# **Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education**

Barry Chazan

Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education

Barry Chazan

# Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education

Barry Chazan Graduate School of Education and Human Development George Washington University Washington, D.C., WA, USA

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*For ANNE*

# Prologue

I have a thousand reasons to treasure Barry Chazan as a longtime leader and fellow laborer in vineyards of education, where so many of us struggle to get our art and craft right so we can serve our students well.

Fortunately, I don't need to enumerate all my reasons in this brief Foreword. This book—a gift from Barry's mind and heart to educators of every sort—sums them up in a single line found in the Epilogue: "I believe that education is the process whereby we become human." He goes on to illumine that core belief with affrmations like these:

I believe that the subject of education is the person. I believe a person is someone whose enhancement, development, well-being and dignity are the ultimate aim of existence. I believe the educator is a person of ultimate faith, ultimate doubt, and ultimate courage whose calling is to help the young learn how to learn.

Barry's focus on the personhood of both the student and the teacher is a radical statement in a world where education is often regarded as no more than a path to economic success. The commodifcation of education—and of those whom we educate—is one root of many of our troubles. We turn out graduates whose only aim is to maximize their market value, graduates who have no idea what "the examined life" is all about, graduates who have no capacity to be exemplars of humankind's "better angels" or critics of its "lesser angels."

When we treat students as objects that need to be shaped for market appeal, we turn out graduates who objectify the world. That means business folk who have no problem gaming consumers and the economy for fun and proft; doctors who treat their patients like broken machines to be fxed; and citizens who make "difference" into "otherness," making it far too easy to hate. This is a book that can help return education to its ancient mandate to expand the human mind and heart and help build the Beloved Community.

Barry Chazan is an analytic philosopher. So this book is bright with intellect, as Barry strives to bring more clarity to our professional discourse. But his is not a detached intellect: I experience him as a scholar who knows how to "think with the mind descended into the heart." Only from that heart-place can the power of intellect be put at the service of the human possibility. Only from that heart-place can we become educators who help our students to become more fully human.

Barry Chazan's lifetime of work, as crystallized in this book, will help everyone who teaches come closer to fulflling that vision.

Madison, WI, USA Parker J. Palmer

# Acknowledgments

My life has been shaped by interactions with words, nature, and human beings. I would like to thank everyone that I have taught and everyone who has taught me—I have learned from each of you. I would like to thank the person who has known me the longest—my brother Robert Chazan, a distinguished medieval historian and one of the shaping fgures of Jewish studies in twentieth- and twenty-frst-century American academic life. This very distinguished big brother and friend and wife Saralea and their remarkable clan are treasured family and sources of great wisdom and joy.

Over the years, I have been blessed with dear friends, and I would like to thank Janet Aviad, my oldest friend since college walks near Grant's Tomb, Andy Griffel, Richie Juran, Zohar Raviv, and Michael Soberman, all of whom have helped me to see myself and the world more clearly. Erika Vogel has guided me through the publication of four books over the past few years and has become a colleague, friend, and teacher.

I would like to thank longtime colleague Professor Len Saxe of Brandeis University and Professor Michael Feuer, my Dean at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, for their wisdom, intelligence, and support of my work. My academic partner, colleague, and friend of over 20 years Professor Ben Jacobs has occupied a central position in my thinking, teaching, research, and life. He is a gem of a person and educator, and it has been my luck to be able to partner with him on so many projects related to our shared passions for education and life.

#### x Acknowledgments

I enjoy words, but there probably are not enough words to describe my admiration and affection for Parker Palmer who wrote the prelude to this book. Parker is a more recent friend although his books, words, and mind have been shaping me for years. I have had the pure joy of being able to spend time with him over these past few years and this is a privilege I could only have dreamt about.

I am grateful to Nadia Jacobson for her super editing of this book and for her uncanny ability to sometimes know my mind better than me. Milana Vernikova of Palgrave Macmillan Press is a true professional to whom I am very grateful for her wise guidance and constant goodwill.

I have fve remarkable children spread over diverse locations and age cohorts, each of whom is a unique treasure. In truth, Shai, Tali, Idan, Adi, and Lia, individually and together, have been the dearest teachers I have known. Idan and Adi have read several chapters of this book, (Adi has also aided me in many technical details) and any good ideas are theirs!

This book is for Anne Lanski, my dear and beloved wife of over two decades. Anne is a remarkable partner, mother, leader, educator, and human being—and all of this is done with her unmatched humility and authenticity.

Anne, this is for you!

# Contents


**Index** 95

#### xi

# About the Author

**Barry Chazan** is Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem And Clinical Professor of Education at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

# The Journey

**Abstract** The goal of this book is to analyze the meanings of core terms used in the discussion of education and Jewish education and to conclude with an educator's credo.

**Keywords** Philosophy • Education • Jewish education

This book will lead you on a journey into the magical kingdoms of education and Jewish education. Our travels will take us on the highways and byways of questions, ideas, visions, and practices related to these wonderful dominions. The questions we shall encounter have been discussed by thoughtful and wise people throughout the ages, and they continue to be central to our lives as parents, educators, and students. There are three terms central to our journey: "philosophy"; "education"; and "Jewish education".

The word "philosophy" refers to the love of wisdom; namely, the systemic activity of utilizing the intellect to explicate life's "big questions". While often associated with sagely looking bearded males wearing fowing robes, philosophy is actually a quality and technique that can be used by people of all ages, genders, and garb to examine important issues.

The word "education" refers to a practical activity that has been part of the human experience throughout the ages. Philosophers of education, educators, parents, and children of all ages try to understand the diverse meanings of the phenomenon called "education" and its implications for daily life. Indeed, the activity of refecting on what education is and how it works constitutes one of humankind's oldest and most important preoccupations.

The phrase "Jewish education" refers to the conscious effort of a group of people—described over the centuries alternatively as "a religion", "a people", "a civilization", and "a "tribe"—to create and implement frameworks aimed at engaging their young and all of their members in the core ideas, values, and practices of that group.

The "compass" we shall use on our journey is the philosophic method, which is a technique dedicated to asking, discussing, and in many cases attempting to answer core questions of life. Philosophy of education draws upon the general skills of philosophy, but it is unique in that it is aimed at the framing, shaping, and implementation of educational practice. It is preoccupied with questions such as the following: "What does it mean to know?"; "How do people learn?"; "What are the goals of education?"; "Are educators gardeners who plant seeds and then watch them grow or sculptors who takes blocks of stone and chisel them into the form they desire?" It also attempts to consider how thinking might be translated into practical life.

Traveling on many roads over the years, both in the general and Jewish world, has enabled able me to meet a multitude of thinkers—Socrates, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, Augustine, Rousseau, the Baal Shem Tov*,* John Dewey, Martin Buber, and Carl Rogers—through their writings. In addition, it has been my unique good fortune to meet both in writing and in person some luminaries who infuenced contemporary education—Erik Erikson, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Lawrence Kohlberg, Parker J. Palmer, and Israel Scheffer. My travels have been nourished and enriched by the committed educators and effervescent young people who constantly ask "beautiful questions" and often provide "beautiful answers" (indeed you may notice that I love questions so much that the titles of most of the chapters in this book are questions!).

In my wanderings, I have tried to be loyal to my chosen feld of analytic philosophy of education whose purpose is to decode and explicate the frequent confusion caused by people trying to talk "at" rather than "together with" others. The *raison d'être* of the analytic approach to educational philosophy is to enable coherent discussion of educational issues, based on the assumption that a clear understanding of concepts enables us to have a more constructive conversation about education and its practices.

In Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this book, I discuss a variety of topics: analytic philosophy of education; key educational concepts; the moral situation and moral education; indoctrination; informal education; travel as education; and Israel education. While I propose to remain loyal to the credo and value of the analytic mode, I have come to believe that there is a time and a place for both questions *and* answers. Therefore, the book's epilogue is an essay of one educator's credo, in which I—with a hefty dose of awe and trembling—present some of my answers to the questions that I have heard over the years while being "on the road".

Our frst chapter begins with the discussions of several meanings of the phrase "philosophy of education" and what this means for the practical world of the educator. Welcome aboard and thanks for joining me on this ride!

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# What Is "Philosophy of Education"?

**Abstract** Philosophy of education refers to the systematic process of understanding and explicating key concepts related to educational practice. Analytic philosophy of education is a contemporary approach to this task and is the technique used in this book to explain key educational concepts.

**Keywords** Prescriptive • Descriptive • Analytic Philosophy of Education

Over the years, many have been the committed educators and teachers I have met on the long highway of education who have said to me, "I am a practical person, I simply don't have a philosophical mind." The word "philosophy" frightens many people who believe that it requires special knowledge, it is ethereal and incomprehensible, and it focuses on the most abstract ideas and concepts of classical theories and thinkers.

In fact, "philosophy" and "the philosophy of education" refer to one of the oldest and most basic of human endeavors—thinking and pondering about basic and core ideas of life such as "How was life created?"?; "What is the right thing to do?"; "What does it mean to think about thinking?";

Adapted from Barry Chazan. *The Language of Jewish Education* (Hartmore House) 1978.

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 5 B. Chazan, *Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3\_2

"How do we learn?"; and "What is death, why does it happen and what happens?"

From the earliest of human narratives, fables, and stories until the most recent of video games, children's books, and graphic novels, thinking about "big issues" is at the heart of the human condition. Indeed, it is not by accident that twentieth-century philosopher Gareth Mathews wrote books entitled *Philosophy and the Young Child* (Matthews 1980) and *The Philosophy of* Childhood (Matthews 1994) and that cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga published a book entitled, *The Ethical Brain.* (Gazzaniga 2009), and contemporary child psychologist Allison Gopnik wrote *The Philosophical Baby* (Gopnik 2009).

The term "philosophy" refers both to the categorial organization of the many diverse types of questions that we human beings ask and to the process of refecting on these issues in organized and systematic ways. Thus, the term *metaphysics* is used to describe questions about the nature of being; *epistemology* refers to questions about how we know; *ethics (*or *axiology)* focuses on questions about what is right or wrong or good or bad; *logi*c is the study of patterns and methodologies of rules of inference; and *aesthetics* refects on the nature of beauty. There is also an organizational structure within philosophy, which utilizes the philosophic method to help us deal with professions or spheres of activity which are practical in nature such as medicine, law, or architecture. One of the most prominent forms of this category of philosophical method focused on practical activities is philosophy of education, which is the subject of this book.

One may well ask, "Why study philosophy?" One answer is that we brought this upon ourselves—as described in the philosophical book of Genesis—when the human obsession to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge resulted in our being sentenced to exile ("east of Eden") and to wander forever seeking "to know". Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes said in answer to the question "Why study philosophy?" that it was rooted in the nature of being human—we are *homo sapien*s—which he succinctly summarized as *cogito ergo sum*, I think therefore I am.

A different answer suggests that thinking and philosophic refection are connected to the idea of "wonder" or "radical amazement" (Heschel 1976)—the amazement that greets us when we wake up in the morning and see a sunny day or a smiling face or a child's query about how airplanes stay in the sky or why seesaws go up and down. Nineteenth-century English poet William Wordsworth suggested that philosophy begins with children and that "the child is the father of man" (Wordsworth 2018) and twentieth-century Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai mused that "God has mercy on kindergarten children/but less and less as they grow/and on adults He has no mercy at all"! (Alter 2015).

#### Philosophy of Education in the Twentieth Century

The dominant practice to pursuing and teaching philosophy of education in twentieth-century American academic departments or schools of education typically fell into two categories. One category focused on the presentation and comparisons of diverse philosophies of education that developed over the ages. This category concentrated on specifc theorists—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William James, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Nel Noddings (Reed and Jackson 2000)—and/or it organized diverse educational philosophies into distinctive categories (e.g., perennialism, essentialism; utilitarianism; constructivism; progressivism; existentialism). The purpose of these historical and comparative overviews was to help prospective educators understand diverse viewpoints about the theory and practice of teaching.

A second practice in teaching philosophy of education focused on instructors presenting an integrated normative philosophy which they regarded as reasonable, intelligent, and worthwhile for the practice of education. Perhaps the best examples of this practice were the remarkable courses on philosophy of education presented by John Dewey in the frst half of the twentieth century at Teachers College, Columbia University, which were ultimately collected, transcribed, and edited by his students and emerged as a profound book on democracy and education (Dewey 1997). Dewey utilized the tools of philosophy to weave together and present an integrated convincing educational philosophy to guide young, and not-so-young, educators through their work in schools. I was to discover a third approach to philosophy of education—the analytic approach—by traveling on highways between New York-Boston-New York!

#### A Road Taken

Many decades ago, as I began to pursue travels on the road to a career in philosophy of education, my journey took me on New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts. to meet with a shaping fgure of twentieth-century philosophy of education, Israel Scheffer of The Harvard Graduate School of Education. Scheffer, along with British colleague R. S. Peters, had become the central fgures in shaping a new and different approach to the study and teaching of philosophy of education called "the analytic" or "linguistic" philosophy of education (Scheffer 1960; Jonas Soltis 1978). They did not aim to preach what the goals of education *should* be, what we *should* teach, or advocate or how we *should* teach, but instead they focused on the way we *talk* about education.

The assumptions of analytic philosophy of education are: (1) words matter and precision in the use of words in educational discourse matters a lot; (2) much of the discussion of "education" is confused and unclear because there is no consensus or agreement on such core educational terms as "teaching", "learning", and "knowing. If educators could arrive at some shared agreement and clarity about such words, it would greatly facilitate discussion and minimize confusion. (3) It is necessary to clarify and analyze diverse types of educational terms which include stipulative, programmatic, and descriptive defnitions in order to understand what the speaker's intention is in using the words he or she uses. The analytic philosopher of education wants to understand the distinctions between such phrases as "knowing how", "knowing that", "thinking that", and "thinking about". What is the difference between knowing that there are 50 states of the United States as compared to knowing how to swim? What is the difference between teaching that George Washington was the frst President of the United States and teaching someone how to think? The assumption of this approach is that words often express diverse meanings, and through an analysis of common language we might be able to understand diverse usages, meanings, and ultimately practices in teaching, learning, and education.

Therefore, rather than focusing on the promulgation of normative or ideological theories of education, the analytic philosopher of education clarifes the way words are used in education, based on the belief that many of the confusions about education are linguistic rather than ideological. The intention of this approach is not to preach a particular or personal vision, but rather to improve the clarity and mutual agreement of core terms in educational discussion.

#### I Came for a Visit and Stayed for a Lifetime

That visit at Longfellow Hall in Cambridge was to lead me to Dodge Hall at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York where I become a disciple of one of Israel Scheffer's prime students, named Jonas Soltis. The methodology of Scheffer and Soltis seemed to me to make a lot of sense and to be extremely useful in practice. I cared deeply about education, I wanted to make a difference, and I wanted to know what I could do to make a difference. My teachers taught me that I could potentially make a contribution to education by improving the way we talk about it. What was needed was not more sermons from on high, but clear, understandable, and agreed-upon language so as to enable refective practitioners to shape the course of their practice.

So off I went to be an analytic philosopher of education—and indeed much of my work discussed in the coming chapters refects this approach to clearer talking and thinking. This method was to guide my work in the world of education at diverse universities, in a variety of countries, and in multiple roles. I came to realize that a certain percentage (sometimes a great percentage) of the confusion about education was not about intrinsic issues but of a linguistic nature. This approach to educational language coalesced with my ongoing engagement with and love of words in poetry and literature (Oz & Oz-Salzberger 2014). My academic roots in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in the Upper West Side of New York led me to many venues, from New York to Jerusalem to Caracas to Melbourne to London, and to other stops in between, where my concern was to try to facilitate clear discussions of the language of education.

#### Applying the Method

This book comes to apply the linguistic methodology to issues dealing with the meaning of the word "education" in general education and Jewish education. The assumption explicit in my approach is the belief that one can only understand the specifc term "Jewish education" within the broader context of the general term "education". At the same time, we must take into account that the term "Jewish education" refers to a specifc and sometimes quite different kind of education, which has a long and laudatory tradition of its own.

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of this book deal with the analysis of general educational concepts, while Chaps. 6, 7, 8, and 9 focus on educational concepts specifc to Jewish education. My intent is not to present a history of philosophy of Jewish education nor of general education but to help us understand how to talk about and, hopefully, implement education in a clear and cogent manner.

