Dr. Steve Bailey was co-founder of Shalhevet High School, Los Angeles, CA and a researcher, author and consultant in Jewish education, specializing in moral education. He is a professional development workshop presenter and Director of Quality Education by Design (QED) http://www.QEDworkshops.com

Jewish educators will rarely agree on issues of what to teach (curricula), how to teach (methodology) or scheduling a school calendar that makes all staff happy. But an area of Jewish education that comes closest to consensus is the goal of producing an ethical, socially mature student, sensitive to Jewish values.

Since the establishment of Shalhevet High School (Los Angeles) in 1992 as a Just Community, I have been arguing for a focus on a proactive, formalized approach to ethical reasoning and behavior in Jewish Day school education. Jewish educators would agree that a contemporary Jewish Day School cannot be content to provide only quality Jewish Studies, college preparatory general studies, sports, arts and music. Aside from these important goals, the goal of Jewish education must include an effective pedagogic model of ethical education – educating towards mentchlichkeit. It is critically important that day schools graduate students who integrate Jewish ethical values into their social lives, career goals and community responsibility.

To be sure, many schools have midot projects and hesed programs, but these tend to teach more narrow areas of pro-social behavior (tzedakah, hesed, tikun olam), leaving much of everyday school life – cliques, prejudice, social insensitivity, dishonesty, irresponsibility, disrespect for fellow students, etc. – outside the project. Furthermore, typical midot or hesed projects are given temporary focus and tend to be neither research-based nor assessed for measurable, positive, behavior change outcomes.

The idea behind a Just Community model is that the entire school community – students, teachers, administrators and parents – are all held responsible for a set of policies that reflect values of mutual respect, fairness, justice and social concern, based on a research-based moral education model which infuses all aspects of the school community, each and every day of the year. Although Shalhevet remains the only school-wide Just Community in Jewish education, more and more schools have adopted components of moral education programs based on sound psychological and pedagogic principles inspired by the educational work of the late Lawrence Kohlberg of Harvard University. These specific programs, such as Town Hall or classroom moral dilemma discussions, are designed to sensitize students to ethical dilemmas and social issues within school life and to teach democratic values.

But what about Jewish life after graduation? Although individual ethical character development is being given increasing attention, the preparation of students to become active members of the Jewish community after graduation has been given less attention. In this article, I propose the Kohlberg Just Community model for Jewish Day schools as a gateway to graduating students who, after leaving the school environment, have been educated to become effective representatives of Jewish values in the community at large – on campuses, on school boards, in Jewish communal institutions and as advocates for Israel.

Overview of the Purpose of Education: Knowledge or practice?

Consider this pedagogic question: Is the main focus of Jewish education to transmit past and current knowledge or to prepare students to be active, contributing members of society in a way that reflects Jewish values? The answer is not simple.

The overall goal of education has been a slowly evolving concept. The classical philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, as well as the later philosophers, Augustine and Aquinas, argued that education is primarily the transmission to students of a fixed and ordered body of knowledge through formal instruction. This view predominated both secular and Jewish education throughout the middle ages, until it was challenged in the 18th century by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Education, Rousseau argued, should focus on the learner, not the teacher; instead of being imposed externally, knowledge should develop naturally out of the student. Rousseau’s progressive education model strongly influenced the traditional model of western education, until Dewey, in the early 20th century, gave it a radical twist.

While Dewey (1916/1966) agreed with Rousseau that education should not concentrate solely on transmission of specific knowledge, he proposed that the goal of education is to teach students how to think about any knowledge. Rejecting both memorization of facts and self-education, he advocated the teaching of competencies and critical thinking skills which could be applied to the ever-changing and accumulating fund of specific knowledge.

But this approach has its weakness as well. R. S. Peters (cited in Bowen and Hobson, 1974, pg. 374,) argued that it was absurd to “foster an abstract skill called ‘critical thinking’ without handing over anything concrete to be critical about.” In other words, Peters argued for synthesizing the traditional and progressive approaches such that one teaches critical thinking skills and competencies, but with the transmission of content.

However, according to Pollard, et. al (1991), even that is not enough. They expand Peters’ model, beyond content and competence, to include a focus on performance. That is, one needs to educate towards the practical use of critical thinking, discussion and knowledge. In effect, they argue that education should aim to prepare citizens for practical life in modern societies.

