Search results for: Day schools

In collaboration with The AVI CHAI Foundation, the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and a steering committee of religiously and geographically diverse Jewish day school heads are convening a two-day conference, November 14-15, 2016, to explore the trends playing out in the academy and the campus quad: “From Anti-Zionism to Anti-Semitism: An Educators Conference.” The conference intends to inform – not to alarm – us about the climate of college life today and to consider how Jewish schooling addresses the changed atmosphere that we and our students confront. Many of us are disturbed when the good that we take for granted – Zionism, Israel, and Judaism – are denounced as evil. We are confused when liberal ideas about diversity and progressivism are turned against the Jews who believe in those ideas. If we are troubled and confused, our students facing the assault are even more so. We have to know and better understand what they will have to confront.

This week, I had the privilege of attending the 4th Annual Summer Sandbox, a 2.5 day conference focused on project-based learning (PBL) and education in the 21st century hosted at Yeshivat Noam in Paramus, NJ. As an educator well aware of the use, jargon, and general interest in PBL within the progressive educational community but without much insight into its underlying principles and methods, I've been meaning to attend this conference for a few years now.

This piece, the follow up to my recent discussion of the financial and non-financial costs of yeshiva day schools, proposes what I respectfully submit is a relatively simple and intuitive solution to this fundamental flaw in the yeshiva day school model. Put in place, it would radically alleviate yeshiva day school costs without compromising our children’s Jewish education, and potentially make that education more effective and lasting.

There are many ways to view yeshiva day schools. The Orthodox community generally views them with pride, as a substantial communal achievement — and rightfully so. In less than a century, a community of largely impoverished refugees, decimated by the Holocaust, came to a foreign country and established schools that rival that country’s most elite and established schools. Almost every yeshiva day school produces graduates who attend the finest colleges and graduate schools, and their students regularly win national literary, advocacy, math and science competitions. And the sweeping success of these schools has also been religious — there are more Jewish religious studies students in America today than at any time in its history. And yet, this achievement has come at a cost, and that cost continues to be extraordinary and multifaceted. The most obvious cost is financial: it costs an extraordinary amount of money to send a child to yeshiva day school and for our community to sustain such independent schools. But there are also other, associated costs which may be less obvious than the monetary costs, but which are no less profound.