Old Problems, New Appetites
0LD PR0BLEMS NEW APPETTTES A CONVERSATION WITH PRACTITIONERS Last month, moment's editors joined in an evening's conversation with a small group of Jewish educators from the Boston area. The...
...Like most such conversations, it could have gone on indefinitely...
...Not smugness, but pride, a sense that for at least some of the people who devote their lives to teaching the young, there's a very large reward, a very high level of satisfaction, an opportunity to make a genuine difference...
...But it's lonely and it's hard, lonelier and harder than it needs to be...
...And no one is going to hand it to us...
...There's no community of discourse...
...They want to know that their time is being used productively...
...The major frustration of the professional today—aside from adminis-tratrivia and the lack of adequate funds—is the feeling that we're operating in a vacuum, that there's nobody out there who gives a damn about what we do or even about whether we do it at all...
...The ripple effect is working...
...We're not as effective as we could or should be, but even if we were, we couldn't provide a solution to all the problems of the American Jewish community today...
...And it's terribly important for them to make those kinds of demands from the system...
...It was destroyed, among other things, by the suburban sprawl, which was coupled to the lack of familial and institutional support systems...
...The key structural issue facing Jewish education is how to make personnel available on a full time basis...
...I'm not disappointed these days...
...Our students want to do more than "feel good...
...It's masochistic to keep at it...
...Today, there are more people doing better things, federations are more concerned and involved than ever, Jewish leaders are looking for some kind of educational experience for themselves, there's a developing appetite for learning...
...Of course, we're still suffering from a kind of lag, from past mistakes that can't be repaired overnight...
...Jewish education will continue to be seen as a peripheral activity, not only by the students and their parents, but by the professionals themselves...
...Today, we have more schools, and more teachers, and more students, and more textbooks—more of everything, more and better—than ever before in American Jewish history...
...Of course that matters, but what matters ever so much more is the totality of a child's experience...
...But even more than the money, more evidence that the community out there really cares, that it wants us to succeed, that it expects excellence and won't quietly settle for anything less...
...But we don't have that kind of community today...
...One of the greatest failings and disappointments of the Jewish educational system is that the kids put in so very many hours and come away feeling that they know nothing, that they've wasted their time...
...The old system was based on a consensus that doesn't exist any more...
...That's why it's self-defeating to resign yourself to mediocrity...
...There's a widespread feeling that our children have gone wrong, that they are leaving the fold, that the rate of intermarriage is much too high, that there's a rebellion against Judaism, and parents point an accusing finger at the Hebrew school—as if we were responsible for all the problems...
...You begin with an elite, and you slowly develop a whole, functioning, effective system...
...What they want is the chance to experience success...
...Even as a principal, I refuse to judge the success of Jewish education by the quantity of knowledge the kids absorb...
...I've seen it happen, and I've helped make it happen...
...It's not fair to expect us to...
...That's why we've got to raise standards, not lower them...
...I think all of that can happen...
...We have to make it clear that unless we can work in tandem with the other critical institutions—especially the family—and unless those institutions support our work, then we are being saddled with responsibilities we can't accept...
...They want their children to have what they feel they lack...
...Is he a richer human being for having attended our schools...
...In the suburbs, there just weren't familiar things or ways for people to latch on to...
...The purpose of the evening was to look at the system of Jewish education through the eyes of the professionals, those who teach in and manage our schools...
...Unlike most, it was not marked by a sense of bitterness or frustration...
...Obviously, we're not...
...Until we do, we won't attract enough good people to the field, and we won't have the full commitment of the people we do attract...
...After all, there are very few things you continue to do when you don't get some reward, some sense of progress...
...Does the child come to understand that a Jewish human being is something worth being, that "Jewish" isn't just a descriptive term, that it represents a huge addition to his humanness...
...But, thanks in large part to a group of immigrant m'lamdim, who aren't given due credit for preserving and promoting and innovating for half a century, there are now thousands of people in the field, people who take their jobs very seriously...
...And the major hope I have is that all the things that are now percolating will insure that five or ten years from now, we won't feel so terribly isolated...
...The real question we have to decide today is what kind of a Jewish community we want twenty years from now, because it's the answer to that question that should determine what we teach today...
...Does he get a sense of accomplishment from his experience in Hebrew school, a satisfaction...
...Now I have found that when you're willing and able to tell parents that there are things we won't be able to do without their support, they can be very helpful in terms of establishing realistic expectations, of defining appropriate goals for the system...
...People of all kinds, from every constituency, have to be involved in the process of defining what they want, of defining success...
...Jewish life depends upon an understanding of the Covenant, and on the community's translating the Covenant into a living thing...
...People themselves have to be involved, have to increase their investment in the purposes and activities of the institutions that matter to them...
...Herewith, some of the more noteworthy observations: People's disappointment in the Hebrew school system is often unfair...
...And I mean specifically people who are not professionals, because if the professionals alone articulate these kinds of things, they won't take, they'll be undermined...
...What we have is a meagerly educated adult Jewish community that is crying for more, that doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of the past, and that— in and of itself—is an enormous accomplishment...
...There were complaints, to be sure—some recorded below—but there was also, and more definitively, a sense of new possibility, and a general feeling of pride...
...If they would, they could convert those institutions into communities...
...And there was a time when we couldn't be sure there would be...
...I've spoken to hundreds of parents who say that they don't want their children to be as ignorant as they feel themselves to be...
...And we've done more than meet the minimum need...
...Our minimal need, as a profession, was to sustain ourselves, to insure that there would be a continuing stream of Jewish educators...
...What educators lack most is nerve, the nerve to articulate what they are not going to allow themselves to be held accountable for...
...It's hard, and may even be impossible, to have an effective educational system that's not an integral part of a life system...
...Does the Hebrew school respond to the kinds of needs kids have today that society in general isn't responding to...
...But think about what today's appetite can make possible over the next five or ten years...
...More money would help, sure...
Vol. 3 • October 1978 • No. 10
