History is How We Write It

A few weeks ago there was a lengthy article in the New York Time Sunday Magazine about the Texas Board of Education and its influence on textbook publishers.  The debates and hearings are now over, and the new Texas standards are now in place.
Publishers will now respond to the new standards by publishing textbooks that align to them - Texas is a huge market and the publishers need to sell their books.

I hope this will encourage educators to seek sources for their students that reflect appropriate perspectives, even if those are not reflected in the available textbooks.  That is one of the advantages (and yes, challenges as well) of the enormous amount and diversity of information available to us today.  Please click on this blog from the ASCD Smartbrief about learning in today's world.  What is true about students in the general educational world is true in the Jewish educational world as well.

And to remember that - as I wrote on February 24, 2010 in a post about Purim -the lens through which we understand history is even more important than the accumulated facts that we have about it.

VaYakhel and P'kuday

Please take a look at a new blog just begun this week.
You can find it at http://parshakids.blogspot.com/
Its target audience is kids in 5th through 8th grades who are interested in what their peers are thinking about parshat hashavuah.

Big Ideas:

• Studying Torah can create a Jewish lens through which to see the world
• Every parasha has important ideas that learners can integrate into their worldview
• One can apply critical thinking skills to study of Torah
• Sharing ideas is a wonderful way to build understanding

Essential Questions:

• How are the ideas in this parasha meaningful to you?
• How do these ideas relate to your life?
• In what way does using a Jewish lens impact the way you understand the world around you and interact with it?

Learning Activities:

• There will be one or two statements of ideas from the parasha articulated on the blog
• Participants will be invited to read the post, discuss the ideas with a friend or in class (optional), and post their own thoughts in the comments section of the blog.
• Learners can read the thoughts of others and react to them by posting comments

Assessment:

• Participation on a regular basis will be a marker of engagement
• Teachers will read the posts and comments and may use them in class discussions

I encourage you to try this out with your students if they are in the appropriate grades.  I will be reading the comments before posting them publicly to avoid inappropriate language.  

Our Most Important Job

Helping students learn to evaluate available information is more important today than ever before. In the past, we as teachers were in the business of conveying content. We had the 'truth', and we chose the books that had the 'truth.'

In today's world there is more information at our learners' fingertips than there used to be in entire libraries. Unfortunately, much of that information is misleading at best and totally inaccurate at worst.

This article about the Dead Sea Scrolls is an example of how information on the internet can be manipulated by anyone with the desire to do so.

2000-Year-Old Scrolls, Internet-Era Crime

By sharing this article with your students you may help sensitize them to the possibility that what they read must always be read somewhat skeptically - and to introduce them to reliable sources of review, such as snopes.com and urbanlegends.about.com which carefully evaluate content.

A learner who develops critical thinking skills is a learner on the way to life-long learning.

What are we teaching? What are they learning?

Although I'm not sure I understand the metrics of the study, it is still interesting if the Big Idea is that those students majoring in social sciences (including anthropology, economics, human geography, history, linguistics, political science, psychology, and similar disciplines which examine the social life of groups) are likely to be less 'religious', however one defines that, at the end of their studies than when they begin.

The summary of the report on this study in the Education Life section of the NY Times on November 1 suggests that the cause is "postmodernism, the staple of humanities classes, with its notions of relative truth (opposed to religion's absolute truth and questioning authority."

How does this relate to what we are teaching in Jewish education? Are we teaching absolute truth? Are we encouraging questioning? I believe the answer to the first question is more 'no' than 'yes', and I sincerely hope the answer to the second is resoundingly 'yes'.

Let us hope, then, that our students will not find that higher learning negates what they have learned while in our educational settings, but rather will see themselves as continuing to use the critical thinking skills that they have already exercised while learning with us.

Telling Stories, Telling the Truth

As the school year begins for most of us, we will be asked - probably over and over - "Is this story true?" Whether we are teaching Torah narrative, Jewish history, or Midrash, we will need to understand the meaning behind the question before we can give an appropriate answer.

What does "true" mean? I believe there are multiple ways to understand this word.

• True can mean historically accurate, verifiable through scientific examination.
• True can mean fundamentally valid, with an intrinsic importance to understanding the world.
• True can mean 'what I believe' - the story from the perspective of the group to which I belong.
• True can mean 'what I want the listener to believe' - part of the narrative that defines my identity and that I hope will shape the identity of others.