## The Road Not Taken

Has the twentieth-century linguistic analytic approach played a role in contemporary Jewish education? The answer is short and—for those who see value in the analytical approach—not sweet. I believe it is fair to say that the analytic approach has had little infuence on contemporary Jewish education.1 This is not to say that twentieth-century Jewish education was neglectful of the philosophy of Jewish education nor that distinguished philosophers did not make use of aspects of analytical thinking. Indeed, twentieth-century American Jewish education has been enriched by the writings of a group of signifcant normative philosophers of Judaism who in various ways referred to Jewish education. German-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber wrote a series of signifcant essays on education and national education (Buber 1947). While Abraham Joshua Heschel's writings focused mainly on Jewish theology, he did, in various contexts, comment on issues related to Jewish education (Heschel 1966). Mordechai Kaplan devoted two chapters of his magnum opus, *Judaism as a Civilization,* to theoretical and practical issues related to Jewish education (Kaplan 2010). One of the most prominent voices of contemporary Jewish thinking, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson ("The Lubavitcher Rebbe") is perhaps the most prolifc writer on the role of education in life, in general, and in Jewish life in particular in his many decades of teaching, speeches, and writings (Solomon 2000; Wexler et al. 2019; Solomon 2020). It should also be noted that contemporary Jewish academics rooted in philosophy of education such as Hanan Alexander (Alexander 2001, 2012, 2015), Jon Levisohn (2005, 2009, 2013), and Michael Rosenak (1987, 1995) have made important contributions to the feld.

#### On the Road

Now that I have framed an approach that I believe has much to contribute to Jewish education, in the next chapters I will apply this approach to a series of core questions I have heard in many places and in many venues on this exciting highway.

#### Note

1. B Chazan "Analytic Philosophy of Education; the road not taken" in. H. Miller, L. Grant and A. Pomson, editors. *International; Handbook of Jewish Education*. (Springer) 11–28.

#### Bibliography


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 3

# What Is "Education"?

**Abstract** Analytic philosophy of education focuses on clarifying such key terms as: "education", "aims", "goals", "objectives", "overt curriculum", "covert curriculum", "null curriculum", "pedagogical content knowledge". The understanding of these and other concepts is critical to enable contemporary education to be regarded as a truly professional domain.

**Keywords** Aims • Goals • Objectives • Pedagogic content knowledge

The world of education—like law, medicine, business, and other spheres has its own unique language. A discussion of this language is important for principals and teachers, parents, and students in order to facilitate a clear understanding of what education is. In this chapter, I analyze and clarify some key terms with a view to promoting a coherent and more precise educational practice.

## Three Ways to Analyze the Term "Education"

There are three kinds of defnitions of "education" (Scheffer 1960). The frst type is called *the descriptive*. It is a statement that proposes to denote or explain the nature of the meaning of the word called "education" by using a variety of words to explain either what the phenomenon is or how the term is to be understood. This type of defnition claims to describe precisely how the word denoted as "education" is most prominently used.

The second type of defnition of "education" is *the programmatic,* which comes to advocate for or prescribe a belief of what education *should be* or *should do.* A programmatic defnition is less preoccupied with what the phenomenon or language of education is and more concerned with promulgating a particular practice of education that is regarded as desirable. Sometimes prescriptive defnitions are expressed in short, clipped sentences such as Pink Floyd's "We don't need no education" or the title of Jonathan Kozol's description of education as *Death at an Early Age* (Kozol 1985). Programmatic defnitions are ultimately short slogans or deeply felt preaching about the way education *should be.*

The third type of defnition is *the stipulative* and its purpose is technical and utilitarian. It is basically a linguistic agreement or pact that enables a discussion to proceed smoothly without forcing a person to each time state, "This is what I mean by the term 'education.'" It is essentially is a linguistic shortcut, in which one person's explanation of the word "education" is called Version 1; a second person's explanation is Version 2, and the third interpretation is called Version 3. This is a kind of a shortcut that enables the discussion to precede at a decent pace.

My concern in this chapter is the descriptive mode, namely, the endeavor to arrive at a clear and generally agreed-upon statement of what the word "education" means. My aim is to refer to terms that are generally used in everyday speech and to attempts to search for viable and relevant defnitions that refect as accurately as possible the common language usage of the term. There is a technique that students and some academics use in the attempt to understand the term, namely, to trace it back to its original linguistic roots. There are times when this is helpful, but very often this can be misleading, since the way it once was used does not necessarily help us understand the way it is used today. The contemporary word "education" is sometimes traced to the Latin root *educare*, which means "to train" or "to mold". Based on this linguistic root, some people like to argue that training or molding is what education today should be. At the same time, the Latin word *educere* means "to lead out", which suggests a totally different understanding of "education" as a process aimed at that freeing the person from the prison of ignorance. Generally, it is my sense that the technique of tracing back to former linguistic roots is more useful for understanding ways in which terms were understood in the past rather than helping us to grasp what they mean today.

#### Some Contemporary Meanings

Let's now look at some diverse defnitions of "education". One understanding of the term is the conscious effort to equip the unequipped young with facts, knowledge, and skills that will enable them to function as adults in a specifc society. This is often called the *socialization* model.

A second usage of the word "education" understands it as exposure to, understanding of, and practice in skillsets that a person needs to be able to function in contemporary culture. This notion is sometimes called the *acculturation* model.

A third notion of education focuses on the development of refective thinking and feeling abilities so that the young will be able to carve out how they wish to exist. This model is sometimes known as the *liberal* or *person-centered* model of education.

#### A Proposed Definition of "Education"

I have found the discussion of diverse meanings of education to be very fruitful because it helps me see the world through different lenses and, particularly, enables me to think about and consider diverse meanings and practices of the dynamics of education. At the same time, since I believe that education is a practice, and in practice we need some very specifc tools and toolkits to help us proceed, I have searched over time for a defnition of "education" that I regard as both descriptively and programmatically useful for the educational practitioner. Ultimately, the defnition that I regard as the most useful was shaped by Lawrence Cremin, who is regarded as the most distinguished historian of twentieth-century education:

Education is the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, provoke or acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, skills or sensibilities as well as any learning that results from the effort (Cremin, *Public Education*, p. 27)

This broad-based defnition indicates that education is a purposeful activity. The word "education" is reserved for frameworks created with the considered and conscious intent to educate. This defnition also understands education as a process and not a place. It is a purposeful activity that can happen within a wide range of frameworks and not only in buildings called schools. Moreover, this intentional activity does not only transmit knowledge, but it also is concerned with values, attitudes, skills, and sensibilities. Education is an activity which takes place in many diverse venues and is intended to develop knowledge, understanding, valuing, growing, caring, and behaving. It can happen "when you sit in your house, and when you go on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise" (Deuteronomy, 6:7). While contemporary societies have denoted schools as the agency responsible for education, in fact, education far transcends the certifcates of achievement received from pre-school, elementary, secondary, and collegiate frameworks.

## "Aims", "Goals", "Objectives"

The concept of education invites the question "Education for what?" What is the purpose of education? While the terms, "aims", "goals", and "objectives" of education are sometimes used interchangeably, philosophers of education describe three distinct activities related to "purpose": Aims, Goals, Objectives = AGO (Noddings 2007).

"Aims" refer to the most general ideals, values, or principles, which a person, institution, or society regards as the ultimate desideratum of education. Aims are value statements which designate certain principles or values as the ultimate aspiration. Aims describe both the ideal target of an educational institution as well at its ultimate desired outcomes or achievements. Educational aims ultimately frame the overall direction of an educational system or institution.

"Goals" refer to a second stage, which is derivative from aims and focuses on contents and topics that should be studied so as to enable students to understand and actualize core ideals explicit in aims. Goals translate aims into specifc contents or stepping-stones that should be part of the educational process. If one of the aims of twentieth-century American schooling was to teach a set of shared values for its diverse populations in order to socialize them into a core American society, then its goal was to provide them with skillsets such as language, science, and mathematics, which were then regarded as contents critical to enable realization of the larger shared American creed.

The word "objectives" refers to the most practical stage, which is the actual teaching materials—books textbooks, maps, videos, and visual aids—used in the classroom each day, week, and month in a year. These are the infamous "lesson plans" which are an hour by hour mapping out of how teachers will spend every single day in the classroom.

This AGO framework can be a useful structure for analyzing education, from its most abstract goals to its most immediate daily application. Moreover, if implemented properly, it would seem to refect a useful dynamic from theory to practice. Unfortunately, in reality, what often happens is that aims and goals are skipped over and objectives—daily blueprints, and lesson plans—become the main preoccupation. Because of a multitude of exigencies, the thoughtful paradigm of aims, goals, and objectives is often neglected at the expense of "getting through the day" in practice.

#### Three Notions of "Curriculum"

An important term in the study of education is "curriculum", which popularly refers to the overall subjects or contents of schooling. As the feld of curriculum studies developed into a rigorous academic area of study in schools of education, broader understandings of the term were to emerge (Pinar et al. 1995).

One of the important sophistications in the study of curriculum has been the notion of overt, covert, and null curricula. The "overt curriculum" refers to the clearly stated and enunciated objectives, contents, subjects, topics, books, and resources, which are the offcial frameworks, and requirements of a school and its teachers. It is the approved and mandated contents that shape a school's operation.

The "covert" curriculum refers to attitudes, values, and behaviors that characterize the norms of daily life in schools beyond the subjects formally taught in a classroom. The covert curriculum is the unspoken "culture'" shaped by a multitude of forces and factors. What is the décor of the school? What do the halls look like? What type examinations are given? What is the nature of student interaction? The covert curriculum refers to the multiple features of a school culture very much shaped by the lives, habits, and "lingo" of students which have signifcant impact on the actual rhythm and fow of daily school life.

The "null" curriculum refers to the books, subjects, topics, and artifacts that are consciously and purposefully *not* part of the school curriculum. This may include partial or no discussion of the history of indigenous populations in the teaching of American history. It includes the list of books, sources, ands ideas that have very consciously *not* been chosen in the formal curriculum. All education requires selection, and the topics not chosen—and why—are just as important as those that have been chosen. Indeed, there are political, racial, gender, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual issues that signifcantly shape the overt, covert, and null curriculum of each and every type of schooling.

These three terms alert us to the complicated nature of curriculum development. While there is a popular phrase that refers to an individual "writing a curriculum'", in fact, curriculum development has become a specialized domain that involves subject matter experts classroom teachers, and educational leadership, and requires extensive deliberation, feld testing, revision, and production. It is one of the most exciting and, at the same time most demanding of felds in contemporary education.

### Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

An important dimension of education is what is commonly known as "pedagogy", which is understood as the methodologies or the ways in which teaching should happen.1 This is obviously a critical dimension of education because it is about what educators teach and how students learn—which are the ultimate domain of education. Pedagogy (sometimes called the "science of teaching") is the assumption that there are universal patterns and procedures in teaching which should constitute an important part of academic teacher training. There were, and there still are, some general courses on pedagogy in university departments of education which refect the assumption that there is a core set of methodologies generally appropriate for all sorts of teaching. Twentieth-century philosophers in multiple felds of study—for example, physics, mathematics, literature, and economics—began to focus on the notions of "realms of meaning" or "spheres of knowledge", which led to the general consensus that there is a diversity of pedagogic methodologies that derive from the many different spheres of knowledge. This kind of thinking made it clear that because of the signifcant differences between science, mathematics, history, literature, and philosophy, there could be no one overall pedagogy appropriate for all subjects; consequently, such courses as "principles of pedagogy" were misleading. In the 1980s, through the innovative work of a group of educators of whom Professor Lee Shulman was a central fgure, an important concept was to emerge which has had a profound effect on styles of teaching (Shulman 1986). This research led to the term "pedagogical content knowledge" (PCK). PCK refers to the fact that diverse spheres of knowledge utilize diverse methodologies of researching and understanding and therefore require diverse practices of teaching. In other words, the way a teacher teaches the subject depends on the nature of the subject and that all subjects are not the same. Just as it is clear that the ways we teach someone to drive a car or to learn how to swim have their own characteristics, so it is clear that the teaching of mathematics must differ from the teaching of literature, which differs from the teaching of civics, which differs from the teaching of languages. This notion indicates that one must be wary of general principles of "how to teach" and that quality teaching begins with and is related to an understanding of the subject matter being taught. To teach chemistry or physics one has to understand the role of experimentation. In teaching literature, one has to understand the importance of simile, metaphor, plot, and theme. PCK was to have a major impact particularly in the experimental subject areas, although there were also important implications for teaching literature and other areas. At the heart of PCK is the notion that methodology or "what to do" fows from the content one teaches, and the content one teaches ultimately fows from the "why" of education. In other words, education is an integrated dynamic in which the "why" affects the "what" and the "what" affects the "how".

I learned about the importance of PCK during my travels over the years to all sorts of Jewish schools. One of the most prominent subjects (typically in the early years of elementary school) I observed was the teaching of Genesis Chapter 12 which describes a conversation between God and Abraham in which God makes a covenant—a legal agreement—with Abraham, that if he follows God's ways, Abraham will be given a certain body of land for himself and for his children in perpetuity. How one teaches this section depends upon how one understands the nature of this ancient source. If this text is a verifable history book (which was the mode that I observed in so many schools), it will be taught in one way; if this text is not a history book but rather a philosophical or theological work with profound religious, moral, and human messages, it will be taught in a totally different way. These two understandings result in dramatically diverse pedagogies and messages, depending on whether the text in Genesis 12 was presented as an authoritative history or a profound philosophy.

#### Conclusion

The contemporary language of education includes some key concepts— "schooling", "aims", "goals", "curriculum", and "pedagogy"—whose meanings are very important to the practice of education in schools and beyond. This conclusion suggests that the felds of education and Jewish education in the twenty-frst century are sophisticated domains which call for serious deliberation and study by prospective educators. The educators of our young deserve the same level of training, investment, and rigor that we expect from the doctors who treat our bodies or from the engineers who build the bridges on which we travel. Education in the twenty-frst century is a critical sphere that calls for deep refection, training, and passion.

#### Note

1. Adult education specialist Malcolm Knowles suggested that the term "pedagogy" be used to refer to the teaching of children and that the term "andragogy" be used to denote adult learning. (Knowles 2020).

#### Bibliography

Cremin, Lawrence. 1976. *Public Education.* (Basic Books).

Knowles, Malcom. 2020. *The Adult Learner.* (Routledge).


Scheffer, Israel. 1960. *The Language of Education.* (Charles C. Thomas).

Shulman, Lee. 1986. "Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching". *Educational Researcher* Feb. Vol. 15 No. 2. pp. 4–14.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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CHAPTER 4

# What Is "Moral Education"?

**Abstract** Moral education is one of the most signifcant arenas of preoccupation of analytic educational philosophy as well as of daily educational practice. Several signifcant alternative theories of moral education emerged in twentieth century philosophy of education.

It would seem that twenty-frst century theory and practice of moral education refects new realities, challenges, and responses.

**Keywords** The moral situation • Moral socialization • Moral thinking • Moral caring

Moral education is one of the central concerns of philosophy of education. Over the years, it has been described using a variety of terms—"moral education", "values education", "ethics and education" and "character education". Ultimately, these diverse appellations all focus on the question of "What is the role of education in making us moral and good human beings?"

In former times, discussion of the moral and the good was typically related to religious belief and practice and was often regarded as one of the central missions of religious education. The discussion of moral education

This chapter is based on chapter 5 "The Moral Situation "in B. Chazan and Jonas Soltis, editors.(1973). *Moral Education*. New York: Teachers College Press.

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 23

B. Chazan, *Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3\_4

was to change dramatically in the modern era when morality was no longer necessarily dependent on or a derivative of religious education. Modern discussions do not necessarily—if at all—tie moral and ethical spheres to religion. Rather, they focus on the role of morality in education in general.

#### The Moral Situation

The discussion of what "moral education" means very much depends on the clarifcation of a prior question: What are the issues a person faces when he/she is confronted by a moral situation that calls for a decision?

The frst component of a moral situation is that it constitutes a moment in which one has to decide between alternative actions regarding what to do or how to behave. However, the need for a decision in itself is not the single determining dimension of being moral since there are many moments in which we have to make choices in matters of taste, interest, or mood that are a part of daily life in modern societies and are issues unrelated to morality (e.g., "Which of Baskin-Robbins' thirty-one favors should I choose today?"). Moral decision-making is about having to make a choice between conficting core values and principles that force us to decide which is the right and wrong thing for us to do. Moral conficts are generally not between right and wrong but rather between two rights or two wrongs. Heinz has a very sick wife whose life was in danger. There is one drug that can save her; it is sold in only one pharmacy and it is extremely expensive because the pharmacist has devoted many years to developing it. Heinz does not have enough money to pay for the drug nor is he able to recruit funds. Ultimately, he has only two options: (1) to steal the drug and face the consequences or (2) not to steal the drug and potentially be responsible for his wife's death. What should he do and why?1 Moral decisions are about practical situations involving principled beliefs about what is right or wrong good or bad. In former times, priests and other religious authorities told us what to do. In modern life, we confront the situation with no clerical or supernatural dictates, rather, with only our own conscience and self.

