second grade student to immediately, fully understand a pasuk that he’ll learn God willing every year for the rest of his life and so decide to sacrifice teaching the lifetime Ivrit skills for the immediate understanding in translation. Others claim that our children can’t learn in Ivrit and what they really mean is they can’t teach in Hebrew. In fact, our students are capable of learning Ivrit and thrive in Hebrew immersion programs. The students who are the beneficiaries of this type of learning environment demonstrate strong text skills and understanding without the need for an imposed and unnatural “shorashim†approach.
4) It is my understanding that the posting to Lookjed represents a discussion that starts with YU professors’ frustration with incoming students who are lacking in knowledge and skills despite having spent more than 13 years in Jewish educational institutions. I think that we all understand the frustration and want to address this problem, but if my assertion that the biggest problem in our system is the lack of proper instruction is correct, there is some irony here. For years, many of us have wondered why it is that the premier Modern Orthodox educational institution offers no undergraduate degree in education to men. Women can earn a degree in education from an excellent program, but the initiative to prepare teachers for careers specifically in Jewish education has faltered. Teachers with strong Torah knowledge and lacking pedagogical skills and/or the ability to teach Ivrit b’Ivrit, who are tasked with the job of teaching Torah to our children, produce students who lack the skills and knowledge to learn at a high level. I wonder if the new course offering at YU would be aptly called “We reap what we sow?â€
Rabbi Alan Berkowitz
Principal
Magen David Yeshivah Elementary School
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 08:26AM by mlb.
