For my first encore...
Daf left to finishing to finishing Moed: 30
Today's quote: "I know that there are people out there who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!" --Tom Lehrer
Don't worry, this post is presidential-politics free (the subject is actually a line by Tom Lehrer on his "An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer album). I actually wanted to rant about something that I've wanted to rant about for a couple days now: The Jewish Education System.
How did I get on this topic? I was coming home from mincha/maariv one day and schmoozing on the way with my friends Moe and Gavriel (who happen to live in the same building as me), and Moe mentioned that he and his wife were interviewing at different schools because one of their daughters is starting to go to school this year. This then led to the inevitable discussion of the difference between girl-Jewish schools and boy-Jewish schools. This then led to discussing how boys growing up in the Jewish school system end up not knowing how to read from a Chumash at all, seeing as how they're obsessed with learning Mishna/Gemara from 6th grade or so on throughout high school.
I thought about this topic even more when Jessica told me something remarkably disgusting that she heard from her mother. Apparentely, there is a religious school (I'm not mentioning names) in Cleveland that is seperating the boys from Cleveland Heights from the boys from University Heights/Beachwood into 2 different classes, because the kids from UH/Beachwood are more modern, so they don't want them to be in the same class.
What the hell is going on here? Since when have these schools abandoned common sense, and adopted the holier-than-thou approach? Or has it been there this entire time and I've just never seen it before? I thought this attitude was limited to Brooklyn...It shames me that this sickness has spread to the Midwest. We keep preaching about the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of hating our fellow Jews, and yet at the same time we do stupid stuff like this where we nurture this ridiculous behavior. What happens if one of the families moves to a different area? That kid no longer has any friends, even though he's at the same school! Ridiculous...
And yet, at the same time these idiots are focusing their attention to split up Jews into separate groups, these kids grow up and leave school with little/no ability to do any learning on their own. Can you open up a random non-English Chumash and read the words and understand them? I'm not talking about can you understand what the verses are saying: I mean can you understand what each word means? Or how about this: Can you open up a Gemara and learn it without an Artscroll? I sure can't, and that's after having done Daf Yomi for 2 years, being in Yeshiva for another 2 years, and having Skokie try to drill vocabulary in my head for 4 years! What's ridiculous is that we are substituing knowledge for skills. These schools take pride in what they teach students, yet those students outside of that enviroment fail to thrive without working extremely hard at it!
I know there's more that's wrong with the school system, but there is an easy fix for a major problem: Teach the freakin skills! Don't just teach my (future) kids what Rashi says on the parsha, show it to them! Have the kids 'crack their teeth' (as we used to say in Yeshiva) on the words to understand the grammar and form of Biblical and Mishanic Hebrew. This reminds me of a class I took last fall, Rabbinic Literature. I came into the class thinking (and you can see one of my blog posts at the time to prove it) that this was going to be one of the easiest classes ever for me. It ended up being one of the hardest. My professor, Daniel Rosenberg, was incredibly anal about grammar, forcing to translate everything literally, and only then putting it into context. I got a B- on my midterm. B-! Not because I didn't understand what the Gemara was talking about, but because I didn't know the words! After that I really started cracking my teeth on it, and ended the semester with an A- for the class.
You know what? After that class it got easier for me to learn Gemara. Words that I didn't know before I was able to figure out because I applied the grammar rules that I had learned in that class. Why can't we do that in school, so that the kids can actually leave them with the ability to go out and learn on their own? Stop trying to cram in as much knowledge as possible, and let them have the ability when they want to make a D'var Torah on Shabbos to actually be able to look up some good sources on their own! If public schools can teach kids skills (as I was told they do in the Beachwood school system), why can't we? I honestly think that if kids left school with the ability to learn on their own without difficulty, we would see a lot more kids doing so.
I know that there's more that's wrong with the system, but I'm going to stop for right now here, because that was the main point of that conversation.
I'd just like to end off by trying to actually make a poll here (which probably not many people will answer, but I'm going to do it anyway):
What is your opinion of the Jewish Education System?