Such decision-making is not an abstract discussion of wise philosophers sitting in easy chairs and deliberating for hours, days, months, or a lifetime. Moral decisions are issues that each of us faces every day in the here and now, situations that are central to human life, that are intensely personal, and that require making a choice of following a course of action.

#### Approaches to Moral Education

The emergence of contemporary public education created a dilemma about the place of moral education in schooling. As indicated, in former times this type of education was in the bailiwick of religion, which prescribed specifc choices and actions. The question for a contemporary public education not rooted in specifc religious beliefs is whether there is a place for moral education in schools. If the answer is in the affrmative, then we are faced with questions as to the bases on which moral decisions made, what are the goals of moral education in public schooling, and what the roles and responsibilities of teachers might be.

French academic Emile Durkheim is often regarded as the father of the felds of sociology and of modern thinking about moral education. Durkheim, in his numerous writings about morality and education, established a framework that infuenced educational thinking and practice for many decades (Durkheim 1961).

Durkheim regarded human beings as social animals, meaning that human life originates and exists within social frameworks. There is no existence without society. Consequently, morality is a system of behaviors refecting what societies regard as "right" or "wrong". For Durkheim, modern moral education is the activity of transmitting good and right behaviors of a society to its future citizens. He regarded the teacher as a "secularized" priest or prophet charged with the mission—by means of words, demeanor, and actions—of transmitting society's core values and behaviors. For Durkheim, the teacher is a powerful and essential force in moral education, and, in fact, is much more important than the family. A family is ultimately focused on caring, supporting, and protecting its children, and it will always compromise on moral issues when its own children are involved. Thus, it is the educator who is charged with transmitting moral codes and enforcing moral behaviors in the young.

Durkheim did not prescribe a specifc code of ethics—and he indicated that moral codes could change over time—yet he maintained that ethics relates ultimately to behaviors that are for the good of a society. He did acknowledge that it was sometimes necessary to revolt against the practices of a society if its current moral behaviors strayed from societal principles. In such cases, it was both legitimate and indeed a requirement to call a society to order and to chastise it for corrupting its own core principles. Thus, Durkheim did not regard Socrates, the biblical prophets or Jesus as malcontents, but rather as social critics protesting the turpitude and degeneration of Athenian and Israelite societies and pleading with its citizens to return to their fundamental values.

Durkheim believed that teachers should be models of morally correct behavior. Their mission is to transmit the core values of modern secular societies by pedagogy, personality, and public behavior. The teacher's task is not simply to pass on knowledge verbally, but also to model "the good" and "the right". At the same time, the teacher must be concerned that the moral sphere does not become mere habit; instead it should be linked to refection and understanding of core social values. Durkheim indicated that a teacher's authority must be tempered with benevolence and sensitivity to the frailty of the child and should not lapse into harshness.

The best pedagogic device for developing the social elements of moral education, according to Durkheim, is the utilization of the class as a social group for the nurturing of group pride, comradery, and loyalty. The school class should be the model for behaving according to a society's highest and most worthy values. Durkheim's approach to moral education is the frst iteration of a secular theory and practice of moral education for contemporary life.

An important—albeit little known—contribution to the discussion of moral education is to be found in the writings of British educationist John Wilson (Wilson et al. 1967). Durkheim grounded the origins of moral education in sociology, while Wilson believed that philosophy was the basis of a theory of moral education rooted in moral deliberation and refection. Wilson regarded moral education as a way of thinking about ethical issues rather than as a procedure for transmitting specifc values to students. His emphasis was on individual inquiry and deliberation rather than societal imposition.

Wilson's model of moral education was based on a thinking process, which encompassed identifying the moral dilemma; verifying the relevant facts and moral issues involved; and applying principles of reasoning and consideration of other people's interests to enable moral action. This approach regarded the role of schooling to be the nurturing of the philosophic process of moral reasoning.

Wilson did acknowledge that in order to teach the process of deliberation and resolution, a teacher often would need to express a particular moral viewpoint, because to be neutral or passive is to omit one important part of the process of moral reasoning. At the same time, the role of teachers/educators is to teach the multi-dimensional patterns of moral thinking, rather than to serve as exemplars of moral action. Teachers should not model how students should behave but rather how they should model the dynamics of moral reasoning.

The rapid expansion of public schools in late twentieth-century American society led to the need for practical pedagogies and programs for implementing morals and values education in American schools. A group of educators committed to the practice of moral education in schools created an approach called "Values Clarifcation" (Raths et al. 1963). Values Clarifcation (VC) is rooted in the assumption that there is no clear or accepted set of moral values in contemporary life, and that the moral domain is a matter of personal choice and individual decisionmaking. Therefore, the VC approach states that teachers should not be allowed to impose their values or their behaviors and that their role in "values education' is to develop a series of skill sets that would enable the child to become a valuing person. VC believed that classroom teachers could and should help the young focus on moral issues and help them learn how to make their own value decisions. The VC model encompasses a process with seven components: (1) Choosing freely; (2) Choosing from alternatives; (3) Choosing from alternatives after thoughtful consideration of the consequences of each alternative; (4) Valuing the choice; (5) Valuing the choice so much as to be willing to affrm the choice to others; (6) Acting in a certain way to refect commitment to the choice one made; and (7) Acting repeatedly according to the choice that they made so that it becomes an imbedded form of moral behavior. In VC, the role of schooling in moral education is to train young people to be able to apply the seven stages of the process, rather than to be a "morally-educated person".

The role of the VC teacher is to create classroom activities and pedagogies focused on developing the seven valuing processes. The VC teacher is a technician who facilitates the development of a series of thinking, feeling, and behavioral skills. Moreover, the VC teacher should not reveal his/her own moral preferences; indeed their personal moral lifestyle is totally irrelevant to their work. They are neither representatives of society nor models of advanced stages of thinking; rather, they are trainers of a set of necessary skill sets.

The VC proponents developed a series of pedagogic exercises, dialogue strategies, role-playing case studies, value sheets, and hundreds of activities falling into three main categories. One set of pedagogic tools focused on the strategy of valuing questions that caused the student to think about moral issues. Another strategy aimed to encourage students to express their own personal values and examine them. A third group of activities created guidelines for group discussion and processing to enable students to hear and react to different perspectives.

The academic world did not treat VC with the respect shown to other university-based moral education programs, probably because it was more shaped by teachers' practical needs for engaging and compelling classroom materials rather than being rooted in philosophical or psychological models. The pragmatic aspect of VC should not be minimized because any theory of moral education can only truly be useful if it is accompanied by or leads to clear, accessible, and useful practical materials.

Lawrence Kohlberg was the most prominent name in twentieth-century moral education (Kohlberg 1968, 1981, 1983). A psychologist educated at the University of Chicago, Kohlberg spent his academic career as a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he devoted his research, educational, and pedagogic interests to the subject of moral education, Kohlberg's work was rooted in psychology and philosophy, and his focus was on the practice of education. His appeal and commitment to the feld of moral education was profound, and he was singular in his quest for the synthesis of theory and practiceֹ.

Kohlberg's approach to moral education rejected the position that morality was essentially a set of moral norms, while also rejecting the notion that morality was exclusively a matter of individual choice. Kohlberg believed that while individuals are raised and rooted in specifc societies, at the same time they must deal with issues that are universal in nature and that extend beyond specifc societal borders. Indeed, he regarded the moral sphere as a central domain of being human.

Based on his psychological research, Kohlberg developed a threelevelled classifcation of "types" or "orientations" of moral judgment. Level One of moral judgment (called the "pre-conventional") refers to moral thinking and decision-making that is oriented toward (or shaped by) fear of punishment or pain. A person on this level makes moral decisions to avoid physical or other sorts of punishment and/or to satisfy egotistical needs. What is "good" or "right" is whatever prevents a person from getting yelled at or punished, or, conversely, gets them some candy. Level Two, moral reasoning (the "conventional level") is oriented toward social expectations and behaviors—being a "good boy" or a "good girl" or doing what a good citizen in a particular city, society, or state is expected to do or not do. On this level, decisions are made in terms of adherence to accepted moral conventions. Level Three, moral thinking (the post-conventional), refers to individual decisions oriented to conscience, principles, and to the ultimate value of justice. In Level Three decisionmaking, we can sometimes be acting in accord with society but, ultimately, we are oriented to transcending societal norms.

These levels are generally assumed to be connected to three commonly accepted sociological stages in our biological development, that is, infancy; school-age; adolescence and emerging young adulthood; and adulthood. However, Kohlberg's levels of moral development did not necessarily automatically synchronize with the standard model just described. Indeed, there are many adults who are preconventional or infantile in their moral decision-making processes, and there are also adolescents and young adults who are post-conventional or principled in their moral decisionmaking and development. Another important aspect of Kohlberg's developmental notion is his belief that once people have reached a higher level of development, it is unlikely that they will regress to a lower level. One who has learned to live a life of principle (with all the complexities involved) will likely fnd it diffcult not to live the principled life consistently.

Kohlberg was committed to the development of a theory as well as to its implementation in schools (and at a certain point he also tested its use in prisons). Kohlberg shared Durkheim's emphasis on the importance of moral education in schools, although Kohlberg prescribed a much different pedagogy and practice. He shared some of Wilson's philosophic thinking but was much more psychologically and practically oriented than Wilson. He agreed with VC's emphasis on practice but rejected most of the other thinking of VC.

Kohlberg worked with a group of educators to create a fve-step method for moral dilemma discussion: Step 1: A moral dilemma is read out loud to the class (Kohlberg created a group of approximately 16 dilemmas, indicating that dilemmas could also be selected from ancient texts, literary texts, and contemporary sources). After the reading, the teacher makes sure that the group has understood and agreed upon the main points presented in the dilemma.

Step 2: The teacher raises two questions about the dilemma: (1) What should the person facing the dilemma do? (2) Why? The "why" question is ultimately the central discussion topic for Kohlberg because it refects the nature of a person's orientation in terms of moral thinking**.** Step 3: The class breaks up into small groups to discuss the participants' reactions. The reason for initially splitting into small groups is to make people feel comfortable to share their thoughts before reassembling. Step 4: A group discussion regarding what the protagonist should do and why. The teacher's role is to listen, explicate, and, as much as possible, enable the participants to hear patterns that refect all three levels of moral thinking. This stage is critical in enabling students to at least hear levels of thinking that are higher than theirs. Step 5: The teacher summarizes the entire exercise and, to the extent that there were presentations refecting the three levels, briefy summarizes the three different ways of thinking. The teacher's role is to explicate, not propagate views. This discussion section was very important to Kohlberg as he believed that enabling students to hear levels of thinking higher than their own and hopefully to be infuenced accordingly. Moreover, it was important to demonstrate that moral deliberation and discussions are not simply empty talking but that issues of morality do, can, and should have solutions. The teacher's role in the entire process is based on a familiarity with the three levels of thinking, an ability to utilize and model the Socratic method of questioning, a sensitivity to group dynamics, and the ability to summarize without preaching. Kohlberg's infuence was great for several decades in the second half of the twentieth century because it was both rooted in a philosophical and psychological theory of moral thinking and translated into actual educational processes.

Reactions to—and, in some cases, critique of—Kohlberg's work led to a new late twentieth-century and twenty-frst-century school of moral education denoted as "the caring approach" (also referred to as "the feminist approach") (Larrabee 1993). One of the most prominent voices of the caring approach is philosopher of education Nel Noddings, who developed what she called, "a relational approach to ethics and moral education" (Noddings 2007). For Noddings, the core of ethics and moral education is not "moral thinking" but rather the human virtue known as "caring" which refers to a trait at the core of human life characterized by concern for the other. This virtue is rooted in the emergence of what it means to be human, which encompasses being able to be a caring person toward others and a person able to be cared for by others. While not a theological model, Noddings' position refects the humanistic assumptions of Martin Buber and others who regarded human life as a dialogue in which one learns to appreciate the other, be appreciated by the other, and ultimately develop an authentic interactive human relationship denoted as the "I-thou" (Buber 1958). According to this perspective, ethics is about the human virtues of intuitiveness and receptivity, rather than moral principles or reasoning. Noddings' caring is not a universal moral *principle* but a core human *virtue.*

Noddings regards schools as central platforms and frameworks for the development of caring, and her writings pay much attention to the creation of schools and school communities as caring environments. The teacher is one who has chosen a profession rooted in caring and, ultimately, one of whose roles, if not *the* central role, is to turn the school into a laboratory for developing a caring community.

While the twentieth century was deeply preoccupied with the issue of moral education, there were (and always have been and will be) voices which reject the role of schooling in issues of morality. Here are some famous examples: "My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school" (Margaret Mead); "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education" (Albert Einstein); "What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free and meandering brook (Henry David Thoreau); "It is our American habit, if we fnd the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory, to add another story or wing" (John Dewey); "Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind" (Plato).

The "anti-moral education" tradition is rooted in the notion that by its very nature almost any kind of schooling is a form of indoctrination. This tradition says that schools should only teach topics, subjects, and issues that are based on agreed-upon and established methodologies and facts. As the nature of morality is one of personal preference, moral content cannot be regarded as shared or public knowledge, thus it should not be taught in school.

The *epistemological* version of this argument says that schools should only teach verifable and objective bodies of knowledge. So-called "moral knowledge" is neither verifable nor objective in the same way as the sciences. Education should deal with only publicly verifable and agreedupon contents often characterized as scientifc or rational.

The *individualist* argument claims that the individual is the primary unit in life and schools should be concerned with the liberation and autonomy of the individual rather than the promulgation of a particular ethic. It opposes moral education on the grounds that it becomes a means by which the state or some power group—men, colonialists, Caucasians, and other such power groups—imposes their specifc value beliefs. Education should be about ownership of self, and children should have the potential to be free choosing agents rather than be manipulated by a church or synagogue, big business, white capitalists, or gender-specifc worldviews.

The *empirical evaluative* critique of moral education is fact-based rather than ideological, stating that there is no valid or reliable empirical data to validate the value of moral education in schools. Its argument is that research shows that schooling is not a very important factor in affecting people's morality and hence the entire enterprise of implementation in schools is a waste of time and money. Schools should do what they do best, and they should not attempt to undertake an impossible task.

It is indeed legitimate to raise questions about moral education within public education. Are schools the tools of "power brokers" or interest groups or are schools simply incapable of having an impact on the moral sphere? The anti-moral educationists are good souls and not simply ornery troublemakers, and they do bring to our attention the potentially manipulative nature of schools, which may indeed serve the "power brokers" rather than "the powerless".

#### Into the Twenty-First Century

Thinking about moral education has taken some new directions in the twenty-frst century. The language of "moral education" has seemed to shift to the term "character education" and philosophic thinking has focused on virtues, with less of an emphasis on moral principles and judgments (Zagzebski 1966). The entire feld of morality has been infuenced by new trends in research within developmental psychology, neurology, and sociology that have been generally shaped by the neurosciences. Psychologist Vivian Gopnik indicates "that babies and young children are not the immoral creatures we thought them to be. Even the youngest babies have a striking capacity for empathy and altruism" (Gopnik 2009). The emerging feld of neuro-education has been described as "the hot new area in education" (Klemm 1996).

Thinking about morality and education in the twenty-frst century has also been shaped by a painful dynamic unrelated to the pastoral groves of the Academy. The hallways and sanctuaries of our schools, houses of worship, and other areas of public assembly have been desecrated by violence, shooting, destruction, and death. There is no need for Kohlberg's fctional dilemmas; daily life on the West Coast and the East Coast, north and south, and even in the holy chambers of the Congress of the United States, have become a living pandemic of moral crisis, dilemma, and failure. Indeed, snapchat, smartphones, and on-site television cameras are writing the next sagas and stories of moral education in the twenty-frst century.

#### Coda

It should come as no surprise that the subject of teaching morals and values has been a central arena of contemplation, thought, and practice in the world of education. From ancient times until today, there has been a sense of connection between education and being a good or moral person. As we have seen, there are many approaches to this subject, and it continues to preoccupy those who believe that education is related to how we live as human beings. The twentieth century was an extremely dramatic arena for refection and the implementation of the diverse approaches to moral education. The twenty-frst century is proving to be a painfully vivid setting highlighting the need for moral education and a moral way. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that moral education continues to be one of the central pressing and eternally important elements of the life and work of the world of education.

#### Note

1. This is one of a series of dilemmas created by Lawrence Kohlberg for his dilemma discussion practice.

#### Bibliography

Buber, Martin. 1958. *I and Thou*. (Scribner Classics).

Chazan, B. and Soltis, J.*,* editors (1973). *Moral Education.* Teachers College Press. Durkheim, Emile, 1961*. Moral Education.* (Free Press).


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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CHAPTER 5

# What Is "Indoctrination"?

**Abstract** "Indoctrination" is a term which refers to the intent to impose ideas or beliefs upon people in areas that ultimately call for individual refection, decision-making, and choice. It is a distasteful activity because it is aimed at limiting the individual's ability to think and choose. Religious or moral education are not necessarily indoctrination and it is possible to create a Jewish education that is not indoctrination.

