Underestimating Our Kids
I think that one of the biggest problems in Jewish education today is that we underestimate the ability of our kids to learn, especially at a young age. The curriculum is most schools has been dumbed down to an alarming extent. So much time is spent on feel good nonsense and not enough on fundamentals.
It is axiomatic that younger children can pick up languages more easily than older ones yet we squander those formative years with gobbledygook rather than teaching, for example, vocabulary and dikduk.
With respect to so-called text-based learning, in fact most of the teaching seems to be "outside the seforim" so kids get through 8th grade with a bunch of touchy-feely silliness and never get challenged to work out a pasuk of Chumash or Rashi. By the time they get to high school (where the focus, for most boys, is almost entirely on Gemarah), it's generally too late.
The kids almost never learn biur tefilah, so, by the time they get to high school not only do they not understand what they are saying when they daven, but, in the majority of cases, they have been exposed to environments at home where tefilah is not respected. What do we expect them to think about davening?
They are never taught what it means to have a neshama or what it means to have a relationship with the Almighty. Most 8th graders would look at you funny if you tried to engage them in a conversation about that topic. So, not only do they not learn anything concrete, they don't understand what the big deal is.
Even the shtarkest and most together high schools would have a hard time fixing the problems that they inhereit (and most Jewish high schools are far from shtark and together).
There are exceptions that prove my point. For example, I know of a school where the vocabulary, dikduk and general knowledge of the first grade boys can match that of most fourth grade girls (don't even talk about the boys) in another local school.
It can be done.
We need to start by giving the kids more credit than we have. We need to challenge them.
I think that one of the biggest problems in Jewish education today is that we underestimate the ability of our kids to learn, especially at a young age. The curriculum is most schools has been dumbed down to an alarming extent. So much time is spent on feel good nonsense and not enough on fundamentals.
It is axiomatic that younger children can pick up languages more easily than older ones yet we squander those formative years with gobbledygook rather than teaching, for example, vocabulary and dikduk.
With respect to so-called text-based learning, in fact most of the teaching seems to be "outside the seforim" so kids get through 8th grade with a bunch of touchy-feely silliness and never get challenged to work out a pasuk of Chumash or Rashi. By the time they get to high school (where the focus, for most boys, is almost entirely on Gemarah), it's generally too late.
The kids almost never learn biur tefilah, so, by the time they get to high school not only do they not understand what they are saying when they daven, but, in the majority of cases, they have been exposed to environments at home where tefilah is not respected. What do we expect them to think about davening?
They are never taught what it means to have a neshama or what it means to have a relationship with the Almighty. Most 8th graders would look at you funny if you tried to engage them in a conversation about that topic. So, not only do they not learn anything concrete, they don't understand what the big deal is.
Even the shtarkest and most together high schools would have a hard time fixing the problems that they inhereit (and most Jewish high schools are far from shtark and together).
There are exceptions that prove my point. For example, I know of a school where the vocabulary, dikduk and general knowledge of the first grade boys can match that of most fourth grade girls (don't even talk about the boys) in another local school.
It can be done.
We need to start by giving the kids more credit than we have. We need to challenge them.
posted by MoChassid @ 11:19 AM
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