Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular Society

1. Jewish Religious Education: Two Philosophical Schools

t Jewish Religious Education: Two Philosophical Schools MOVEMENTS AND PHILOSOPHIES IN MODERN EDUCATION Our century•like othererasofgreatcrisis, has been blessedwith an abundance of educational schools of thought. Both the crisis and the schools are rooted in the philosophical and social movements toward modernity ofthe preceding centuries. These movements reshuffled religious beliefs and at times discarded or rejected them as they sought to interpret and direct the economic, political. and scientific revolutions of the age. The developments were swift and complex . Though attempts were sometimes made to see them as a gradual and rational unfoldingofhumanpotential orofhistorical necessity. this detached and serene view of things was difficult to maintain in the face of social upheavals and political instability. Thought and ideology alternated between utopian expectation and romantic yearning. between rationalistic optimism and a sense of insecurity and foreboding. Given the traumas of the twentieth century. the forebodings were wellfounded . For, after Freud and Einstein, in the wake of "the guns of August" of 1914 and the cloud of Hiroshima in 1945, the revolutions and innovations could no longer be seen as only innovative andexpansive; they were perceived by most as complicated, ifnot terrifying. Once this perceptionwasestablished. it was inevitable that the sense of "great events" should also bring an air of crisis. Thus educational theories and schools of thought proliferated, engendered by revolutionary hope and existential fears. Anyone who has taken one or two undergraduate courses in philosophy of education knows about the abundance of educational schools of thought in 16 Religion and Philosophy ofEducation modern society. The liberal arts "tradition" defended .,great books" from an overemphasis on prosaic science; progressive education "reconstructed" the school in order to defend the child against the text. Since the Second World War, all practitioners of education have read-or read about-theorists and curricula based on ..the structure of the disciplines," which sought to teach central concepts and methods ofdiverse fields, enabling modern pupils to gain the creative competence needed in the world of tomorrow. Teachers have also encountered the tools, if not the theory, of neo-behaviorism, which claimed that our society most urgently required not culture, nor creativity, but skill and technical mastery. And, of course, most teachers, especially if they are interested in religion and the humanities, have followed the development of "humanistic psychology," whose proponents have attacked the alleged lack of soul in "structure-of-the-disciplines" teaching and the mechanistic programming of knowledge in neo-behaviorism. These writers have demanded a reemphasis on "personality" in educational endeavor.I Philosophers of education have organized and typed these varied educational movements according to basic conceptions of reality, human nature, knowledge, and, consequently, instruction. For example, Scheffler refers to three fundamental views of knowledge and to three •'philosophical models of instruction." whereas Lamm distinguishes among the imitative, molding, and developmental "logics in teaching.•,2 In the various contemporary educational movements, the fundamental philosophical orientations toward reality. value, human endowment, and knowledge fmd distinctive programmatic embodiments . The movements are numerous and, in principle, almost innumerable, for they arise in response to new challenges and situations. whether the Industrial Revolution or the Russian Sputnik. The philosophies, on the other hand, are in a sense perennial, although they are periodically invigorated and enlarged by new thought and knowledge. For the philosophies, as already noted. are systematic statements of fundamental orientations: to humanity and the world. to truth and value. to criteria of what is trivial and what deserves devotion. They bespeak different temperaments; they speak to different sentiments . In our civilization, these visions. implicitly or explicitly. date back to the prophet and talmudic sage on the one hand and to the Greek philosopher and dramatist on the other. For the purposes ofour discussion on religious Jewish education. we shall examine these fundamental views through the prism of two models of educational thinking. One we shall call the normative-ideational model; the other. the deliberative-inductive one.3 I believe that an examination of these two orientations will help us to focus our discussion of Jewish religious education; I am hopeful that it will make us more sensitive to the central issues ofreligious Jewish Religious Education: Two Philosophical Schools 17 education, help us to distinguish among diverse religious inclinations and ideologies , and make us better equipped to identify central questions that must be asked and analyzed. Indeed, in later chapters, we shaH attempt to find these normative and deliberative approaches on the map of religious...