**Keywords** Indoctrination • Intention • Teaching from within

Religious education and moral education have the dubious distinction of being associated and equated with "indoctrination". This chapter deals with the concept of indoctrination by asking three questions: (1) What is indoctrination? (2) Are religious and moral education the paradigm cases of indoctrination? (3) Is a Jewish education that is not indoctrination possible?

This chapter is based on chapter 5 in Barry Chazan, *The Language of Jewish Education: Crisis and Hope in the Jewish School*. New York: Hartmore House Press, 1978.

## "Indoctrination" as an Emotive Term of Disapproval

The most immediate and striking sense of the word "indoctrination" is its use as an emotional expression of disapproval. Even those who believe that there are moments when schools and teachers need to take strong stands actually show a reluctance to use the word "indoctrinate", since it suggests a distasteful or nefarious activity. What are the characteristics of this activity that leads many people to have such strong reactions?

#### Indoctrination as <sup>a</sup> Methodology

One explanation of the word "indoctrination" regards it as the transmission of certain contents that uses a methodology of *not* presenting all sides of a subject or "stacking the deck" by selecting facts and ideas that will guarantee the acceptance of specifc ideas or beliefs. Such a methodology includes incomplete or one-sided arguments, deliberate falsifcation or suppression of evidence, impassioned and emotional slogans, and preaching rather than teaching, all of which are aimed at the imposition of specifc ideologies in the minds of students.

It must be said that most schooling at certain times utilizes methodologies related to such areas as attendance decorum and behavioral standards that may seem arbitrary but are ultimately "rules of the game" that enables schools to function. Similarly, the use of force is not automatically indoctrination if aimed at preventing damage, disorder, or a more serious danger. Indoctrination as a methodology refers to manipulation of the mind rather the body. Hiding facts, disparaging student opinions, or rejecting any ideas that contradict the teacher's beliefs are examples of indoctrination. Indoctrination is a means of forcing, brainwashing, or imposing desired ideologies without open discussion. The notion of indoctrination as a methodology refers to authoritarian ways to manipulate rather than educate the mind.

#### Indoctrination as Contents

A second understanding of the word "indoctrination" proposes that it is not the *methods* used that characterize it, but rather the *contents* or subjects being taught. Indoctrination occurs when schools and teachers intend to present certain kinds of contents as fact when they are really just opinion or belief. Teaching the core principles of physics is not indoctrination because it is based on shared knowledge and research. However, imposing certain moral, religious, or political positions, is regarded as indoctrination because it is not based on shared knowledge and research but are matters of personal opinion and feelings. This approach assumes that the contents of education must be subjects which "any sane and sensible person" would accept, while the contents of indoctrination are the opposite (Snook 1972). Therefore, if we are to avoid indoctrination, the *contents* we teach must be rational in the sense that they are validated by publicly available and accepted evidence.

The "subjects" which are regarded as the exemplars of potential indoctrination are religion, politics, and morality. These subjects are regarded as prime contents of indoctrination because they are ideologies and/or beliefs systems which are not known to be true or false and whose verifcation is speculative. In our contemporary world, the list of potential subjects prone to indoctrination has expanded and for some critics it also includes the teaching of history, social studies, and civics, which increasingly regarded as tools in the hands of indoctrinators (Beyer and Apple 1998). The group of educationists sometimes denoted as "the Critical School" argue that much of what is part of the regular school curriculum today is not shaped by facts but by the viewpoints of certain power brokers or ideologues whose intent is to impose values and worldviews rather than to open minds and nurture critical thinking.

#### Indoctrination as Intention

A third approach to indoctrination claims that while the methodologies and contents schools are well-intentioned in their attempt to explain indoctrination, they have missed the core defning characteristic. Sometimes the so-called "methods" of indoctrination are useful in certain areas of education in which there are basic skills sets or contents to be learned. The notion that certain contents defne indoctrination also misses the point. It is not morality, religion, or politics that constitute indoctrination, but rather the *intent* of the teachers in teaching these subjects. Religion, politics, and morality are important parts of the history of human life and deserve to be studied. The problem is that very often the teaching of these subjects is less about learning and more about imposing worldviews and beliefs systems on the young. The "intention" approach argues that indoctrination is characterized by the aim or desire to inculcate unshakable beliefs in others in a non-questioning, non-critical, non-rational manner: "Indoctrination begins when we are trying to stop the growth in our children of the capacity to think for themselves" (Hare 1964). Champions of this approach indicate that the danger of religious, moral, or political education is that it often becomes the means by which a teacher or school inculcate and impose viewpoints, perspectives, and beliefs on the young, rather than analyzing and explicating the origins, meanings, and outcomes of holding such beliefs. Indoctrination is not about *what* you teach or *how* you teach but, ultimately, about *why* you are teaching it.

# Are Religious, Political, and Moral Education Indoctrination?

It is clear why religious, political, and moral education are so often connected with indoctrination. These topics involves spheres of refection, behaviors, and standards which are typically regarded as personal matters of choice, and therefore not within the purview of schools. From ancient times until today, the spheres of religion, politics, and morality have encompassed questions and issues that personally affect our lives in relationship to others and to the world. Religion, politics, and morality are important topics in the history of humanity and in contemporary life, but the red light of indoctrination is ignited when teachers forget that teaching is aimed at learning, not imposition.

# Can There Be Jewish Education That Is Not Indoctrination?

In this chapter, we have examined diverse attempts to explain indoctrination and, while each attempt has pluses and minuses, ultimately it seems that indoctrination is the defnitive intention to inculcate and impose a belief system and a set of behaviors on young people even if this means denying them the ability to refect, think, and ultimately decide for themselves.

This discussion leads us to the question as to whether it is possible to talk about Jewish education without indoctrination in our times. While the subject of religion is not in itself indoctrination, there have been numerous eras and frameworks in which the teaching of religions in general—including Judaism—has seemed indoctrinatory. Jewish education, like other forms of religious education, can well lend itself to such a possibility.<sup>1</sup>

That being said, it is possible to delineate the parameters of an approach to Jewish education which is not indoctrination. There are four cornerstones of such a Jewish education: (1) intention, (2) core texts, (3) the student as philosopher, and (4) teaching from within.

#### *Intention*

Jewish education without indoctrination focuses on presenting core ideas, values, and behaviors of Jewish religion and civilization in a way that enables young people to ask questions, and discuss the meaning of these ideas. Such a Jewish education does not focus on inculcating viewpoints or programming behaviors, but on opening the mind and heart of young Jews to the richness of Jewish civilization and its relevance for contemporary life. The intention of this approach is to teach- and not to preach- in a way that honors the ability of the young to think, feel, and act.

#### *Core Texts*

The second cornerstone of a Jewish education without indoctrination is the treasure chest of texts of the Jewish canon. (Crenshaw 1998; Dorff and Crane 2013; Stampfer 2010). While Jewish tradition is full of an endless selection of "quotable quotes", and even "do's and don'ts", it is the opportunity to "meet in person" the ideas of the great texts which can be so engaging and exciting for the young.2 Textbooks and short slogans give answers, but they steal the question from the young. The opportunity to open the "treasure chest" of Jewish texts and read them together with peers and teachers should be at the heart of such an open Jewish education.

#### *The Child as Moral Philosopher*

The third cornerstone of Jewish education without indoctrination is the ability of the young to question, refect, and think. This psychological and philosophical assumption has been a prominent theme of late twentieth and early twenty-frst-century educational psychology and philosophy:

Parents and teachers are often so impressed with the burdens they bear in having to nurture, instruct, reassure, and inspire their children that they fail to appreciate what children have to offer adults. One of the exciting things that children have to offer us is a new philosophical perspective. (Matthews, *The Philosophy of Childhood*, p. 14)

We used to think that babies and young children were irrational, egocentric, and amoral. Their thinking and experience were concrete, immediate, and limited. In fact, psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered that babies not only learn more, but imagine more, care more, and experience more than we would ever have thought possible. In some ways, young children are actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring, and even more conscious than adults are. (Gopnik, *The Philosophical Baby*, p. 5)

We need to listen carefully because sometimes the young hide their inquisitiveness by using the word "bored" or by putting their head on the desk. Indeed, if they say they are bored, we need to listen because maybe we are boring. Many visits to many classrooms in many places have convinced me that our young are hungry to talk *with* us rather than be talked *at* by us*.* We need to excite them and let these young philosophers talk together with incredibly engaging ideas, sources, and texts.

#### *Teaching from Within*

The fourth cornerstone is best explained by the remarkable educationist Parker Palmer, who has taught us about the hidden wholeness, the courage to teach, teaching from within, and so many other ideas fundamental to twenty-frst-century education and life. Parker Palmer suggests that the key questions facing education are not only "what", "how", and "why", but "who" (Palmer 2007). He suggests that "the inner landscape of the teaching self" or the "teacher from within" is central to the story of education. In choosing a career in teaching, people are committing themselves to a life-long profession of passion, not simply a job. The teacher's internal landscape includes intellectual, emotional, and spiritual elements:

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher". (Palmer, pp. 8–10)

The "teacher from within" needs content knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge, and the awareness that he/she is shaped by ambiguities, humility, diversity, and even confict. We should not be afraid of these feelings as they are a part of teaching from within—"ultimate faith is ultimate doubt" (Tillich 2011). There could not be a more appropriate description of the role of the teacher in such a twenty-frst-century Jewish education than the multi-dimensional teacher with the courage to teach as described by Parker.

It is the synthesis of these four cornerstones—intention, core texts, the child as philosopher, and the teacher from within—that, together with the appropriate effort, good will, and investment in our professionals, could create a rich interactive and meaningful Jewish education which does not come to impose Jewish from without, but rather enables Jewish values to develop from within.

#### Notes


#### Bibliography


Tillich, Paul. 2011. *Dynamics of Faith.* (New York: HarperCollins).

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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# What Is "Contemporary American Jewish Education"?

CHAPTER 6

**Abstract** The descriptive meaning and usage of the phrase "Jewish education" is ambiguous in contemporary American Jewish life. In the tradition of linguistic philosophy of education, this chapter does not come to prescribe an ideology or philosophy of what contemporary American Jewish education *should be,* but rather identifes how the phrase "Jewish education" is used and understood in everyday parlance in American Jewish life.

**Keywords** Jewish education • Supplementary school • Day school • Jewish counterculture

# Why Is this Question Different from all Other Questions?

Our travels have taken us to diverse venues, vocabularies, and versions of educational language. In this chapter, our journey will take us to the worlds and language of contemporary American Jewish education which like Jewish education throughout the ages—is infuenced both by internal Jewish educational contexts and by external general educational cultures in the diverse societies in which Jews have lived (Divan 2018). This chapter focuses on explicating the varied meanings of the phrase "contemporary American Jewish education".

As we have seen throughout this book, analytic philosophy of education focuses on language and words. However, sometimes in our efforts to analyze language, we need to utilize methods beyond printed words and sentences. The psychoanalyst Theodore Reik introduced the term "third ear" to refer to the periodic need to employ a mechanism beyond our two ears to "hear" the psyche of an individual or a phenomenon (Reik 1948). Oliver Sacks used the term "an anthropologist on Mars" to describe similar kinds of phenomena which call for alternative points of entry into understanding words and people (Sacks 1994). In this chapter, I believe that we can best proft from utilizing the eyes and ears of outsiders to enable us to hear what people mean when they talk about "Jewish education" today. Therefore, I have invited two anthropologists from Mars to join us to help delineate the diverse meanings of the phrase "contemporary American Jewish education".

#### The Supplementary School

Our anthropologists from Mars begin their analysis by visiting a variety of venues where Jewish education happens in North American Jewish communities. The anthropologists immediately note that the majority of places where "Jewish education" takes place seem to be in brick-and-mortar structures physically connected to larger structures called "synagogues" located in diverse suburban and urban neighborhoods. These synagogues are modern and aesthetically pleasing buildings in which a sizeable sanctuary for prayer serves as a centerpiece along with other spaces such as libraries, rooms for social events and gatherings, and a "school wing" which encompasses one or more foors divided into classrooms. These classrooms are comparable to rooms in public schools, with white or black boards, movable desks, and some kind of table or desk at the front of the room for a teacher. The classrooms are decorated with pictures or drawings of Jewish scenes and objects and—most often—with a map of the State of Israel (one of the anthropologists with a special interest in cartography focuses on the diverse versions of these maps). The anthropologists are advised that while the various synagogues in a community might look alike, they are likely to be defned by or associated with distinct Jewish religious denominations that exist in American Jewish life. Such schools are denoted by an assortment of names: "Hebrew school", "supplementary school", "Sunday school", "religious school", and "family school" (the names keep changing). It quickly becomes clear that the students coming to these schools (after a full day of public schooling) are mainly children of elementary school age. This framework has been the predominate form of American Jewish education from the mid-1950s into the twenty-frst century.

The frst conclusion is that the term "Jewish education" refers to a supplementary part-time religious schooling system mainly encompassing children between the ages of eight and thirteen.

#### The View from Within

Our Martian observers now switch their focus from "outside" to "inside" with a view to understanding the dynamics of education within these schools. The spiritual leader (rabbi) of the congregation serves as the leader of the synagogue complex, while the planning and functioning of the school is the responsibility of an "educational director" or "head of school". Both the rabbi and the educational director are typically full-time professionals with academic training in Judaica, and frequently in education studies as well. A board of education or education committee responsible to the synagogue professional and lay leadership works together with the educational director in planning and implementation.

The faculty of the school is comprised of a variety of part-time instructors, including adults with teaching experience, college students engaged with Jewish life, and Israeli members of the local community with a facility in Hebrew, often accompanied by an expertise in Jewish content. Teachers in part-time schools receive a minimal salary, no benefts, and there are no national or regional degree or certifcation requirements.

The second conclusion is that supplementary synagogue education is overseen by qualifed religious and educational leadership and implemented by part-time teachers generally without verifable teaching credentials.

The Martians discover that every synagogue is an educational empire unto itself. While most synagogues are nationally affliated, this does not impose specifc goals, pedagogies or desired outcomes for individual schools. In many ways each school is a kingdom unto itself.

The third conclusion is that American Jewish education is a dramatic example of decentralized localized educational planning.

## What Did You Learn in School Today, Sweet Little Child of Mine?

The astute Martians quickly discover that it is impossible to defne *the* curriculum of Jewish supplementary schooling since the decentralized nature of this framework results in diverse forms and formats of curricula and courses of study. At the same time, it does seem possible to cite main categories and contents of study in American Jewish supplementary schools:


These topics and themes refect an overall concern with the presentation of core ideas and practices of Jewish holidays and rites of passage, an introduction to events and ideas of "the Jewish experience" past and present, and a discussion of the role of ethics and social responsibility in Jewish life. At the same time a central task of this elementary schooling is the educational, spiritual, and practical preparation of twelve- and thirteenyear-olds for the rite of passage known as *ba*r or *bat mitzvah*.

The fourth conclusion is that the majority of these schools focus on Jewish holidays, the Jewish life cycle, the Holocaust, Israel, ethics and social responsibility, and preparation for *bar* and *bat mitzvah*.

### The Day School

Our Martians discover another type of institution, one which services a much smaller number of elementary school-age children, but which is regarded as an important part of the contemporary American Jewish educational scene: the "day school", "academy" or "yeshiva". Such institutions (typically encompassing grades one through eight), are private all-day schools providing general and Jewish studies in one venue within the framework of a normal school day. A smaller number of all-day secondary Jewish schools also exists, modeled on the network of elite private high schools in America. Both elementary and secondary Jewish day schools are led by credentialed and recognized educational professionals who typically have advanced education in Jewish studies. Teachers of general studies are generally full-time professionals who must be credentialed and licensed by local or regional school districts. Teaching Jewish studies in day schools is also usually a full-time position and staffed by teachers with appropriate Jewish background and pedagogic skills. However, there are no local or state accreditation requirements for teaching Jewish subjects in Jewish schools and hiring is in the hands of the school leadership. Many of these schools are denominationally affliated with a specifc religious grouping, though there are also community Jewish day schools whose aim is to service the needs of a community regardless of denomination Finally, it is important to note that above and beyond its school function, the day school in American Jewish life refects the desire to create an all-encompassing and inclusive Jewish community of children, siblings, parents, and peers that share holidays and special events together.

The ffth conclusion is that American Jewish education includes a subcategory of private all-day schools providing a dual curriculum of Jewish and general studies, while at the same time shaping an active and engaged shared Jewish communal environment.

