Irvine and Jerusalem

Ackerman, Walter

IRVINE AND JERUSALEM WALTER ACKERMAN Late in May of this year Charlotte Jacobson, chairperson of the American Section of the World Zionist Organization, announced that the WZO would sponsor an...

...Our response to Irvine and all that it stands for is the test of whether it will...
...The American Jewish community has never been able to produce a sufficient number of native born teachers for its schools...
...the resolution proclaiming the establishment of the World Council of Jewish Education (the appointment of a director will be delayed pending negotiations...
...They represent an openness to change and the discussions surrounding their adoption in schools around the country have nurtured a sense of movement and a feeling that something, after all, is being done...
...into some sort of inter-congregational structure under community auspices...
...IRVINE AND JERUSALEM WALTER ACKERMAN Late in May of this year Charlotte Jacobson, chairperson of the American Section of the World Zionist Organization, announced that the WZO would sponsor an international conference on Jewish education in Jerusalem in the fall "to seek solutions to the current crisis in Jewish education...
...The contrast between Irvine and Jerusalem, a contrast which I have deliberately overdrawn, is, I believe, instructive...
...Those who are there are all engaged in some form of Jewish education...
...their immediate aim should be the retention of all children for at least the critical years...
...A month before the conference, scheduled for the end of August at the Irvine Campus of the University of California, they were already able to count some 500 paid registrations from all over the United States...
...some of them are there probably just for the fun of it—a conference on Jewish education is, after all, an honorable reason for going to California...
...There are no solutions to the "crisis in Jewish education"—just as there are no solutions to the problems confronting general education...
...creating needed specialized roles as additions to classroom duties...
...The reasons are hardly obscure—low pay, low status, low return—and the consequences all too evident...
...There is surely no shortage of things to be done...
...The conference at Irvine was the third gathering in as many years sponsored by a loosely knit group of young Jewish educators banded together in the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education, a spinoff of the North American Jewish Students Network...
...The study notes, however, that "there is strong reason to believe that few teachers are paid maximum salaries...
...It is a very busy and expansive time...
...This is surely one of the most important developments in Jewish life in America during the last decade and a half...
...It is, in fact, not a conference but a five-day "happening...
...Notice must also be taken of the explosive expansion of Jewish studies programs in American colleges and universities—over 300 different institutions of higher learning in this country now offer courses in Jewish studies...
...In the fierce struggle against all those forces which threaten the achievement of that goal, the skilled and dedicated teacher is the crucial factor...
...Jacobson's announcement "now that serious efforts will be made to alleviate the danger facing the Jewish people as a result of ignorance of Jewish culture and the intermarriage that goes with it...
...Overall Federation allocations to Jewish education doubled in dollar amount from 1966 to 1970 to an aggregate sum of $9,707,881—an increase of two percent, to a total of thirteen percent of the monies allocated by Federations for local needs...
...Despite the drop in numbers, however, the proportion of Jewish children of school age who receive some form of Jewish education hovers consistently around eighty percent...
...In the crazyquilt pattern of personnel in Jewish education, high paying upper level administrative posts and positions which demand specialized skills go unfilled for lack of qualified candidates...
...It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of these programs...
...Aryeh Dulzin, the chairman of the World Zionist Organization, recalling (hopefully) the abortive and inept attempt several years ago to launch a similarly named agency, spoke of the "great relief he sensed among those present at the meeting in New York which was the occasion of Mrs...
...The rich and imaginative conference program was a showcase for the talents of a new generation of Jewish educators, incorporating as varied a mix of personal belief and observance as the kaleidoscope of fad, fancy, and good sense which characterized it...
...Orthodox schools still predominate but the steady growth of the Solomon Schecter Schools of the Conservative movement and the appearance of a number of day schools under Reform auspices indicate that there is a growing minority of parents who are interested in intensive Jewish education...
...The hardy few who still view teaching in a Jewish school as their major occupation find it next to impossible to secure full time employment except in an exhausting combination of mornings in a day school and afternoons in a congregational school...
...They are, in point of fact, largely translations of current practice in general education and only rarely the product of original theoretical constructs whose base is in the conceptual categories of Jewish thought and the experience of the Jewish people...
...A good deal of the work, particularly that of the private educational entrepreneur, is pitifully amateurish and serves no useful purpose...
...There has been no dearth of sensible suggestions and practical proposals for securing the economic base of the teacher and providing him/her with the status and challenge which are the irreducible eleThe proportion of Jewish children of school age who receive some form of Jewish education hovers consistently around eighty percent...
...But most of all the conference attracts because it is a chance to be together with like-minded people who share a common concern for Jews and Judaism...
...All the plans, all the proposals and all the talk are just that unless Jewish classrooms are in the hands of the best and the brightest of our young people...
...The forces which buffet educators and schools of all kinds are beyond the control of any single group or agency...
...National agencies, the educational commissions of synagogal bodies, commercial firms and a "cottage" industry have spawned a wide variety of programs and materials...
...They were planning the Western Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education...
...The chasm dug by the differences in native cultures—the bonds of Judaism and its traditions are no longer strong enough to bridge the gap—separates the Israeli from the American audience...