Pollard’s eclectic position leads us to our focus on the contemporary educational model, pioneered by Lawrence Kohlberg, of the school-based Just Community (Kohlberg, 1985). Kohlberg’s model focuses on a) teaching critical thinking and competencies, like Dewey, b) content, as extended by Peters, as well as c) the practical application of skills to students, proposed by Pollard.

But Kohlberg also adds a component particularly relevant for Jewish education: ethical education. When all these components are combined, we can create a Jewish day school that focuses on ultimately graduating students who are competent in our rich heritage of Jewish ethics, encouraged to critically think about Jewish values and are experienced in practically applying ethics to everyday behavior in and out of school. Importantly, developing ethically sensitive students during their school years not only allows students to function ethically within their school, but also prepares them to be active contributors to the Jewish community, to Israel and to society at large, after graduation.

Kohlberg’s Just Community Model of Ethical Education for Social Justice

For over four decades, Lawrence Kohlberg, the cognitive-developmental psychologist, championed the significance of developing mature moral reasoning in students through classroom moral dilemma discussions. His ultimate goal, however, was not the classroom. He believed, rather, that it was our civic duty to educate for citizenship, justice and social concern in the real world. Kohlberg wanted to teach young people how to function effectively in a participatory democratic society, where citizens have the power to fight against racism, prejudice, inequality and injustice.

He and his students moved their research focus from methods to increase moral maturity in the classroom, to “schools-within-schools” and eventually to the concept of a Just Community – a school, which Kohlberg described as being characterized “by full student participation…in which justice is a living matter.” His goal was clear: educating for an ethical, just society – in school and out of school.

Although Jewish educators would unequivocally agree with Kohlberg’s goals, the degree to which Kohlbergian moral education techniques contribute to Jewish education has been debated for decades. Some researchers and educators have been opposed to, or at least skeptical of, a system within Jewish education that promotes student empowerment over authority, “reasoning” rather than behavior and autonomous moral judgment rather than commitment to a transmitted tradition. Other educators demonstrated the compatibility of a modified Kohlberg model and argued strongly for the adoption of Just Community concepts into Jewish Day school education (Bailey, 2003).

This article argues, as did Graham McDonough (2005), that decades of critical analyses of the structure of Kohlberg’s model and its cognitive-developmental focus relating to education, has resulted in missing the forest for the trees. While virtually all the literature on Kohlberg methodology in Jewish education has focused on the moral development of the individual student, little discussion has centered on the potential contribution of Kohlberg’s conceptual model to Jewish education, particularly the “Just Community,” in terms of the development of skills needed for leadership, participation and practical problem-solving in Jewish communal affairs – locally, nationally and in relation to our “Israel-community.”

The Just Community and Development of Leadership Skills

At an early stage of research into classroom dilemma discussions, Kohlberg learned from teachers and students that they wanted to discuss real moral issues, not just hypothetical ones. In a famous anecdote appearing in the preface to Scharf’s Readings in Moral Education (1978), Kohlberg recalls how a principal insisted that hypothetical dilemmas could not help solve their real problems of theft, vandalism and drug use. Kohlberg suggested that the students be asked to participate in making rules about these problems, but the administration would have to promote real democratic governance. With that, the authoritarian principal decided he did not want a moral education program in his school! This episode, however, convinced Kohlberg that effective moral education not only required discussion of real issues, but also required a school environment that promoted empowerment of students and democratic values.

Using an adaptation of Durkheim (1925/1973), Kohlberg taught that teachers should be advocates of values and represent the spirit and traditions of the community. He compared his stance of “teachers as advocates” to the Israeli kibbutz leader, the madrikh, who advocates for collective responsibility by the entire community. This type of community-value advocacy, thought Kohlberg, was a strong impetus for the moral growth of individuals within the group. Moreover, advocacy whose purpose is to create group norms which appeal to the moral reasoning of the group is different from indoctrination, which reflects the personal authority of the teacher or administrator.

As the result of his experiences in experimental Just Community projects in schools, Kohlberg came to emphasize new aspects of moral education and to modify some previously held notions. Reimer (1989) discusses some of these that are relevant to our summary.

Having worked with adults and adolescents, Kohlberg viewed the work with adolescents (middle school and high school), typically at the “conventional level” of moral development, as the key population to target for moral education. He wished to create a Just Community to initiate adolescents into a conventional moral system reflecting fairness, equality and community values. Kohlberg, according to Reimer, learned from his kibbutz visit that respect for rules is not allegiance to arbitrary regulations promulgated by an authority, but can be seen as a respect for agreements that the group makes among themselves and with their leader.

