Section archive - Formal Education

Ethical challenges confront each and every one of us in our daily lives. How honest should we be with our co-workers? To whom do we owe our greatest loyalty? How do we balance between our responsibility to family, community, profession, and self? Many view these kinds of challenges as obstacles to be overcome; others, however, see them as opportunities for schools to grow and find their most deeply held values. Much like a real-life Kohlbergian values-clarification exercise, the process of dealing with the challenges sometimes matters as much, if not even more than, the actual results. The process can help examine questions such as: Whose interests does the school place at the core? Who is involved in addressing the problem? What criteria are established for determining the most appropriate course of action? These questions touch the heart of the school’s identity, and it is questions like these to which we devote this issue of Jewish Educational Leadership.

Israel's first science and technology preschool was inaugurated in Beersheba recently as part of a new government initiative called Madakids. Instead of puzzles, coloring sheets and learning blocks, preschoolers will be exposed to robotics, computers and space exploration. The goal of Madakids ('mada' means science in Hebrew) is to introduce scientific subject matters to young Israelis at the earliest possible age. This, administrators hope, will help produce the next generation of Israeli scientists. The Beersheba preschool is a collaboration of the American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, the Beersheba municipality, the Rashi Foundation, the Education Ministry, and the Science, Technology and Space Ministry.

Jewish schools throughout North America as well as in South Africa and Australia are introducing a revolutionary curriculum to their students this academic year. Over 1,300 students in over twenty schools will be using the new program designed by the Halacha Education Center (HEC). The programs designed by HEC represent a major overhaul of the classic Jewish educational experience. The HEC has taken the original sources and prime texts of Jewish law and developed new exciting, user-friendly, accessible textbooks, teacher’s guide, videos, and audio-visual material that engage the students in a deep, enjoyable and memorable fashion. The new materials are a reformatting and presentation of Judaism’s ancient laws and wisdom.

Critical pedagogy is conceived in the contemporary educational era as a means to help improve learning skills and abilities and thus, the scholastic achievements of students from disadvantaged groups. Yet, we know very little about the ways in which critical pedagogy is interpreted and understood in disadvantaged schools. This study seeks to examine the implementation of critical pedagogy in a secular Jewish high school in an impoverished neighborhood in Israel. The high school strives to attain scholastic achievement by instilling critical consciousness.