...There is only the painstaking day-to-day work of dedicated teachers in countless settings whose belief in the worthwhileness of Judaism requires the support of a sensitive community ready to provide the appropriate resources...
...The decline in the absolute number of children in attendance at Jewish schools is not without potentially happy consequences...
...And the conference itself—its dreary predictability leaves little to the imagination...
...Day schools are the chief beneficiaries of direct allocations to schools, but the growth in the amount of Federation allocations has not at all kept pace with the inevitable increase in the size of day school budgets...
...The number of day schools continues to increase...
...The exhilaration of Irvine is evidence that such a group can nourish us once more...
...Although the current expenditure for Jewish education is probably well over $100,000,000 a year, a sum which is all the more impressive for its voluntary nature, it is clear that the traditional patterns of funding are inadequate to the demands of expanding in a period of spiraling inflation...
...The cumbersome machinery of the Ministry of Education, the Jewish Agency and the Walter I. Ackerman is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University...
...It is in the person of the Jewish teacher that Jerusalem and Irvine and all the points in between converge...
...A recent survey reports the median maximum salary of" a full-time day school teacher was $13,433 a year while that paid to a full-time teacher in a supplementary school was $9,400...
...The real measure of the meaning of both Irvine and Jerusalem will be drawn from the way each affects the essential act of all education—the meeting between pupil and teacher...
...One can, however, note that the major efforts at curriculum reform are the response, albeit belated, of the Jewish educational establishment to the lashing criticism of Jewish schools, from both within and without educational circles, for their failure to achieve any appreciable results...
...Much has happened in Jewish education in the United States in recent years...
...Two investigators, each working independently, have found that regardless of family background Jewish identification is positively affected by attendance at a Jewish school of any kind provided the youngster remains in school a minimum number of years...
...That figure is less impressive than might appear at first glance when it is compared with data from an earlier period...
...among its other lacks, Jewish education in this country suffers from the absence of sustained and rigorous research...
...Now any event in Jewish education which attracts so many people demands attention and needs to be understood...
...The dispatch ends with a tactfully veiled paraphrase of the remarks of Moshe Krone, chairman of the World Zionist Organization's Torah Education and Culture Department, who, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "spoke of the problems involved in creating a World Council of Jewish Education and emphasized the importance of developing a proper approach to Jewish educational problems today...
...Decreasing enrollments coupled with spiraling costs have forced the consolidation and merger of small congregational schools, even those of different religious orientations, The frightening fact is that the profession of Jewish teaching has all but disappeared...
...A similarly encouraging increase is reported on the secondary school level—programs for youngsters above the age of thirteen which meet at least once a week...
...forty universities offer a major and twenty-seven sponsor graduate programs...
...the handouts to the Jewish press...
...consolidating schools in order to permit increased teaching loads...
...The details of the program are almost irrelevant—the total is so much greater than the sum of the parts...
...many more are there because they want to learn something which will be helpful in their work...
...The dictates of common sense regarding the critical role of the teacher find strong support in research...
...Jewish high schools of all kinds now serve more than 70,000 pupils and about sixteen percent of all enrollment in Jewish schools, a ratio which is more than twice as large as that of twenty years ago...
...The manifest desire of school-people and their supporters to improve the quality of Jewish education is dependent for its realization upon the financial resources at their disposal...
...ments of a profession—employment by the community rather than by individual schools...
...He was visiting Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies, Brandeis University, 1977-78...
...graduate programs in Jewish education are attracting an unprecedented number of young men and women...
...Intensive Jewish education is expensive Jewish education: the increase in the number of day schools requires drastically higher expenditures, and the recruitment and retention of teachers, curriculum development, ancillary and support services—even for less intensive afternoon and one-day-a-week schools—all require large investments of money...
...The latter, however, are generally less well educated than their predecessors and lack their passion...
...While there is some doubt about the exact number of Israeli teachers at work in Jewish schools today, there is no question that without them the staffing of weekday schools in America would be impossible...
...The recourse of day schools to higher tuition fees contains within it the very real danger of moving intensive Jewish education beyond the financial reach of many families...
...speech after speech decrying the sad state of Jewish education, the dangers of assimilation, defection and intermarriage...
...Mention must also be made of an unprecedented level of activity in curriculum development and the production of instructional aids...
...In the United States, and in most other centers of Jewish life around the world, the conference will pass, unnoticed, into oblivion...
...According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin of June 1, 1978, "The main project to be explored at the fall meeting will be the establishment of a World Council of Jewish Education that would comprise a partnership between diaspora Jewry, the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization...
...His/her conspicuous presence in the Jewish school pushes that institution into a corner which is isolated from the mainstream of American Jewish life...
...And hundreds and thousands of teachers in New York, Buenos Aires, Teheran, Los Angeles, Paris and all the other places where there are Jewish schools of all kinds will be in their classrooms the next day wondering who really cares and hoping that they will be able to concoct the magic that will take them through another day...
...Jewish schools must focus their best efforts on a reduction of drop-out rates...