In another area of Kohlberg’s revised thinking, he distinguished judgments made on the basis of pure fairness or justice and judgments made on the basis of personal responsibility. This is similar to distinguishing between a moral action that reflects the letter of the law versus one that reflects the spirit of the law, even if it violates the “letter” (what halakhic literature refers to as lifnim m’shurat haDin, or, beyond the letter of the law). Within the Just Community, adolescents have the responsibility to be their “brothers’ and sisters’ keeper” as members of the community, even if an action may not be required by the literal interpretation of justice. The virtues of trust, loyalty, caring and responsibility motivate action even when an intellectual analysis of the moral issue would not produce that action.

It should be noted that this focus on relationship issues of trust, loyalty, caring and compassion were fully developed by Kohlberg’s student, Carol Gilligan, in her studies of gender based morality (Gilligan, 1982). Unlike Kohlberg, her emphasis was on the supremacy of relationship (hesed) over formal law and justice (din). Gilligan later came to moderate her gender-based views, but her emphasis on social compassion and caring is fully compatible with the Jewish perspective of moral education within a Just Community, modified for Jewish education (din moderated by hesed).

At his point we can turn to a summary of the characteristics of a Just Community in an educational setting, based on the research in Just Community projects and see how these characteristics are just those which prepare a student for skills needed in the community at large. Elsa Wasserman (1980), one of the major researchers into Just Community models, presents the characteristics of this model community within a school:

a) the open discussion of real-life moral dilemmas,
b) increasing understanding and tolerance of the perspective of others,
c) acknowledging the basic rights and responsibilities of all community members,
d) encouraging students to challenge each other’s moral reasoning,
e) heightened sensitivity to social concern, fairness and justice.

This paper takes the position that it is just these “Just Community skills” which develop leadership abilities in future settings related to the Jewish community.

The School Just Community as a Gateway to the Jewish Just Community

A school-based Just Community is made up a number of components which contribute to the overall functioning of the school as a community sensitive to democratic values and social concern. Although there are typically seven components, I will list four of these which directly apply to the development of both leadership and participant skills in the general Jewish community outside the school. In doing so, I suggest how the skills developed in school carry over to the student’s contribution to his or her community as well as to our national community in Israel.

1. Democratic Classrooms

The Just Community is an authoritative democracy. As such it presents students, in their classrooms, with the opportunity for their reasonable needs to be heard and taken seriously, and to be treated respectfully and fairly. From the students’ side, students in a Democratic Classroom learn to take the perspective of the teacher, to balance her needs and theirs, to develop a sense of trust, to propose their own solutions and to become sensitized to personal responsibility.

If we imagine a Jewish community meeting, perhaps related to a synagogue or educational institution, we see the same skills required for active, effective members of the various committees. Taking others’ perspective, listening to others, respecting other opinions and articulating solutions – all contribute to the effectiveness of any committee. Anecdotally, we are all aware of the fact that many members of the community resist volunteering for committees because they see them as perfunctory, inefficiently led or merely rubber-stamping the chairman. Young adults who are the product of a Just Community education, however, are likely to bring much-valued skills of leadership, analysis and democratic structure to these committees, making committees more active, significant and effective.

2. Town Meetings

An effective Just Community program requires a proactive, comprehensive approach to fairness, respect for others and for the democratic values of privilege and responsibility in all aspects of school life. This is true not only in the Democratic Classroom, but also in the policies and procedures reflected in the school’s general rules and policies. A Town Meeting is the setting in which students, administrators and teachers discuss and work through school policies. Such open discussion teaches skills of listening, articulating, evaluating, tolerating and respecting different views, analyzing conflicts of values and balancing competing needs of justice and caring.

Many community-wide meetings within the Jewish community are, in effect, Town Meetings. Representatives from all branches of community Jewish life attend, each with his or her own agenda. Often there are clear religious differences among groups as well as strong political opinions. The educational experience of Town meetings is a microcosm of this type of inclusive community meeting and requires the same skills of listening, articulating, evaluating, tolerating and respecting different views, analyzing conflicts of values and balancing competing needs.

3. Fairness Committee

The purpose of a Fairness Committee is to deal with problems of fairness that arise among students, between teacher and student, and between administration and student. In this context, fairness means that both parties have a right to be treated with respect and to have their needs balanced so that both sides can accept a resolution. In this context the teacher and student have equal rights for respect and fairness, even if one is the teacher and the other, a student. While the Committee should be viewed as a conflict negotiation agency – not a court – it has the power to recommend a particular resolution to the Principal by which the parties agree to be bound.

