Section archive - Formal Education

If you are interested in Hebrew Education in a congregational school setting, you are invited to join 'The Hebrew Project,' a national conversation to try and better define the goals and focus of Hebrew education in congregational settings. In order to help better clarify goals of Hebrew language teaching, three Hebrew language educators have established a wikispace and are inviting anyone involved in congregational education to join in the conversation.

Recently, a lively discussion about boredom in Jewish education took place on the Lookstein Center Lookjed listserve. Dr. Erica Brown, Director of Washington DC's Jewish Leadership Institute, opened the discussion with the observation that boredom's 'growth and its intensification derive from the sense that students – and increasingly teachers, too – have that the, to some extent inevitable, tedium and grind of study and learning, and the prolonged subordination to authority, are no longer really worth it; or that, while they may be unavoidable en route to the desired goals, they are little more than hurdles that have to be jumped in order to satisfy the bureaucratic and largely meaningless requirements of absurd institutions.'

The present study examined the way in which children attending Orthodox Jewish schools internalize the value of both their Jewish studies and secular studies, as well as the value of Jewish cultural practices. A distinction was made between identified internalization, where children perceive Jewish studies and Jewish culture to be an important part of their sense of self, and introjected internalization, where children participate in Jewish studies and Jewish culture because they feel like they “ought to” or because of external pressures. Primary identified reasons for their Jewish studies and Jewish cultural practices were significantly associated with positive self and teacher ratings of adjustment; internalization of secular studies was unrelated to adjustment.

This is the first national study designed to explore the near-term effects of day schools on the academic, social, and Jewish trajectories of former students during their college years. Conducted during the winter of 2006-07, this research drew over 3,300 Jewish respondents from college and university campuses in the top quartile of ranked schools in the United States. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, this study contextualizes the experiences of students from day schools through comparison with Jewish undergraduates from private and public school backgrounds.