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Some Uses of Justification in Jewish Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Walter I. Ackerman
Walter I. Ackerman
Affiliation:
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
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Extract

The justification of plans and programs is a necessary condition of the relationship between systems of education, both obligatory and voluntary, and the publics they serve. Those who are responsible for the conduct of the educational enterprise in general and the schooling of the young in particular must provide those who support the system, financially and otherwise, with acceptable and defensible reasons for the efforts and activities of the schools. The idea of justification in education rests on the assumption that the process of schooling, whatever its form and content, is subject to rational control and that the authority for the conduct of schools is derived from the principles inherent in the justification offered. A proferred justification is most effective and likely of acceptance when the positions it generates on educational issues fit the general fabric of ideals and aspirations of the society to which it is addressed. If, as we believe, justification is a necessary part of the rhetoric which surrounds legislatively determined and state maintained school systems—i.e., systems whose right to existence is not subject to question or doubt in any modern society and where attendance is required by law—then it follows that it is of even greater significance for voluntary school systems which lack the coercive power of their governmental counterparts—i.e., Jewish education.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 2 , April 1977 , pp. 1 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1977

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References

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68. Although written many years later and describing another generation of Jewish teachers, the following excerpt applies equally well to the men we are discussing here: “The Seminary College was theoretically committed to what Jewish tradition calls Torah lishma, learning for its own sake, but in actual fact its purposes were very far from being disinterestedly academic. The literal meaning of Torah lishma may be 'learning for its own sake,' but the true, the theological meaning of the idea is ''studying the revealed word of God for the sake of heaven.' The Seminary College did not, I think, consider that it was teaching the revealed word of God for the sake of heaven; it did, however, consider that it was teaching the heritage of the Jewish people as a way of ensuring the survival of that people (my father knew what he was doing when he sent me there). This is not to imply that there was anything covert or devious going on; on the contrary, most professors of the Seminary simply and frankly took it for granted that their business was to deepen the Jewish commitment of their students by making them more fully aware of the glories of the Jewish heritage. They were not training minds or sensibilities; they were training Jews!”(Norman, Podhoretz, Making It [New York, 1967], pp. 43–44).Google Scholar

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107. Ibid p. 31.

108. Ibid p. 36.

109. Ibid p. 118.

110. Ibid p. 122.

111. Ibid p. 126.

112. Ibid p. 127.

113. Ibid p. 109.

114. Ibid pp. 101–2.

115. Ibid pp. 195–202.

116. Ibid p. 202.

117. Ibid pp. 128–40.

118. Kurt, Lewin, “When Facing Danger,” Resolving Social Conflicts (New York, 1948), P. 174.Google Scholar

119. Ibid p. 164.

120. Ibid p. 163.

121. Ibid

122. Lewin, , “Bringing Up the Jewish Child,” Resolving Social Conflicts, p. 183.Google Scholar

123. Ibid p. 185.

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126. Idem, “Jewish Self-Hatred,”p. 198.

127. Ibid p. 199.

128. Ibid

129. Ibid p. 191.

130. For an elaboration of this point, see my “The Present Moment in Jewish Education,” Midstream 18, no. 12 (December 1972): 3 –24.

131. James, Sleeper, “Authenticity and Responsiveness in Jewish Education,” The New Jews (New York, 1971), p. 124.Google Scholar

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133. Ibid