#### The Jewish Educational Counterculture

Our Martian anthropologists discover a vibrant network of informal or experiential frameworks aimed at young American Jews: summer camps, community centers, ideological youth groups, socially oriented youth organizations, museums social media, heritage travel, Israel experience, webinars, and podcasts. Professor Ben Jacobs has denoted frameworks as "countercultural" in the sense that they are "something that pushes up against or in some cases pushes back against" the status quo notion of "education" rooted in "schooling". (Jacobs in Chazan et al. 2017; Roszak 1969;). These counter cultural activities co-opt real life settings and create learner-centered immersive experiences that typically focus on contemporary questions, issues, topics, and problems related to Jewish life. These frameworks develop programs that actively engage twenty-frst-century American teenagers and college-aged emerging adults and enable them to experience a Jewish life that is intellectually and emotionally compelling. This experiential system is staffed by accessible role models who are able to understand the worlds of their younger peers and to convey excitement and passion about being Jewish.

The sixth conclusion is that a dynamic and diverse network of informal, experiential Jewish programming exists in American Jewish life, one which aims to convey an American Jewish life to the next generation of young Jews in ways they can relate to, appreciate, and understand.

## A Surprise Addition

The anthropologists think that their job is just about done when they stumble upon a fascinating phenomenon in American Jewish life that communal leaders often omit from the Jewish educational landscape. In twenty-frst-century America, there are a multitude of colleges and universities—both state and private—that offer a robust menu of courses, concentrations, and majors (as well as master's and PhD programs) in academic Jewish studies. Both in terms of geography and content areas, the range of this network is huge. It encompasses colleges and universities across North America and academic Jewish topics that span the disciplinary spheres of religion, anthropology sociology, psychology, history, economics, literature, music, and more. Courses in these departments are staffed by the best and brightest of academics whose life's passion and profession is teaching and research. These frameworks and these academics have essentially created a new educational framework in which post-adolescent American youth can study and understand the diverse dimensions of Jewish civilization in a rigorous academic framework.

The seventh conclusion is that in the past 75 years of American life, a new, powerful, and dramatic frontier of rigorous academic study of Judaism located in American universities has emerged, one which constitutes a signifcant framework for the serious study of Jewish civilization.

Contemporary American Jewish Education <sup>a</sup> Report

	- There are multiple nuances and frameworks implied by the term "American Jewish education" and no one meaning is defnitive.

Good luck! Your friends from Mars

#### Bibliography

Chazan, B. et al. (2017). *Cultures and Contexts of Jewish Education*. (Palgrave).


Sacks, O. 1994. *An Anthropologist from Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales.* (Knopf).

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# What Is "Informal Jewish Education"?

**Abstract** The term "informal" or "experiential" education has become an important concept in the language of contemporary education. Eight defning characteristics of this term are presented in this chapter.

**Keywords** Informal education • Experiential education • Personcentered • Holistic educator

Education is an ever-changing feld which combines cherished traditions and constant innovations about how, where, and why people learn. The discussion of "where, why, and how people learn" has preoccupied educators throughout the ages, and in contemporary times the phrase "informal education" has emerged as a signifcant term in the educational lexicon. Several alternative terms have emerged to denote this phenomenon, including: "out of school activities", "recreational education", "non-formal education", "informal education", and the currently popular "experiential education".1

The frameworks of informal or experiential education join the mainstream educational institutional language of pre-schools, elementary schools, secondary schools, and universities, often as welcome partners, occasionally as doubtful artifacts. Once described as "supplementary" or

This chapter is based on my essay, "The philosophy of informal Jewish education" (pp. 13–23) in Bryfman, D. ed. (2014). *Experience and Jewish education.* Los Angeles: Torah Aura Productions.

"extra-curricular", this new kind of education has assumed a new and ever-expanding centrality in contemporary life.

# The Challenge of Defining "Informal Education"

The interest in informal education raises the question of what this term means. The most common answer is that informal education is education outside of school. While this is a convenient explanation linguistically, it is not particularly helpful in describing the actual nature of the phenomenon. There are activities that physically take place in school, such as debating societies, language clubs, yearbook, and physical education, which somehow seem different from the nature of the standard school protocol of study and curriculum. Similarly, there are activities which take place outside of school, such as intensive language institutes or pre-college preparation programs that in many ways resemble the nature of schoolbased learning. In addition, negative descriptions are rarely useful or precise enough to clearly delineate the nature of a phenomenon. Thus, the distinction between "school" and "out-of-school" activities is not ultimately helpful because negative defnitions do not clearly tell us what a phenomenon is so that we can learn "how to do it" in daily life. While descriptions of formal education abound, there have been surprisingly few linguistic or analytic attempts to delineate the nature of "informal education".

This is our mission in this chapter. First, we shall briefy look at some examples of "informal education" in Jewish frameworks, then, on the basis of emergent shared characteristics, I shall propose what seems to be eight common characteristics of the phenomenon called "informal Jewish education".

## Examples of "Informal Jewish Education"

The kaleidoscope of activities regarded as informal or experiential Jewish education is ever-growing. It includes Jewish youth movements and organizations, which refers to young people voluntarily participating in cultural, educational, ideological, and social activities within a peer group context. The phrase "youth movements" is generally used when the organization has ideological roots, and "youth organization" is typically used to denote general youth frameworks. The power of the peer group and culture is an important dimension of such youth frameworks, as young people enjoy being together and spending time with friends. Youth movements and organizations are often led by charismatic and engaging counselors who have the ability to excite and inspire. As the counselors are close in age to the participants, it engenders a great sense of identifcation in their younger charges. These frameworks frequently address topics of immediate concern to young people. Programs include regular meetings, retreats, and summer camps. The experience of such frameworks is enveloped in an aura of enthusiasm and fun.

Jewish camps are immersive summer settings in which young people of diverse ages spend several weeks away from home within a community of young people, frequently located in rural settings. These frameworks are holistic totally self-contained communities in which the camp family lives, eats, and plays together in a diverse range of activities. (Joselit 1994; Sales and Saxe 2004). Camps and retreats are particularly effective in creating an intense and all-encompassing milieu or "total institution" (Goffman 1961). Perhaps most important, camp is a lot of fun! The experience of going to a camp or to a retreat has, like the youth movement, an aura of great engagement and enjoyment about it.

JCCs (Jewish community centers) were established at the beginning of the twentieth century to help Jewish immigrants become more American. By the end of the twentieth century, they had become multipurpose gathering places and venues, and had a mission which called for a diversity of recreational, cultural, social, athletic, Jewish, and general educational activities, as well as helping the now fully integrated American Jews to remember their Jewish links ("Jewish oxygen fows in this place and it is breathed by millions of Jews who enter its doors.").2 JCCs have proven to be a new kind of Jewish neighborhood in which Jews of all ages pass through, and it is one of the few places where Jews of all kinds meet (Kaufman 1999).

Adult Jewish learning refers to voluntary frameworks established to enable adult Jews to enrich their Jewish knowledge and acquire Jewish skills in warm and non-threatening settings (Katz 2012). Jewish family education refers to educational programs developed for entire families with the purpose of strengthening the entire Jewish lifestyle of the entire family. (Alper 1987) These two kinds of informal education expanded signifcantly in late twentieth-century America, and while they had qualities similar to traditional educational models, they were voluntary and adjusted to meet the needs of adults thirsty to study diverse aspects of Judaism with professionally knowledgeable and skilled educators able to teach texts in ways that relate to the lives and life settings of the participants.

As the phenomenon of travel became more accessible, Jewish or heritage travel became a growth industry in American Jewish life. This kind of education involves directly experiencing sites, events, and people. A trip to Prague or Venice provides an experience of the coexistence of Jewish and general culture. To travel to Poland is to experience the height of Jewish creativity and the depth of human depravity. Traveling to Israel is about seeing, feeling, and touching the Jewish past, present, and future. In this kind of education, much cognitive learning happens through seeing, visiting, touching, and participating in, rather than through lectures or "looking in from without." (Saxe and Chazan 2008; Kellner 2012), At the end of the twentieth century with the advent of Taglit-Birthright Israel, travel to Israel for post teens and emerging adults became a central educational framework in contemporary Jewish life.

One cannot talk about informal education without referring to the revolution that has taken place in technology, communications, and cyberspace. As the pandemic era showed us, even when confned to home, people are able to study specifc topics; have group learning sessions; visit far off places; and listen to podcasts and hear the voices of great teachers and personalities. Indeed the opening of an entirely new platform in which one can choose a topic or an activity at the touch of a button or create a group through a video-conference invitation constitutes a major new arena which extends education far beyond the walls of Hebrew school or the university.

These are just a few examples of the diverse frameworks and formats that have emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-frst century which point to a heretofore unknown, and now only beginning to blossom, campus of Jewish learning and experience.

## The Defining Characteristics of "Informal Jewish Education"

These diverse examples enable the development of a paradigm for "informal Jewish education" based on eight formal attributes or characteristics. The uniqueness of the practice of informal Jewish education lies in the confguration and synergy of these eight characteristics.

#### *Person-centered Jewish Education*

The central focus of informal education is the individual and his/her growth. Underlying this focus is the belief that human beings are dynamic individual organisms that grow and are shaped by their own engagement in learning. Hence, this kind of education places a primacy on the person's own involvement and progress, and he/she is considered an active partner in the educational dynamic. Educationally, this implies what is often called "a child-centered pedagogy". It focuses on individuals and their personal interests, listening as much as telling, asking questions rather than giving answers, and collaborating rather than coercing. In terms of informal Jewish education, the person-centered principle means helping each individual grow and fnd meaning as a person and as a Jew. The emphasis is on personal Jewish development rather than on the transmission of Jewish culture, and the individual is actively engaged in his/her own journey of Jewish growth.

The preoccupation with the individual in informal Jewish education also implies concern with affecting the learner's *total* being. While selected activities may focus on a specifc Jewish skill or Jewish topic (such as learning to speak Hebrew or build a *sukkah*), the ultimate aim of informal Jewish education is to build the person's overall Jewish character. Thus, informal Jewish education does not see "Jewish growth" as exclusively intellectual, but rather as a synthesis of aesthetic, affective, moral, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions.

#### *The Centrality of Experience*

Informal Jewish education is rooted in a belief that experience is central to the individual's Jewish development. The notion of experience in education derives from the idea that participating in an event or a moment through the senses and the mind enables one to understand a concept, fact, or belief in a direct and unmediated way. "Experience" in education refers to learning that happens through participation in events by actually seeing, doing, touching, hearing, and engaging. John Dewey focused on the centrality of the learner in the educational process because of his belief that people learn best when there is a dynamic interactivity between them, thoughts, ideas, and knowledge (Dewey 1938). Such experiencing enables ideas and events to occur in real time and in genuine venues, rather than their being talked about with the learner.3

In terms of informal Jewish education, learning occurs through enabling people to undergo key Jewish experiences and values. For example, an experiential approach to *Shabbat* focuses on enabling people to participate in it in real time—lighting candles at sunset, hearing *kiddush* before the meal, and eating c*hallah*. This approach does not deny the value of learning about *Shabbat* in classes and from texts, but it does suggest that learning about an experience is not the same as participating in it.

It is important to note that the experience of study and the learning of ideas can in themselves be very engaging and powerful. The unmediated confrontation with text, either individually, with a study partner or a class with an exceptional teacher, are powerful examples of the central Jewish value of *Talmud Torah.* Thus, the emphasis on experience is not a rejection of the experience of study, rather it is a refocusing on the active engagement of a person with all his/her senses so that the learning comes from within rather than being imposed from without.

#### *A Curriculum of Jewish Experiences and Values*

Curriculum has generally been seen as characteristic of formal rather than informal education and is typically understood as a set or course of studies with lists of subjects to be covered, books to be read, ideas to be learned, and tests to be given. However, the more generic meaning of the concept of "curriculum"—an overall blueprint or plan of action rooted in vision is very much part of informal Jewish education. Curriculum can be rooted in a well-defned body of Jewish experiences and values while at the same time be experienced fexibly and related to the lives of people at signifcant moments.

There is a diversity of views regarding what comprises the core experiences and values of Jewish tradition or culture. Some approaches are likely to emphasize prayer, study, holidays, and rituals. Other approaches are likely to emphasize Hebrew, holidays, music, morals, and customs. Still other approaches are likely to emphasize the Land of Israel, travel to Israel, Hebrew, and Jewish history. Because of this diversity, it is diffcult to arrive at one agreed-upon core Jewish curriculum. At the same time, there are some Jewish experiences that seem to be shared by the majority of informal Jewish educational systems, for example, holidays, life-cycle experiences, cultural and peoplehood experiences, text study, Israel, and core Jewish values.

A central dimension of an informal Jewish education curriculum is its fexibility and dynamism. The methods of teaching "core contents" and the sequence in which they are taught are open to change and adjustment. These core experiences and values may be "taught" in a variety of ways, depending upon time, place, and the individual pace of each learner.

#### *An Interactive Process*

The unfolding of the curriculum in informal education is determined by the interaction of people with each other and with core experiences. Informal Jewish education is rooted in the belief that active human interchange, dialogue, and discussion are critical dimensions of learning. Interaction refers to a reciprocal effect or infuence between two or more people. The thinking and behavior of one, it is assumed, acts as a stimulus for the thinking and behavior of the other. People learn and grow through active social interaction, which stimulates ideas, causes us to think and rethink views, and helps us to re-conceptualize our beliefs and ideologies. The active discussion involving back and forth with others is not simply pedagogically useful, it is, in a more basic sense, a pivotal factor in shaping our ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. The principle of interactivity implies a pedagogy of asking questions, stimulating discussion, and engaging the learner. To encourage interactivity, educators must create an environment which invites learners to listen to each other and to react with dignity and decency. The pedagogy of informal Jewish education is rooted in techniques that empower openness, encourage engagement, instigate creative dialectic, and ensure comfort in diversity and disagreement.

Informal Jewish education is as concerned with igniting dialogue with the learner as it is with transmitting a cultural legacy. The efforts of the informal Jewish educators are very much connected to the dynamic interactive process between student and educator, student and student, student and text, and student and Jewish tradition. Neither ingenuous nor instrumental, this interaction is an inherent element of informal Jewish education's theory of learning.

#### *The Group Experience*

The group is an integral component of the learning experience in informal education. Indeed, groups are an *a priori* force that shapes human life rather than technical structures that are superimposed upon us. The groups of which we are part shape our minds, language, and selves in very central ways. Therefore, education is not simply about transmitting knowledge to all the individuals gathered in one room. It is very much about the dynamic role of the collective in expressing and reinforcing values that are part of the culture of the society that created the group. Groups are not simply aggregates of people learning individually in parallel fashion, they are social networks that teach ideas and values through the essence of the group process. The skilled informal Jewish educator does not just teach about Jewish history or holidays, he/she also shapes a community that exemplifes the concept of *kehillah* (community). The group is central in informal Jewish education in that the key values of *klal Yisrael* (the totality of Israel), *am Yisrael* (Jewish people), *kehillat kodesh* (holy community), and *chesed* (care for the other) are experienced within group contexts.

#### *A "Culture" of Jewish Education*

Informal Jewish education is rooted in the belief that education is fundamentally about "creating culture" rather than transmitting knowledge. This form of education attains its goals most effectively by treating the entire educational setting as a comprehensive culture. Here, "culture" refers to the totality of components that make up educational contexts: architecture, styles of dress, codes and norms of behavior, seating patterns, physical and aesthetic decor, norms of human interaction, language patterns, and many others. The cultural milieu as a whole teaches by presenting, creating, and reinforcing values, ideas, experiences, norms, and, ultimately, a worldview.

Hence, informal Jewish education emphasizes the importance of orchestrating settings to refect and model values and behaviors deemed important. It focuses on all aspects of an environment in order to educate for "Jewishness". It does not emphasize only cognitive or discursive content, but also the many diverse aspects of the setting as a whole: what the room looks like; what food is served; and how staff members interact with each other. With such an approach, logistical and organizational considerations are neither incidental nor secondary to the educational program they are themselves inherently educational issues. On an Israel experience, for example, it is the educator, rather than the bus driver or administrator, who should determine routes and room allocation. The dinner menu on the frst night of a Jewish summer camp is as much an issue for the camp educator as it is for the business manager and dietitcian. The latter two are rightly focused on fnance and nutrition, while the former, zeroing in on the transition of the campers and possible "newness panic", seeks to create a warm "Jewish home" atmosphere. Indeed, issues of food, travel, bedtime and waking-up time, personal hygiene, and economics are core issues of education and mental health, and not only issues of logistics and administration. The notion of an "educational culture" also implies that education is not limited to specifc locales, such as classrooms or school buildings; it can occur anywhere. As we learn in the most concise and most powerful text on informal Jewish education ever written, Jewish education takes place "when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:7).

