Section archive - Formal Education

This article uses data from site visits to four Hasidic elementary schools in Brooklyn to examine how specific learning, review, and testing activities used in these schools might be applied in other Jewish education classrooms to build knowledge depth and automaticity.

Many children may face long-term damage from losing a year of schooling, and this may translate to long-term economic damage, primarily to those from the lower classes. This is the central argument by education economist Nachum Blass in a position paper attached to a report by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel. The report was published Wednesday.

I feel a deep sense of joy and satisfaction having had the confirmation from longstanding educators with decades of experience what I have known since I started the Zehud Online Jewish School. Building school is building a community of parents and families. The whole ethos of our school is built and structured to support this end goal. Being online has taken us into their homes and hearts, and it is our privilege to treat that relationship with the utmost of care and delicacy.

In the UK, most ultra-Orthodox schools operate as public institutions and are therefore subjected to frequent scrutiny by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED). Recently this has caused particular friction because these schools refuse to comply with requirements that they teach elementary-school students about homosexuality, transgenderism, and so forth. Ḥaredi schools have received frequent surprise inspections during which students were asked invasive questions about sex and “lifestyle choices,” to the consternation of teachers, parents, and administrators. Thus British Ḥaredim are understandably relieved that OFSTED ruled last month that their elementary schools would no longer be under pressure to teach about same-sex marriage.