There are many examples in the wider Jewish community of issues that require conflict negotiation. Laypeople on synagogue boards and school boards, representatives on religious committees, community representatives to organizations – all require negotiating skills to resolve conflicts of differing perspectives and differing notions of rights and justice. Students trained in a school Fairness Committee are particularly sensitized to the negotiation process and the process of seeking fair and just resolutions for all parties.

4. Community Service

Aside from the expectation for ethical behavior in school, there is an expectation for ethical behavior out of school – at home and in the community. This is consistent with the need to present the student with many opportunities for moral reasoning and ethical behavior, as we discussed. It is also consistent with the goal of generalizing their moral maturity to new situations.

An excellent opportunity for behavior reflecting social sensitivity, caring and ethical behavior is in volunteer work for community agencies serving the needy. By devoting a reasonable amount of hours consistently throughout the year, students experience the satisfaction of actually serving others in concrete, practical ways. In the Just Community, students also learn responsibility, reliability and trustworthiness because the students’ participation in the program is taken seriously by the school and the student has to keep time schedules, records, debrief on the experience and establish a responsible relationship with the agency being served.

This component of the Just Community directly serves as an internship for future work in the Jewish community. The school-based community service component exposes students to the wide array of community agencies and needed services, thereby increasing their chances of responsible, mature participation once they become independent young adults after graduation.

Implications

From the above, we can infer that students participating in a Just Community educational setting throughout their adolescence – having had the experiences of policy committees, town meetings, public debate, ethical analyses based on Jewish values, focus on mature reasoning in moral issues, fairness committees, democratic classrooms and community service – are well prepared for active roles in the Jewish community and eventual participation, as adults, in their community’s education system, community welfare organizations and involvement in Jewish social action.

Moreover, aside from contributing to organizations in the general Jewish community, these same skills contribute to the role that Jewish students play on college campuses relating to pro-active and reactive positions of Israel advocacy.

For the past several years, a number of community organizations have focused on preparing Jewish college students for the political challenges of anti-Israel activism on campus. It is quite clear how those Jewish students, who have had experience and skills in articulating and debating moral issues, would be particularly well-equipped to utilize the historical knowledge and current Israeli political facts, in reasoned ways, in order to become proud advocates of Israel on campus. The ability to tolerate and respect different views, analyze conflicts of values and balance competing needs certainly contributes to constructive dialogue and unity within the pluralistic college community and within the broader Jewish community.

Indeed, a school-based Just Community is a gateway to a Just Jewish Community.

References

Bailey, S. (2003). Educating for menschlichkeit: A Kohlbergian model for Jewish day schools. In J. Saks, and S. Handelman, (Eds.), Wisdom from all my teachers: Challenges and initiatives in contemporary Torah education. New York: Urim Publications.

Bowen, J. and Hobson, P. R. (1974). Theories of education: Studies of significant innovation in western educational thought. New York: Wiley.

Dewey, J. (1916/1996). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Free Press.

Durkheim, E. (1925/1973). Moral education: A study in the theory and application of the sociology of education. New York: Free Press.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kohlberg, L. (1978). Preface. In P. Scharf, (Ed). Readings in moral education. Minneapolis: Winston Press.

Kohlberg, L. (1985). A just community approach to moral education in theory and practice. In M. Berkowitz and F. Oser (Eds.), Moral Education: Theory and Practice. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum.

McDonough, G. (2005). Moral maturity and autonomy: Appreciating the significance of Lawrence Kolhberg’s just community. Journal of moral education, 34(2), 199-213.

Pollard, S. Kurtines, W., Carlo, G., Dancs, M. and Mayock, E. (1991). Moral education from the perspective of psychosocial theory. In W. Kurtines and J. Gewritz, (Eds.) Handbook of moral behavior and development: Vol 3: Applications. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum.

Reimer, J. (1989) The just community approach: Democracy in a communitarian mode. In C. Powers, A. Higgens and L. Kohlberg (Eds.) Lawrence Kohlberg’s approach to moral education. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wasserman, E. (1980). An alternative high school based on Kohlberg’s just community approach to education. In R. Mosher (Ed). Moral Education: The first generation of research and development. New York: Praeger Publishers.