The notion of a culture of education also suggests that no single agency has a monopoly on Jewish education. Such a culture can be created wherever Jews may be found—in community centers; Jewish family service offces; sports activities; retreats and conferences; at meals; and on bus rides. Indeed, some of these places may well be ideal venues for Jewish education because they are real settings where Jewish experiences can be lived rather than talked about. The task of the educator is to adapt all settings to serve the larger educational vision.

#### *An Education That Engages*

Informal Jewish education engages and co-opts participants to make them feel positive about being involved. Because of its focus on the individual and on issues that are real to him/her, informal Jewish education is often described as "fun," "joyful," or "enjoyable." This should not be taken as a sign of frivolity or lack of seriousness. As Erikson and others have indicated, identity is, in part, a sense of positive feelings about a group or a frame of reference, thus positive feelings about a Jewish experience play an important role in the development of Jewish identities. (Cole 1996).

In this context, informal Jewish education may be compared to play and sports. The literature on play and sports emphasizes the involvement and engagement of the learner, the joy in the moment, the immediacy of it all, the positive memory, and the warm associations. What seems mundane may be sublime. The late Bart Giamatti—Renaissance scholar, university president, and one-time commissioner of Major League Baseball—described an end-of-season baseball game as a life event reminiscent of *erev Rosh Hashanah*:

In the seventh, the Yankees lead off with two singles from Chambliss and White … I am going to board a plane in a mere fve minutes and my heroes and I, after a long spring and summer and hectic fall, are going home … I now remember it is *Rosh Hashanah*, and I recall that renewal has rhythms as old as decline. (Giamatti 1989, p. 165)

One small game is an echo of eternity and paradise.

#### *The Holistic Educator*

Informal Jewish educators are total personalities who educate by words deeds, and by shaping a culture of Jewish values and experiences. They are person-centered educators whose focus is on learners and whose role it is to create opportunities for engaging experiences and to facilitate the learner's entry into such moments. The informal Jewish educator promotes interaction and interchange. One of the major tasks is to create an environment that enables this interactivity to fourish. This requires profciency in the skills of asking questions, listening, and activating the engagement of others.

The informal Jewish educator is a creator of community and *kehillah* by shaping the aggregate into a group and utilizing the group setting to teach core Jewish values. They are creators of culture, sensitive to all the elements contained within an educational setting so that they refect the values and experiences the educator wishes to convey. The task in this instance is to make every decision—big or little—an educational decision. Informal Jewish educators must be able to engage those with whom they work and make their learning experience enjoyable, stimulating, and yield positive associations. Finally, the informal Jewish educator needs to be an educated and committed Jew. This educator must be knowledgeable since one of the values he/she comes to teach is *Talmud Torah—*study. He/she must be an accessible model of ways of thinking, knowing, questioning, and behaving that refect the best of Jewish civilization.

### Informal Jewish Education Defined

Having identifed these eight characteristics, informal Jewish education can be defned as follows:

Informal Jewish education is aimed at the personal growth of Jews of all ages. It happens through the individual's hands-on experience with a diversity of Jewish moments and values that are regarded as worthwhile. It works by creating venues, by developing a total educational culture, and by coopting the social context. It is based on a "curriculum" of Jewish values and experiences that is presented in a dynamic and fexible manner. It does not call for any one venue but may happen in a variety of settings. It evokes pleasurable feelings and memories. It requires Jewishly literate educators with a teaching style that is highly interactive and participatory, and who are willing to make maximal use of self and personal lifestyle in their educational work.

#### Informal Education and Informal Jewish Education

Jewish and general informal education share seven of the eight defning characteristics: both are person-centered, experience-oriented, and interactive, and they promote a learning and experiencing community, a culture of education, and content that engages. Both, ideally, are shaped by especially thoughtful and engaging educators.

Informal Jewish educators differ from general informal education in terms of the nature and goals of the curriculum that defnes their work. Informal Jewish education is focused on shaping the overall personality of its charges as Jews and as human beings. General informal education may be related to linkage and lineage with a specifc ethnic group or with alternative educational or cultural contents. General and Jewish informal education have different content and curricular orientations but, beyond that, they share the same general assumptions about the essence of an educational approach.

All forms of informal Jewish education are ultimately concerned with Jewish character or lifestyle. It is true that there are specifc examples of informal Jewish education that seem to be about distinct content topics. The adult learning class on "The Rhythm of Jewish Life" helps participants acquire knowledge about the Jewish calendar. The trip to Poland enables a better understanding of the role of the Holocaust in Jewish life as well as presenting the former grandeur of major Jewish communities. However, in both cases, the larger, overall goal is Jewish character development. A person whose sole task is to take a group through the streets of Prague or Krakow is a tour guide. Only if the mission is to contribute to the lifelong journey of the traveler is the guide an "informal Jewish educator."

#### Conclusion

The contemporary bifurcation of education into "formal" and "informal" can be artifcial, and such a sharp distinction did not exist in many classical cultures. Indeed it is in modern school-centered societies that the need for new distinguishing categories emerged.

While the twenty-frst century continues to use the terms "formal" and "informal" or "experiential" Jewish education, this state of affairs is not irreversible. In the decades, years, and centuries ahead, we may yet succeed in restoring the organic unity that once was. We should work hard to correct the notion that informal and formal Jewish education are unrelated entities. In fact, they should be seen as partners in the overall goal of developing knowledgeable and committed human beings. Each has much to learn from the other. We might well consider talking about the "deformalization of the formal" and "re-formalization of the informal" rather than regarding these as opposing philosophies. Indeed, perhaps the time has come to unite these two critical words and worlds.

#### Notes


#### Bibliography


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 8

# What Is "the Israel Experience"?

**Abstract** Educational travel to Israel has become an important framework for American Jewish education. In this chapter, the core components of this Israel educational experience are analyzed.

**Keywords** Educational travel • The tour educator • Learner-centered • The holistic educator • The Israel experience

## Travel in the Human Experience

Travel is one of the oldest of human experiences. Over time, the functions and nature of travel have changed, but the phenomenon itself remains a signifcant dimension of life. The many iterations of travel include nomadic wandering, searching for sustenance in times of travail, religious pilgrimages, military campaigns, the quest for new scientifc horizons and discoveries, and the search to fnd oneself and meaning in life.

In recent centuries, travel was no longer necessarily related to oppression, salvation, or the lust for power. Instead, it became a form of "fnishing school" for graduates of European gymnasia and academies to search and seek out "the meaning of life":

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. from "Song of the Open Road" (Walt Whitman, American poet, 1819–1892), (Whitman 1998)

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's a good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture between the skies from *On the Roa*d (Jack Kerouac, American novelist (1922–1969), (Kerouac 1957)

## Travel Today

Ours is an age in which travel has become an integral element of contemporary culture. Far-off places have become increasingly closer and more easily accessible by car, train, air, boat, and, even, by spaceship. The "business" of tourism has made travel comfortable, exotic, relaxing, and exciting—and if you get homesick you are likely to fnd the Golden Arches nearby! Tourism has become a major economic force; indeed, there are many countries whose primary industry is travel and tourism. Whereas travel in ancient times typically entailed travail and tremor, modern travel encompasses sunscreen and snack bars.

### The Traveling Jews

The history of the Jewish people is very much connected with travel. In the book of Genesis, a man named Abram travels to a new land, his name changes to Abraham, and his destiny is to become the father of a people. In times of famine, Abraham and his descendants travel to Egypt for sustenance. Eventually, the periodic Egypt sojourns result in a long period of servitude to foreign masters, culminating in a lengthy desert journey from Egypt to the Promised Land with a brief stopover at a mountain called Sinai which dramatically shapes a wandering group of ex-slaves into the Israelite people and nation. After a formative period that included tribal formations and schisms, the Israelites experience varying degrees of stability under diverse foreign sovereignties, with periodic exiles to Babylon, Alexandria, Elephantine, and other places. Indeed, it might well be legitimate to describe the Israelites and their successors as a "traveling people" who throughout history moved from a variety of places to a multitude of locations. Travel somehow became integrated into the personality of the Jewish people. (Chazan 2019).

#### Jewish Educational Travel to Israel

The motif of "travel to the Promised Land" became a central motif of the life, prayers, language, customs, and traditions of Jewish life after the Exile. Actual mass travel to Israel never became the norm until the twentieth century, but thinking, envisioning, praying, and even being buried in the Holy Land became a central part of the law, liturgy, and lore of the Jewish people in its many diasporas (Chazan 2019). The story of early twentieth-century travel to Israel constitutes a dramatic new chapter in the history of the Jewish people and is transformed into the emergent idea of Israel as a "real" place for Jewish settlement and ultimately statehood. (Shapira 2012).

The focus in this chapter is on youth travel to Israel, which, as discussed in the last chapter, has become an important dimension of the new countercultural concept of experiential Jewish education. Fairly soon after the establishment of the State, diverse educational frameworks for youth travel to Israel developed and became part of the Jewish educational landscape of both North America and the entire Jewish world (Cohen 2000). For most of the twentieth century, the focus of Israel travel was mostly on summer teen travel programs conducted by major denominations, with periodic specialty niche program created by creative independent educators. In addition, a network of one-year or gap year study programs in Israel emerged, which had special appeal for graduates of Orthodox day schools. The concept of educational travel to Israel was signifcantly broadened toward the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twentyfrst century with the establishment of Taglit-Birthright Israel which provides the gift of a ten-day trip to all eligible post-high school young people. Over the last 20 years, it is estimated that close to three quarters of a million young Jews have participated in such programs. (Saxe and Chazan 2000; Kellner 2010).

Which terminology best characterizes travel to Israel for the young in our day and age? Such travel is not the traditional pilgrimage motivated by a desire to see and pray at holy sites. It is not a search for refuge, since most of the travelers are safe in the countries from which they come. Nor is it migration, because most Jews living outside of Israel do not feel the need to migrate. It is not tourism per se since the major frameworks for bringing young people to Israel are sponsored and implemented by educational organizations.

Several terms have been used over the past decades to describe such programs. They have been called "youth travel to Israel", "Israel educational programs", and even "the Israel pilgrimage". In the 1980s, a group of Jerusalem-based educators discussed the issue of nomenclature, and from these discussions the current denotation of such travel as "the Israel experience" emerged. This language has persevered, and today the term "the Israel experience" is used to refer to frameworks created by various agencies (mostly educational) to enable young people to encounter the phenomenon of a modern Jewish state.

## Characteristics of "the Israel Experience"

The Israel educational experience has emerged as one of the new innovative educational frameworks in Jewish life. This educational framework has become a dynamic feld of refection, innovation, piloting, and evaluation, and, as a result, this domain has emerged as an exciting sphere of contemporary Jewish educational thinking and practice.

The Israel educational experience is rooted in a number of core principles. The frst principle—learner-centered education—posits that the *subject* of Israel trips is not Israel but rather the young people who are experiencing Israel. This frst principle neither diminishes nor denigrates the importance of Israel, rather it proposes that the Israel experience focus on the interaction of an individual with the diverse historical sites, contemporary places, and people of twenty-frst-century Israeli life.

The second principle indicates that *the subject matter* of such an Israel experience is not the visit or observation of historical sites per se but the overall rhythms that constitute contemporary and historic Israel. The subject matter is a kaleidoscope of diverse peoples, ideas, and ways of life, all of which call for educators who are able to create a culture of dialogue and dialectic between the places and the visitor. The skill sets of trip educators include the ability to facilitate discussion between "places" which have much to say and young people who want to "communicate" with them. What matters is not the visit to the Western Wall or Tel Aviv beaches per se (although both are important), but rather the meetings and "conversations" of our young visitors with the many venues they will visit in Israel. Indeed, the various places of Israel are not sights to photograph but voices with whom one can speak.

The third principle is that every aspect of Israel—and not simply the famous sites—are places to be visited and engaged with. The names of the streets in Israel are a lexicon of biblical, rabbinic, and contemporary heroes. Graffti on the walls are new texts being written by twenty-frstcentury scribes of the community. Popular music refects both the diversity of ethnic rhythms of Israel, as well as of the topics that shape contemporary Israeli discourse, such as war, peace, noise, quiet, not forgetting the universal motifs of the human condition—love, sadness, and existence. The traditional holy places or historic sites are not the totality of what there is to see in Israel. Yehuda Amichai quipped that it might be better to look at people buying fruits and vegetables in the marketplace for the family than at arches from many centuries ago (Alter 2015).

The fourth principle of the Israel experience is that Israel's many diverse sites are waiting to "talk" with people, rather than be looked at like exhibits in a museum. The value of a visit to Masada is to engage with individuals who lived there thousands of years ago and to hear from them why they did what they did. A visit to the *Knesset*, Israel's parliament building, is not to take pictures of important people, but rather to talk to representatives of the diverse parties, pose questions, and listen to their different answers. The Israeli educational experience is a conversation not a photo-op exercise.

The ffth principle is the importance of intensive interaction with Israeli peers. In the last decades of the twentieth century, one of the independent Israel experience organizations re-shaped the Israel trip by rooting it in the shared experiencing of Israel by North American and Israeli peers *traveling together.* This concept—called the *mifgash*—regards Israel experience as a unique opportunity for young people In Israel and Jews from all over to travel, learn, interact, and share both common and unique experiences.

The sixth principle views the Israel educational experience within the tri-level curricular construct of "overt", "covert", and "null" curricula. The *overt* curriculum of Israel education focuses on a group of places and experiences that are regarded as worthwhile for young people to visit and experience, such as The Western Wall, *Yad Vashem*, *Masada*, The *Knesset*, Rabin Square, and the desert. The *covert* curriculum, shaped by the participants, includes free time in downtown Jerusalem; swimming at Tel Aviv beaches; riding on the bus; and sitting outdoors or inside a hotel in the evening talking about anything and everything. These moments enable participants to set their own agenda and discuss their particular Israel experience and relate it to their own lives. Finally, there is the *null* curriculum, which refers to places not included on the trip because of time, convenience, personal safety, or other reasons. The null curriculum is important, particularly if participants sense that there are parts of the Israel experience that the trip organizers are hiding. Trip organizers should be able to speak openly both about the places they go to and the places they don't go to during the experience in Israel—and why.

The seventh principle is the notion of the trip leader as a *moreh derekh* pointer of the way—rather than as a "tour guide". Tour guides talk about the history and meaning of sites in the story of a country. *The moreh derech* does the same but also asks questions, and initiates conversations between participants and sites and venues and participants and each other. The *moreh derech* certainly needs to know facts, fgures, and background and history of the sites; but they also need to know how to engage young people in discussions with the locations and with each other. Moreover, the days of the program are measured less by the quantity of sites visited than by the quality of the experiences that take place (distinguished Israeli educator Zohar Raviv reminds us that "less is often more"). The tour educator is a "matchmaker" whose mission it is to create meaningful interaction between different types of people, people and places, and persons with themselves.

The eighth principle is that a good Israel trip is one in which an active and dynamic social environment emerges so as to enable fruitful interaction amongst group members. The creation of a vibrant interactive group or community among participants is a central dimension of the Israel educational program; a good Israel experience is shaped by an animated learning community.

The ninth and fnal principle of the Israel experience is rooted in the philosophy of Dutch historian Jan Huizinga, who described humankind as *Homo ludens,* people who play (Huizinga 2014). The central point of Huizinga and others is that human experience is about learning, experiencing, relating, enjoying, and playing. Play is neither antithetical to education nor should it be regarded as stealing time for frivolity. Indeed, the beach, hikes, games, and hanging out are not "non-educative" activities they often turn out to be pivotal life moments and experiences. Fun and relaxation do not preclude education but rather they are moments for education. Visiting Israel is not all classroom study. Israel and Israelis like to play, smile, and have a good time, and participants in Israel education experiences should be able to share those moments.

These nine principles are guidelines that should shape the planning and implementation of quality Israel experiences. There are no fxed lesson plans, textbooks, and materials that must be covered on an Israel experience and certainly no fnal examinations, certifcates, or pre-college credits. Instead, there are young people ready to experience, learn, explore, question, and play in this remarkable twenty-frst-century classroom called the State of Israel.

#### Three Challenges

Clearly the Israel educational experience is a signifcant contemporary campus for meaningful education about Israel, in particular, and about Jewish life, in general. At the same time, the educational experience in Israel encompasses several challenges.

The frst challenge is that contemporary Israel is comprised of a vast multitude of diverse Jewish ethnicities, religious orientations, and political views. In fact, Israel is the ultimate playground of Jewish diversity. While it is popular to use the phrase "Israelis" as though they were one entity, the term is misleading in implying that there is one homogeneous phenomenon of "being Israeli". Indeed, the truth and the power of an experience in Israel is to make very clear that contemporary Israel is a strikingly heterogeneous mixture of diverse backgrounds, attitudes, and behavioral systems that do not easily ft into one stereotypical category. A major mission of the Israel experience is to highlight this diversity in the cultural, religious, and political sphere and to enable students to witness varied expressions of these diversities. Denominational trips need to move out of their ideological comfort zones and meet Israelis who do not ft neatly into the trip organizers' framework. Non-religious organized trips should not simply present religion as a problem but expose its participants to rich and meaningful examples of living a religious life in Israel.