With all these meanings for a simple one-syllable word, what can the answer be to the question, "Is this story true?"

Before you answer, I believe it is important to think deeply about the motivation for the question. Does the student want to know what you believe? What you want him or her to believe? Whether the enduring idea of the story has validity?

Only when you have considered these possibilities do I believe you can answer honestly and appropriately.

In this essay by Daniel Shifrin you will read about one parent's struggle with this issue. You may or may not agree with his conclusions.

The truth is that you should be struggling with the issue as well.

Jewish Thoughts on War and Peace

It happens that this week's parasha, Parshat Shofetim, includes some guidelines for behaviors in war. The Israelites are given certain limits, including the requirement to invite a peaceful surrender before initiating battle, and restrictions on destruction of both people and, interestingly enough, of trees. You can read the text in Deuteronomy Chapter 20 at this link: Mechon-Mamre.

I found this particularly interesting in view of a speech President Obama gave recently, in which he referred to the war in Afghanistan as a necessary war. His words:

"This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity," Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference -- cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." (from the LA Times, reporting on a speech given Monday, August 17, 2009)

This speech can serve as a trigger for discussion of what those words - "war of necessity" - mean in the context of Jewish thinking.

Big Idea:

Jewish wisdom can be a way of understanding the world around us

Essential Questions:

1. Why does President Obama consider the war in Afghanistan a war of necessity?
2. In what way would Jewish wisdom support or not support his description?

Learning Activities:

1. Read Obama's speech. It is quite long, so you may want to divide it into sections for your students to read. Discuss what he said, focusing on his reasons for considering the war in Afghanistan a necessary war.
2. Read the articles at these links below.

• Maimonides on War
• War 101 in Jewish Thought

Compare and contrast Obama's thoughts on necessary war with those of the Jewish thinkers in the articles you read. Your students may choose to create a chart, have a debate, or express their understanding in another way. The important outcome is that they understand that they can apply Jewish thinking to the world in which they live.

Israel is a pretty special place

This past week Amos Kenan died. You may never have heard of him, but you can read about him at the following links:

An original ahead of his time - Amos Kenan‎ from HaAretz

and

Writer Helped Shape Israeli culture from the Washington Post.

According to these articles, Kenan was part of the heroic generation which fought for Israel's independence from Britain, and in his later years was also one of the leaders of the movement for Palestinian independence. Sounds like a contradiction. He also urged the formation of a new Israeli culture that would be separated from Judaism and would use Hebrew as its foundation, not religion.

This view was not uncommon among the early Jewish settlers in modern times, and is not totally gone today. There are many people who prefer to describe themselves as "Israeli" rather than "Jewish", even if they are in fact Jews.

What other country in this troubled part of the world is willing to acknowledge dissent - even dissent which argues against the very foundations of the country - Israel as a Jewish Country? Can you imagine Saudi Arabia separating its Arab culture from its religious connection? Or any other Middle Eastern country? Perhaps Lebanon, but we know how challenging that has been for that country.

I believe that one of the great strengths of Israel, and its uniqueness in the Middle East, is its ability to support critical differences of opinion among its citizenry. We may be disturbed by what looks like lack of civility in the K'nesset, but we can certainly admire the outspokenness of its members.

In teaching our students, who live in a culture of diversity and who learn from early in their educational experience that opinions can be expressed openly and without fear of retribution, this attribute of Israel can be a powerful idea to explore. It can encourage the kind of critical thinking that is so important in learning today.

Big Idea:

• Israel is a country in which the right to think independently is strongly supported.

Essential Questions to think about:

1. What different ideas about the nature of Israel are expressed by its inhabitants?
2. How does the framework of the government support differences of opinion?
3. What about the political process in Israel shows support for a variety of ideas?

Activities to support learning:

1. Find out how many political parties exist in Israel.
2. Divide the class into teams of 2 - 4 students each
3. Have each team pick 1 or 2 parties and prepare a presentation to explain their philosophies to the rest of the class. Be sure that at least 8 different parties from different areas of the political spectrum are examined by the teams.

Assessment: Choose from among these activities

1. Have the teams present the information they learned about the parties they studied.
2. Discuss the similarities and differences among the parties
3. Prepare a chart to compare and contrast the views of the political parties in the K'nesset
4. Find out more about Amos Kenan and/or one of the groups he belonged to: Lehi, HaShomer HaTzair, the Canaanite Movement.