...At first restricted to the high school level, this movement now touches the elementary school as well...
...Concurrently, however, a young graduate student of modern Hebrew literature together with an assistant and four working educators who volunteered their time and effort were working in a crowded office lent them by the Los Angeles Hebrew High School...
...The best of the efforts, however, reflects a growing sophistication among Jewish educators and a wide acquaintance with trends in general education...
...training teachers who are able to work in both formal and informal settings...
...It is reasonable to assume, however, that in a period of decreasing membership and increasing operational costs there will be no significant rise in direct subventions from congregational budgets...
...Whatever the other reasons, the economics of Jewish teaching are enough to dissuade even the most zealous...
...There was once a generation of Jewish teachers whose being was formed by their love for the Jewish people and its consummate expression in the teaching of Torah...
...many of them have already made career commitments to Jewish education and more are on the brink of such a step—for them the conference may provide an exhilarating push...
...In our time the European born teacher of an earlier period has been replaced by Israelis...
...it is five days at the end of August and just before the start of a new school year...
...assigning teachers to work on curriculum development and the production of instructional aids as supplements to day-to-day school activities...
...Moreover, the income potential for teachers in day schools, by and large the only setting which provides full-time employment for teachers, is considerably below that of their fellows in the public schools...
...World Zionist Organization has been set in motion to crank out the "schloessel" of representation at the conference, to corral the "stars" who will address the meetings, to send notices to the managers and executives of Jewish education the world over—teachers, after all, are already back in their classrooms in the fall—to search the storerooms of the Agency for booklets and pamphlets for display and distribution and to attend to the more mundane details of housing, feeding and entertaining the delegates...
...More children than ever before are in day schools—the percentage of children in these schools has almost tripled in, the last twenty years and at last count they numbered approximately 75,000 (twenty-one percent of the total...
...As such they signify a marshalling of resources uncommon for Jewish education...
...Whatever the ultimate effects of the new curricula, their appearance has already achieved something of importance...
...what better opportunity for the infusion of that extra measure of inspiration—or strength...
...The first conference, held in 1976 at Brown University in Providence, attracted some 350 participants...
...And, despite a generous grant from the Los Angeles Bureau of Jewish Education, the Alternatives Conference operated at a deficit, requiring the mining of private parties sufficiently concerned about Jewish education to dig into their own pockets to help defray expenses...
...Overall school enrollment, it is true, has declined from the peak of the mid-sixties—the last reliable census reported some 457,000 children in Jewish schools of all kinds...
...The penalties of an excess of imports are as severe in education as in economics...
...This year's conference—"A Celebration of Jewish Teaching"— is, like the earlier meetings, geared to the practicing teacher and administrator and an occasion for "doing" Jewish education...
...While the overall picture has perhaps not changed in any radical way, some developments are teasing in their implications...
...the closing address by the President or the Prime Minister (it all depends upon who did the opening) and the final reception...
...Along with synagogue subsidies and tuition fees, Federation and Welfare Fund allocations represent the other major source of funding for Jewish education...
...The promise generated by the growth of day schools, the proposals for curriculum reform in the supplementary schools and an undeniably heightened sensitivity to the needs of Jewish education even in Federation circles founders against the unchangingly dismal state of the Jewish teacher...
...importunate pleadings that something be done about Jewish education, about teachers, about curriculum and about books...
...experienced educational directors who work in contracting congregational schools face an uncertain future while properly trained principals for day schools are in short supply...
...It is not difficult to imagine what is happening...
...The frightening fact is that the profession of Jewish teaching has all but disappeared...
...In 1947—a year in which there were 234,358 pupils enrolled in afternoon and one-day-a-week schools and 14,835 in day schools—Federation allocations for Jewish education represented 8.7 percent of all funds distributed locally...
...The creation of larger, educationally viable school units sets the stage for the employment of full-time teachers, the more effective use of resources and the development of more variegated programs than is possible in the single, small synagogue school...
...The mandatory "onward and upward" address of the President or the Prime Minister...
...While little is known about the nature of the students enrolled in these programs—previous attendance at a Jewish school, religious orientation, career plans and the like—one conclusion surely is per-missable: more young Jewish people of college age than ever before are currently engaged in Jewish studies...
...what happened there was clearly good enough to attract 700 people to Rochester, New York the following year...
...Federation involvement in Jewish education is most generally expressed through the support of Bureaus of Jewish Education and their community wide activities...
...Variegated patterns of record keeping together with an apparent reluctance to divulge relevant information make it difficult to ascertain the exact amounts contributed by synagogues to the maintenance of their schools...
...The glaring discrepancy between fervent declarations of commitment to Jewish education and the actual practice hafdly requires comment...
...In other words, over a twenty-five year period which was witness to an increase of 130 percent in supplementary school registration, an approximate increase of 500 percent in day school registration, and an unparalleled inflationary cycle, Federation allocations to Jewish education, when seen as a percentage of local expenditures, increased by less than fifty percent...
...While there is a discrepancy between the minimum reported in each study— one sets it at 3,000 hours and the other at 1,000—the implications are clear...

Vol. 3 • October 1978 • No. 10


 
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