The second challenge of the Israel experience is how to explain the dynamics of church and state in Israel as compared with the United States of America and several other Western democracies. The Israeli governmental structure is modeled on social and political patterns found in many western European countries that are alien to the American total separation between church and state. In Israel, many matters related to life-cycle events such as birth, marriage, and burial are not solely personal or individual, but rather are under the jurisdiction of the state and religious bodies, where "religious" means "Orthodox". The most strikingly controversial arenas of this system—who is permitted to offciate at life-cycle events (*bar mitzvah*, marriage, and burial) and non-egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall—are within the jurisdiction of the government-approved Orthodox rabbinate. Israel educational experiences should elucidate and explain the origins of such practices and allow for questions, discussion, agreement, and disagreement. The purpose of the trip in this area is not to preach but to teach.

The third and most complicated challenge of Israel educational experiences relates to what is called "the confict"—the longstanding disagreement, confrontation, crises, and wars between alternative narratives and claims related to Israel and Palestine. This dynamic has proven to be one of the major complicating aspects of the Israel experience, one which is frequently cited as a reason not to deal with this topic. The Israel experience should play an important role in educating participants about this longstanding confict—its origins, its key events, and its centrality in every sphere of life in Israel. The overall goal is to enable the young from abroad to understand the many faces of contemporary Israel society concerning the various positions toward the confict. Israel educational experiences are the appropriate settings for helping to explain this complicated and often signifcantly emotional aspect of life in Israel. This subject must be treated with openness and integrity, and it is crucial that its exploration presents a picture of the origins of the confict from the Israeli perspective and the many diverse responses and reactions to this reality within Israeli society. The purpose is not to defend, impose, or indoctrinate any one position but to educate young people to understand the many complex perspectives on this subject within Israel. The visit to Israel should not be a seminar exclusively devoted to the Israeli—Palestinian confict; yet to neglect this topic would be both a missed opportunity and a cause of questioning about the integrity of the Israel experience organizer. The parameters of the presentation of the confict need to be precisely defned as encompassing diverse perspectives as refected in Israeli society.

Obviously, a visit to Israel can only legitimately present the many diverse voices vis-à-vis the confict from within Israel and is not able to present in-depth perspectives of the non-Israeli voices on this subject. At the same time, it is important to indicate that there are alternative Palestinian and Arab perspectives and narratives. It must be made clear that a trip to Israel is a trip to Israel and not a trip to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or post-1967 territories under Israeli supervision. The visit to Israel is not a seminar on Middle East relations and, because of security dynamics and for practical reasons, it cannot enable comprehensive access to the Palestinian perspective. It is important that this point be openly discussed and should in no way be presented or understood as censorship or political narrowmindedness. The perspectives of the non-Israel side are important and at some point must be seriously encountered, but the Israel educational trips can only enable a thoughtful, open, and multidimensional presentation of diverse Israeli perspectives with an acknowledgment of the existence of other perspectives.

Indeed, we should not be afraid of teaching complexity. Our twentyfrst-century young people live in a world defned by complexities refected in family, gender, politics, and racial dynamics, and it is critical to treat this new generation in a manner that befts them and their expectations from education. It is essential to enable the formulation and discussion of intelligent questions rather than to provide slogan-like answers. The goal of dealing with the confict in Israel experiences is to help the young to learn about, refect on, and ask any and every question that will help them to better understand a very important dynamic in the life of the State of Israel.

#### Conclusion

Imagine the possibility of having a twenty-frst-century Disney-World-like venue with neighborhoods, exotic foods, multiple beliefs and cultural traditions, and a Jewish calendar, as well as newspapers, TV programs, preschools, and great beaches that "speak" in Hebrew! Today, a twenty-frst-century State of Israel exists! Babies are born, people fall in and out of love, kids go to school, families go on trips, good things and bad things happen. This is a signifcant moment and place in the long saga of Jewish civilization, and it is a particularly remarkable opportunity for those who love Judaism and education.

#### Bibliography


Huizinga J. 2014. *Homo Ludens.* (Martino Fine Books).

Kerouac, Jack. 1957. *On the Road.* (Penguin).


Shapira, A. 2012. *Israel: A History.* (Brandeis University Press).

Whitman, Walt. 1998. *Complete Poems of Walt Whitman*. (Wordsworth Editions).

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# "A Relational Philosophy of Israel Education"

**Abstract** Twenty-frst-century Jewish life requires a new paradigm for Israel education that remains loyal to the past, but speaks to today and tomorrow. This chapter presents eight characteristics of a new approach denoted as "a relational philosophy of Israel education".

**Keywords** Cognitive emotions • Ethnic education • Jewish identity • Diverse narratives • The relational approach

# Our Task

What a complicated life this little land has lived. It has been *terra sancta* to great religions. It has endured multiple conquerors and occupiers. It has been the object of holy memory and a vision of return. It is a modern state which is part of the family of nations. It is a source of conficting aspirations and emotions. What a complicated life this little land lives.

This chapter focuses on the place of Israel in contemporary American Jewish education from the twentieth century until today. The diverse educational systems of American Jewry have taught about both the historical homeland and the newly created state established in 1948 (Chazan 2015).

This chapter is based on Chazan, B. (2017). *A philosophy and Israel education: A relational approach.* Palgrave Pivot.

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 75

B. Chazan, *Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3\_9

While America's Jews focused on becoming Americans, they also wanted their young to learn about the nascent state.

The twenty-frst century is a different place. Jews are fully at home in and constitute a robust part of American life. Twenty-frst-century America is populated by a generation of post-ethnic multi-identifed millennials (Hollinger 2000). The once pioneering State of Israel is now a powerful post-modern country located in a complex area of the world. These changes have signifcant implications for the relationship between American Jewry and Israel (Beinart 2012).

The prior Jewish agenda of community and continuity has been replaced by a millennial agenda of multiple identities, the search for meaning, and the creation of affliations of shared meaning (Magid 2013). This situation calls for a new Israel educational paradigm that remains loyal to the past but is relevant to the realities of today and tomorrow. This reconceptualization reaffrms the centuries-long Jewish commitment to the concept of Israel. At the same time, it presents a new vision of Israel education as education for character and *humanitas* rather than ethnicity and particularism. The vision to be presented focuses on relating and relationship rather than "us versus them" (Buber 1934; Noddings 1992).

#### Establishing <sup>a</sup> Language

I want to defne certain key terms that that will be important for understanding of the relational philosophy of education to be presented in this chapter.

#### *Cognitive Emotions*

Typically, cognition and emotion have been regarded as polar opposites. Cognition is regarded as sober, calm, refective, and detached, while emotion is regarded as passionate, turbulent, heartfelt, and engaged. Cognition is understood as a faculty of the mind with which we analyze things in a "sensible" way, whereas emotion is regarded as a faculty of the heart whereby we feel things with "great sensitivity". In a signifcant essay entitled, "In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions", the American analytic philosopher of education Israel Scheffer rejected the juxta-position of "the cognitive" and "the emotive" and instead described their inherent interaction. His purpose was to show that cognition incorporated emotional components derived from cognitive refections and together they created "cognitive signifcance". This concept of cognitive emotions has important implications for our approach to Israel education.

#### *Homeland*

The word "homeland" is an important concept in the language of ethnicity and ethnic education and it is frequently used in Israel education. In its general usage, the term refers to a land (or an area), which is the place of origin of a people and its culture, as well as the locus of its history, language, customs, foods, and literary and artistic creations. In twentiethcentury America, the term "homeland" was associated with places from which millions of immigrants arrived. It was scrapbooks with photographs and memories; dinner tables of exotic and enticing cuisine; and the language one used when you didn't want the children to understand. America itself was not a "homeland"; it was the home of immigrants from diverse homelands. Homeland" only became an Americanized concept at the end of the twentieth century, especially after 9/11, when it came to be associated with the security and preservation of the homeland of America. "Home" and "homeland" are important terms to clarify in the discussion of Israel education.

#### *Identity*

The word "identity" became popular in mid-twentieth-century America through the writings and teachings of Erik Erikson (Friedman 1999). In his early formulations, Erikson used the term "identity" to refer to one of eight stages in psychosocial development (Erikson 1980). According to this typology, there are a series of developmental stages over a lifetime, each of which involves a crisis or a crossroads whose resolution leads to the emergence of strengths important for a balanced and satisfying life. The crisis of the ffth stage ("adolescence") is "identity versus identity confusion", in which identity refers to a person's shaping a psychological sense of who she/he is. The optimal outcome of the stage of identity confusion is the virtue of fdelity. Thus, identity in its original usage was very much about one stage of development that has implications for other essential stages. Erikson most decidedly did not refer to identity as loyalty to a specifc ideology or group attachment nor did he regard as a subject to be taught in classes as a goal of schooling. And that since the popular use of such terms as "Jewish identity" and "education for Jewish identity" is actually inaccurate and in fact the term "Jewish identifcation" which refers to degrees of Lincolnshire in lineage to the Jewish people might be a more precise concept.

#### *Israel*

The word "Israel" (*Yisrael* in Hebrew) was frst used in the Bible in Genesis 28:22 in presenting the narrative of Jacob wrestling with an angel and the subsequent changing of his name to "Israel". *Eretz Yisrael*—the Land of Israel—became the name of an area of the Middle East that in the Bible was called "Israel" and its inhabitants were called *bnei Yisrael* or Israelites. In the period of the Israelite monarchy (beginning approximately in the eleventh century BCE), the Northern Kingdom, composed of ten tribes, was denoted by the single word "Israel" while the two southern tribes were called "Judea" (Bright 1960). In post-Temple times (after 70 CE), the word "Israel" was used in diverse constellations such as *Eretz Yisrael* (the land), *Am Yisrael* (The Jewish people), *Torat Yisrael* (the Torah of Israel), and even *Elohei Yisrael* (The God of Israel). In later centuries, Jews in some Western and Central European countries were sometimes referred to as Israelite congregations. In 1948, when the new Jewish State was established, the name chosen for the country was The State of Israel (Frilling and Troen 1998). For thousands of years the word "Israel" has been connected in diverse ways to what we today call the Jewish people and one of the tasks of Israel education is to present discuss and explain the nature of these connections.

#### *Teaching Israel*

For most of the past century, the phrase used to describe the school-based educational activity related to Israel was "Teaching Israel" which denoted one of several subject-matter topics taught in Jewish supplementary and day schools. This subject-matter encompassed history of the biblical Land of Israel; the connection of the Jewish people with Israel over the ages and across continents in prayers, rituals, and customs; the emergence of the Zionist Movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the creation of the contemporary state of Israel in 1948. The topic was approached through diverse lenses—history, religion, customs, and sociology. At the beginning of the twenty-frst-century, several Jewish educational voices replaced the "teaching Israel" terminology with the notion "Israel education", in order to broaden the venues of educating about Israel beyond schools as well as to highlight a learner-centered rather that subject-centered approach.1

#### *Narratives*

Narratives are ways of looking at the world—typically embedded in stories—to enable individuals or groups to make meaning out of the multifaceted realities of human life. Narratives are not fction; they are philosophies. Various meanings of "Israel" are to be found in Jewish historical texts—biblical, rabbinic, modern, Zionist, contemporary statehood, and peoplehood—to help make sense of the concept in different eras. A variety of distinctive narratives of the meaning of "Israel" developed over time, refecting a core commitment to the overall idea, expressed in diverse narratives. The Jews have not been the only groups with Israel narratives; there have been and there are diverse non-Jewish narratives— Christian, Muslim, and Palestinian—that refect dramatically different understandings and interpretations of facts and events. Narratives will play an important role in the pedagogy of a "relational" Israel education.

#### Israel Education as Good Education

Israel education is obviously about Israel; it should be just as obvious that Israel education must frst and foremost be good education. The idea of good education is rooted in several philosophical assumptions. The frst assumption is that that we must learn how to be human and to coexist with others and that education plays an important role in that quest. (Oakeshott 1989). The second assumption is that human life is relational or dialogic, meaning that it is both shaped by and aimed at the ability of human beings to connect with each other in meaningful and humane ways (Buber 1934). The third assumption is that education is the process of developing the ability of human beings to both think and refect on the core values of their lives and to come to admire and be committed to these core values as essential to their existence. The fourth assumption is that engagement with the other is central to the educative process (Dewey 1938; Rogers 1969). The ffth assumption is that education is not preparation for some far-off time called adulthood but rather is, as poignantly expressed by Polish Jewish educator Janusz Korczak, the growth, .

development, and refection of the person in the here and now (Silverman 2017). I shall use the term "the relational approach" to describe this collection of assumptions and their implications for a twenty-frst-century Israel education.

## Eight Principles of <sup>a</sup> Relational Approach to Israel Education

Relational Israel education is rooted in eight educational principles that have signifcant implications for educational practice.

The *frst principle* is that the individual—not Israel—is the center of Israel education. This principle indicates that the learner is the pivot or axis around which education revolves and for which education exists. This is not to say that the word "Israel" is insignifcant, but it is not the starting point of Israel education—the learner is. While starting with Israel is tempting because it highlights an important topic, this direction usually leads to a preoccupation with Israel and neglect of the student. The person-centered assumption is rooted in the moral and epistemological belief that people of all ages can think and feel, and that understanding is a process that takes place at all stages of development. Therefore, the focus of education should be on the person's thinking, feeling, and doing. Jerome Bruner said that any child could be taught any subject at any age (Bruner 1960). Jean Piaget hypothesized that children are young scientists who actively try to explore the world and make sense of it (Piaget 1969). Lawrence Kohlberg suggested that children are moral philosophers who confront moral issues according to a series of well-defned developmental levels (Kohlberg 1980). Nel Noddings said that children can be taught to care (Noddings 1992). As we have seen, contemporary evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists talk about "the moral sense", "the philosophical baby", "the ethical brain", and "the moral animal" (Gopnik 2009; Gazzaniga 2005; Wilson 1993; Wright 1994). If educators presume that the young can refect and think, then they will likely discover that students can refect and think. If educators presume that the young are furniture-less rooms, then they will continue to see their jobs as interior decorators. The relational approach to Israel education begins with the belief that the child is the starting point on the exciting journey of Israel education.

The *second principle* of the relational approach is that the subject of Israel education is the individual's relationship with Israel. The word "subject" is generally used in education to refer to the content or body of knowledge to be taught. Typically, the "subject" of Israel education has been defned as the history of Israel, religious values related to Israel, and the story of contemporary State of Israel, all of which are regarded as contents to be transmitted to the young. Our second principle says that these topics are not the subject, but rather they all come to serve a more central preoccupation—the development of a personal and interpersonal relationship with Israel. This principle is based on the assumption that human life is interactional and relational, and thus dependent on connections with other ideas, values, beliefs, and people. This principle proposes that the intent of Israel education is about initiating, igniting, and nurturing a personal—and hopefully long-lasting—connection with Israel as it focuses on values, places, historical themes, the contemporary state, and people. The creation of the relationship, rather than the memorization of a defnable quantity of material, is the subject of Israel education.

The *third principle* proposes that the aim of Israel education is the exploration of core ideas related to the concept of Israel as being part of the larger enterprise of developing and creating a personal relationship with Israel. It regards the explication and understanding of diverse Israel narratives as important for a person's journey toward the goal of making meaning out of Israel. This goal statement is rooted in an educational tradition defned alternatively as humanistic, liberal, progressive, or person-centered education (Dewey 1938; Oakeshott 1989; Rogers 1980). This principle implies that understanding Israel can lead to a sense of lineage with a past heritage, linkage with a contemporary like-minded group of people, and inner harmony with oneself. The phrase "meaning-making" is used to indicate that the pursuit of meaning is not frivolous, feeting, or irrational; it is instead an activity in which one has to work seriously (Freud 1900). Meaning doesn't just happen; it involves the dynamics of searching, considering, and refecting. It is work and takes time and effort. Moreover, meaning is not a subject to be taught in school, but a state of mind and heart that hopefully will emerge in the process of education.

The *fourth principle* is that along with understanding, meaning-making, and relating, the creation of an Israel culture is a primary pedagogic focus of Israel education. The culturalist theory is a perspective which emphasizes the signifcant role in education of environment and context, such as language, aesthetics, arts, food, and customs (Bruner 1996; Cole 1996, Vygotsky 1978; Cole 1996). The cultures we live in are profound factors in shaping mind and self:

Learning and thinking are always situated in a cultural setting and always dependent on the utilization of cultural resources … Culturalism takes as its frst premise that education is not an island, but part of the continent of culture.