END OF LINE
Today's quote: "I know that there are people out there who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!" --Tom Lehrer
Don't worry, this post is presidential-politics free (the subject is actually a line by Tom Lehrer on his "An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer album). I actually wanted to rant about something that I've wanted to rant about for a couple days now: The Jewish Education System.
How did I get on this topic? I was coming home from mincha/maariv one day and schmoozing on the way with my friends Moe and Gavriel (who happen to live in the same building as me), and Moe mentioned that he and his wife were interviewing at different schools because one of their daughters is starting to go to school this year. This then led to the inevitable discussion of the difference between girl-Jewish schools and boy-Jewish schools. This then led to discussing how boys growing up in the Jewish school system end up not knowing how to read from a Chumash at all, seeing as how they're obsessed with learning Mishna/Gemara from 6th grade or so on throughout high school.
I thought about this topic even more when Jessica told me something remarkably disgusting that she heard from her mother. Apparentely, there is a religious school (I'm not mentioning names) in Cleveland that is seperating the boys from Cleveland Heights from the boys from University Heights/Beachwood into 2 different classes, because the kids from UH/Beachwood are more modern, so they don't want them to be in the same class.
What the hell is going on here? Since when have these schools abandoned common sense, and adopted the holier-than-thou approach? Or has it been there this entire time and I've just never seen it before? I thought this attitude was limited to Brooklyn...It shames me that this sickness has spread to the Midwest. We keep preaching about the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of hating our fellow Jews, and yet at the same time we do stupid stuff like this where we nurture this ridiculous behavior. What happens if one of the families moves to a different area? That kid no longer has any friends, even though he's at the same school! Ridiculous...
And yet, at the same time these idiots are focusing their attention to split up Jews into separate groups, these kids grow up and leave school with little/no ability to do any learning on their own. Can you open up a random non-English Chumash and read the words and understand them? I'm not talking about can you understand what the verses are saying: I mean can you understand what each word means? Or how about this: Can you open up a Gemara and learn it without an Artscroll? I sure can't, and that's after having done Daf Yomi for 2 years, being in Yeshiva for another 2 years, and having Skokie try to drill vocabulary in my head for 4 years! What's ridiculous is that we are substituing knowledge for skills. These schools take pride in what they teach students, yet those students outside of that enviroment fail to thrive without working extremely hard at it!
I know there's more that's wrong with the school system, but there is an easy fix for a major problem: Teach the freakin skills! Don't just teach my (future) kids what Rashi says on the parsha, show it to them! Have the kids 'crack their teeth' (as we used to say in Yeshiva) on the words to understand the grammar and form of Biblical and Mishanic Hebrew. This reminds me of a class I took last fall, Rabbinic Literature. I came into the class thinking (and you can see one of my blog posts at the time to prove it) that this was going to be one of the easiest classes ever for me. It ended up being one of the hardest. My professor, Daniel Rosenberg, was incredibly anal about grammar, forcing to translate everything literally, and only then putting it into context. I got a B- on my midterm. B-! Not because I didn't understand what the Gemara was talking about, but because I didn't know the words! After that I really started cracking my teeth on it, and ended the semester with an A- for the class.
You know what? After that class it got easier for me to learn Gemara. Words that I didn't know before I was able to figure out because I applied the grammar rules that I had learned in that class. Why can't we do that in school, so that the kids can actually leave them with the ability to go out and learn on their own? Stop trying to cram in as much knowledge as possible, and let them have the ability when they want to make a D'var Torah on Shabbos to actually be able to look up some good sources on their own! If public schools can teach kids skills (as I was told they do in the Beachwood school system), why can't we? I honestly think that if kids left school with the ability to learn on their own without difficulty, we would see a lot more kids doing so.
I know that there's more that's wrong with the system, but I'm going to stop for right now here, because that was the main point of that conversation.
I'd just like to end off by trying to actually make a poll here (which probably not many people will answer, but I'm going to do it anyway):
What is your opinion of the Jewish Education System?
- It's fine the way it is.
- We need to completely redo it.
- It only needs some small changes.
- Some major changes, but it's generally good.
- It's never going to be good anyway, so why bother?
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