This means that Israel education includes the shaping of an immersive environment encompassing any and every component that constitutes the venue in which people learn, whether it be the architecture, peer culture, hidden curriculum, teacher's personality or even the weather. The architectonics of Israel education go beyond the normal course of study and include a much broader palate of educational opportunity. This means that the totality of educational institutions can be harnessed for Israel education.

The *ffth principle* of relational Israel education is that the rich corpus of diverse Israel narratives which form part of the Jewish heritage should be encountered and introduced within the context of Israel education. These narratives refect diverse ways of looking at the world within the context of the Jewish experience. The tasks of Israel education in this instance are fourfold. (1) To enable the learner to understand that the Jewish people have retained an overall commitment to the Land of Israel as one of its core values. (2) To enable the learner to discover that diverse meanings and understandings of Israel have been part of Jewish life over the ages. (3) To facilitate an appreciation in the student that the multiplicity of Israel narratives refects a tradition which invites refection, interpretation, and an understanding of the changing environments in which Jews have lived. The fact that contemporary Israel is a particularly charged topic does not mean that teachers or students must leave their cognitive skill sets in the locker room when dealing with this topic. They must approach it with the same cognition and passion they would employ when confronted with any serious question. (4) To assist the young in acquiring tools that will enable them, at some point, to carve out their own personal Israel narrative. Ultimately, Israel education is about internalizing the virtues of intellectual honesty, curiosity, integrity, and commitment, all of which are critical for making us human.

The *sixth principle* is that good Israel education happens when there is connectivity between what we have previously described as Aims, Goals, Objectives, (AGO). Such connectivity or consilience is refected in the Athenian Greek notion of *paideia* or the Jewish notion of *Talmud Torah,* wherein a core educational vision shapes the totality of society and life (Jaeger 1943). The more an educational system can coordinate its vision, educational theory, and practice, the greater the possibilities of impact. Developing a practice is not a matter of seeking "good programs that work". The integration of the diverse components of the educative process is a desideratum of Israel education. Such an approach aspires to create an educational symphony which both artfully and intelligently creates music that resonates with the hearts and minds of the young.

The *seventh principle* requires pedagogues who understand the overall vision, have the ability to make Israel narratives accessible to the student, can shape cultures, and have the courage to be accessible models and to teach "from within" (Palmer 1998). Understanding the vision implies a deep familiarity with the narratives of Israel that are the heritage of the Jewish people. Having the ability to make these narratives accessible encompasses skills in relationship-building, questioning, and group dynamics. Shaping cultures means creating settings that teach by immersing the student in an environment which "breathes" Israel. "Teaching from within" refers to the willingness of pedagogues to reach into themselves and model their "Israel relationship" (and its complexities) with love and passion. Those best suited to engage in Israel education are people who co-opt their personal passion and questions in order to model a commitment that is human but not uncritical.

The *eighth principle* of a relational Israel education is the recognition of the power and limits of education. Emile Durkheim saw education as allpowerful; Sigmund Freud spoke of the near-futility of teaching (Freud 1979) The truth lies somewhere between Durkheim and Freud: Education—and Israel education—can make a difference and may well contribute to a meaningful relationship with Israel. At the same time, we should not forget the plethora of other forces—genetics, family, media, cyberspace, life's twists and turns—which play such a signifcant role in shaping who we become. Israel education is not the answer, the solution or magic bullet, but Israel educators are entrusted with the opportunity to make a difference. Israel education may feel like a Sisyphean task, yet, as educators, we still try to roll the stone up the mountain. And there are times when we actually succeed.

#### Coda

So what is Israel education according to the relational approach? It is the exhilarating yet humbling mission of educating people to think, feel, and integrate Israel into their overall character as Jews and as human beings. It is about the attempt to help young Jews study their particular culture in order to fnd meaning in a place, an idea, a people, and a value that has been dear to their tradition for millennia. Israel education is about helping people seek answers to life's most basic questions through the portal of their particular tradition.

#### Note

1. The book, entitled, The *Aleph Bet of Israel Education*, *2nd Edition* 2015 presents core principles and practices of a twenty-frst-century theory and practice Israel education. (Lanski, editor, 2015).

#### Bibliography

Aristotle, & Ross W. D. 1966. *The Works of Aristotle.* (Oxford University Press).


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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CHAPTER 10

# Epilogue: This Educator's Credo

**Abstract** The virtue of analytic philosophy of education is its contribution to clarifying the descriptive meanings of important words, terms, and concepts related to education. The limitation of analytic philosophy of education is that it does not take a stand, advocate beliefs, or inspire educators as to what education might be. This chapter presents the personal beliefs and credo of one analytic educational philosopher about the potential of education to make our world a better place.

**Keywords** Vision • Becoming human • Ultimate faith and ultimate doubt • The life of values

#### Apologia

At the beginning of this book, we set out on a journey through the magical kingdoms of education and Jewish education. Our travels have taken us on the highways and byways of questions, ideas, visions, and practices related to these wonderful kingdoms. Questions, ideas, listening, thinking, and people fueled these journeys, and we navigated our course using analytic educational philosophy.

Truth be told, there is something deceptive about analytic philosophers of education. They ask questions, examine words, and help clarify meanings, and their books and articles are typically short and concise. At the same time, they seem to be strikingly timid about taking a stand. Here are some of the plaints that I have heard—sometimes politely and sometimes not so politely—during my journeys:


The charges have merit, and sometimes one can become so preoccupied with words and meanings that one neglects—or maybe doesn't have the courage—to share one's own words or thoughts. So, the time has come for this educator to ask some questions and give some answers!

# Why Is the Question So Important?

Life begins with questions. The origins of the great philosophies and theologies are questions such as: who created the world? Where do we come from? What's the purpose of life? What is going to happen at the end? And who is going to win the World Series?

In "Pied Beauty", Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote the lines, "Glory be to God for dappled things—/ For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow" when he woke up, looked out the window, and said, "Wow? Why? How?" Simon and Garfunkel wrote the song "At the Zoo" to answer the question, "Where is it all happening?" This thing called life is so amazing, confusing, beautiful, painful, joyful, and complicated that it causes one to ask questions, to wonder, to think. Sometimes questions are overwhelming, and they can cause great depression or sadness. Sometimes questions are so amazing that they invite the great poets, thinkers, writers, and scientists to consider, study, wrestle with, and propose answers. Indeed, it is this life dynamic that makes the feld of education so fascinating.

*I believe the "why" question is the central question of being human.*

#### What Is Education?

Education is a process, not a place; education is a dynamic not an achievement; education is running the marathon, not winning it. Education is ultimately the lifelong pursuit of self-understanding and awareness of the human condition. Technically, we become human when we are born but, truth be told, we have to learn how to be truly human. Graduation certifcates from preschool, elementary school, high school, college, and graduate school are markers along the way, but ultimately they are only a part of the ultimate goal of the search for self-understanding and awareness of the human condition.

*I believe that education is the process whereby we become human.*

#### Vision and Education

The practice of education begins with and can never succeed without "vision". The "how" of education can never be achieved without the "why" and the "who". Being an educator begins by engaging with core questions whose answers shape our path: How do people learn? What topics, subjects, or disciplines should be studied? For what purpose should they be taught? What are the best "texts" and "sources" for studying them? What methodologies are appropriate for teaching diverse "texts"? Education is dependent on many factors, one of the most important of which is the "why" question. Having a "why" does not guarantee success in education, yet not having a "why" stops education at the starting line.

*I believe that the road to practice in education is through "vision".*

#### What Is the Subject of Education?

Education is about furnishing human beings with abilities and capacities which they can subsequently employ to confront the world and themselves. It is about providing individuals with diverse lenses which empower them to engage with the great works of the heavens, earth, artists, writers, poets, painters, historians, scientists, mathematicians, and stargazers. The subject of education is the relationship of the individual to other people and to the world. The task of education is to open eyes, ears, heads, and hearts so that people may be able to better understand the world that was, that is, and that will be.

*I believe that the subject of education is the person.*

## Who Is <sup>a</sup> Person?

Humanism is a worldview that regards men and women as autonomous rational beings endowed with freedom of will, rational thinking, moral conscience, empathy, imagination, and creative powers. These philosophic assumptions imply the need for an ethic of human equality, reciprocity, solidarity, alongside robust frameworks that enable every single person to participate in the cultural, social, and political spheres of life. The ultimate goal of education is to enable human beings to realize the potential of making existence as good as it possibly can be.

*I believe a person is someone whose enhancement, development, well-being, and dignity are the ultimate aim of existence.*

## Who Is the Educator?

Education is a lifelong profession for people who want to work with others, helping them to open their eyes, develop their skill sets for seeing what is out there, and them on their way. The mission of the educator is not to *teach* literature, history, mathematics, or science but rather to encourage the young to *learn* literature, history, mathematics, and science so as to enable them to charter their pathways in the days, weeks, months, years, and centuries to come. Educators are members of societies and cultures, and while they have a role to play in sharing the richness of their societies; they do not come to serve societies. They should refect their particular tribe's best values and virtues, while at the same time be conduits for the metamorphosis of "moral tribalism" into "tribal altruism".

*I believe the educator is a person of ultimate faith, ultimate doubt, and ultimate courage whose calling it is to help the young learn how to learn.*

#### Are There Values?

The question of the origin of values remains a preoccupation of philosophers from ancient times until now. However, an affrmation of the existence of the values of human dignity, respect for humans, freedom of will, and equality is central to this educator's creed. Moreover, it may well be that the "virtue of all virtues" is "study" which is the gateway, entrance, and corridor (lined with great books, paintings, poems, and music recordings) along our journey to becoming human and discovering the values which will guide our lives. At the same time, it is important to face the fact that values often come in confict with each other. Indeed, it may well be the case that one of the central tasks of education is assisting our students and ourselves in dealing with the many moments of conficts in values.

*I believe that life is shaped, guided, and enriched by human values.*

#### Is the Teacher's Role Limited?

Educators do not accompany students throughout their lives. After a certain grade, we say goodbye to our students and wish them well. We cannot accompany them forever. At some point, everyone must become their own teacher, while they continue to learn. Moreover, sometimes the labor of the educator is exhausting and/or the educator strays from being his or her best or needs to rest. The work of the educator is great and there never is enough time. The bell seems to ring so suddenly, and we don't get to fnish the lesson. And then the student is in high school or at college, and suddenly they have grown up, hopefully, we have made our contribution toward that path.

I believe that there are limits to the teacher's role; but that does not limit the teacher's mission.

#### Why Am I <sup>a</sup> Jewish Educator?

It has been my good fortune to have grown up, learned about, engaged with, and participated in Jewish life and civilization. I regard this civilization as a remarkable legacy, heritage, and collage of ideas and practices that are of rich value and have shaped my life. It is a civilization at the center of which is the idea of study. It is a civilization concerned with sanctifying life-cycle moments. It is a civilization which honors the individual while also seeing them as part of a larger communal collective. It is a civilization which has shown—frequently albeit not always—the capability to adapt values and practices to new settings. It is a civilization which throughout its entire history has been a minority among larger diverse societal structures and has retained its commitment to survive in the name of values, beliefs, and practices which it regards as worthy. It is a civilization that now having a state can learn how to treat majorities and minorities with dignity. Being human, Jewish, and an educator enable me to work in diverse settings, doing what I regard as one of the most engaging, exciting, and holy ways to live a life.

*I am a Jewish educator because this lifelong profession encompasses two terms that I deeply cherish—"Jewish civilization" and "Education".*

#### Coda

I made it through this chapter without any footnotes or reference to great thinkers. I made it through this chapter using the word "I" more times than in any previous chapter (and I suspect more than in all of my writings).

The Bible is one of many works that have enriched my thinking—especially the narratives of the Five Books of Moses, the plaints and visions of the Prophets, and the wisdom and beauty of the Writings (Ketuvim). The book of *Kohelet* (Ecclesiastes) indicates that there is a time and place for everything. There is a time to talk and a time to be silent. There is a time for linguistic analysis of terms and a time to share more personal thoughts.

Before writing this Epilogue, I consulted with *Kohelet* to ask if this was the right time for these thoughts.

**Kohelet:** Yes Mr. Analytic Educator, now is the time for *you* to talk! **Me:** So, Kohelet, I hope I have talked "from within" and with candor and cogency. Thanks for affording me the opportunity to take a stab at answering some of life's and education's interesting questions. And most important thanks to you and your many wonderful colleagues for helping me to understand better this wonderful thing called "life".

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Index1

#### **A**

Abraham, 2, 10, 19, 66 Academic study of Judaism, 48 *Acculturation* model, 15 Aims, Goals, Objectives (AGO), 16, 17 Akiva, Rabbi, 2 American Jewish education, 10, 45 Amichai, Yehuda, 7, 69 Aristotle, 7 Augustine, Saint, 2, 7

#### **B**

Baal Shem Tov, 2 *Ba*r or *bat mitzvah*, 46 Bruner, Jerome, 80–82 Buber, Martin, 2, 10, 30

#### **C**

Camps, 53 "Character education," 23, 32 Chazan, Barry, vii, viii *Chesed*, 58 Child-centered pedagogy, 55 Cognitive emotions, 76–77 Contemporary American Jewish education, 43, 44 Counterculture, 47–48 Covert curriculum, 17, 69 Cremin, Lawrence, 15 Curriculum, 17–18, 56

#### **D**

Day school, 46–47 Descriptive defnition, 8, 13, 14 Dewey, John, 2, 7, 31, 55, 62n3 Durkheim, Emile, 25, 83

1Note: Page numbers followed by 'n' refer to notes.

© The Author(s) 2022 95 B. Chazan, *Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3

#### **E**

Education, vii–ix, 1–3, 5–10, 13–18, 20, 20n1, 23–33, 35, 37–39, 41, 43–49, 51–62, 62n1, 62n3, 67–71, 73, 75–84, 84n1, 87–92 Erikson, Erik, 2, 77 *The Ethical Brain*, 6 Experience, viii, 1, 40, 45–47, 53–61, 66, 68–72, 82 Experiential education, 51

#### **G**

Genesis, 6, 19, 66, 78 Giamatti, Bart, 59

#### **H**

Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 2, 10 Holistic educator, 60 Homeland, 77 *Homo ludens*, 70 Hopkins, Gerald Manley, 88

#### **I**

Identity, 77–78 Indoctrination, 3, 31, 35–38 Informal education, 3, 51–53, 61 Israel, 2, 3, 7, 9, 44, 46, 47, 54, 56, 58, 67–73, 75–84, 84n1 Israel education, 3, 70, 77, 79–84 The Israel experience, 65–73 I-thou, 30

#### **J**

James, William, 7 Jewish community centers (JCC), 62n2

Jewish education, 1, 9, 10, 20, 35, 38, 39, 43, 44, 52, 54–59, 61, 62, 87 *Judaism as a Civilization*, 10

#### **K**

*Kehillah*, 58, 60 *Kehillat kodesh*, 58 Kerouac, Jack, 66 *Klal Yisrael*, 58 *Kohelet*, 92 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 2, 28, 33n1, 80

#### **L**

Locke, John, 7 "The Lubavitcher Rebbe," 10

#### **M**

Maimonides, 2 *Mifgash*, 69 Montessori, Maria, 7 Moral dilemma discussion, 29 Moral education, 23–33, 35, 38 The moral situation, 24 *Moreh derekh*, 70

#### **N**

Narratives, 79 Noddings, Nel, 7, 30, 80 Null curriculum, 18, 69

#### **O**

Overt curriculum, 17, 69 Oz, Amos, 9 Oz-Salzberger, Fania, 9

#### **P**

*Paideia*, 83 Palmer, Parker J., x, 2, 40, 83 Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), 18–19 Person-centered, 55 *Person-centered* model, 15 Peters, R. S., 8 *The Philosophical Baby*, 6, 40, 80 Philosophy, 1–3, 5–8, 10, 18, 19, 23, 26, 28, 39, 44, 70, 76, 87 *Philosophy and the Young Child*, 6 Philosophy of education, 7, 8, 10, 23 Piaget, Jean, 80 Plato, 7, 31 Programmatic defnition, 8, 14

#### **R**

Radical amazement, 6 Relational approach, 30, 80, 81, 84 Rogers, Carl, 2 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 2, 7

#### **S**

Sacks, Oliver, 44 Scheffer, Israel, 2, 7, 9, 76 Schneerson, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, 10 *Socialization* model, 15 Socrates, 2, 7, 25 Soltis, Jonas, 8, 9 *Stipulative* defnition, 8, 14 Supplementary, 44–46, 49, 51, 78

#### **T**

Taglit-Birthright Israel, 67 Teaching Israel, 78 Travel, 65

#### **V**

Values Clarifcation (VC), 27 "Values education," 23, 27

#### **W**

Whitman, Walt, 66 Wilson, John, 26 Wordsworth, William, 6