Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular Society

2. Aspects of Normative Religious Education

2 Aspects of Normative Religious Education There are three questions, according to Frankena, that concern every normative educational thinker. 1 (1) Which "dispositions" are to be considered good? (2) Why are these attributes or dispositions considered to be good and worthy ofcultivation, and which criteria and principles led to the choice ofthese rather than others? (3) How and by what means or processes can these chosen attributes be cultivated in the learner? Although the third question, which deals with means and processes, is also related to normative-ideational educational thought because it concerns itself with the nature ofknowledge and the meaning of "teaching" and "learning," it will not playa central role in our discussion in this chapter, since it is heavily dependent on the "screen" of psychology as well as practical pedagogy. Here, our interest is primarily in deciding what is good and worthy of being taught and the establishment of criteria for what is "known" to be good and worthy. Educational thinkers, even when they are not dealing overtly with educational questions but with such issues as individual happiness. social reconstruction , and the characteristics of virtue and truth, deal with the normative questions: What is good to teach and how do we know that it is good? in three ways. Often, they address themselves to the afftrrnation and clarification of a world view in which true ideas--somehow "above" prosaic human realitiesare related to operative human ideals' 'within" the real world. At other times, they are primarily concerned with the issue of culture and cultural continuity, basing themselves on the dual assumption that (a) the educating society wishes to be continued, and (b) individuals must live the cultural heritage in ways somehow congenial to them as persons. And usually, educational thinkers, 28 Religion and Philosophy ofEducation whether their approach is philosophical or cultural, will address themselves to the existential issue of "the educated individual" as a whole person, who not only lives by ideals and cultural "goods" but also through whom the pristine qualities ofa world view and a heritage are illuminated and shown to be worthy and noble. These philosophical, cultural, and existential approaches to nonnative educational theory are not, ofcourse, really distinct, but they are distinguishable. They allow us to approach our problem from differing perspectives and. as we shall see, they pinpoint different aspects of the contemporary crisis of normative -ideational education. THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH: VALLJES AND THE WORLD VIEW The first approach to education in the normative-ideational orientation concerns itself with society's (and the educator's) Weltanschauung: basic beliefs about reality, knowledge, and value that are embodied in a comprehensive system of ideas and ideal patterns of behavior.1. In this context, all the primary ontological, epistemological, and axiological questions of reality, knowledge, and value may be relevantly posed. For example: What is the nature of the world and of humanity'! What can be known and what is worth knowing? What is virtue and how do we know that it is virtuous? Can human beings, given their "nature," be virtuous? Does reality, as known to us through sense and theory, or feeling and will, have any connection with the good as morally experienced ? Can one assume any reliability in the reports conveyed to us by our senses, our theory, and our moral experiences? Are people "naturally" good? If so, how can they be saved from corruption? If not, how can they be cultivated ? What is believed to be real, knowable, and virtuous will detennine, on a philosophical level, how an educational vision approaches a concrete human reality. The basic principles or beliefs, drawn from' 'primary fonus of understanding and awareness," provide theoretical criteria for curricular selectivity: what to include and what to exclude, what to stress and what to consider superfluous , how to approach what is deemed important and how to build intelligence and morality. The vision, articulated in ontological, epistemological, and axiological ideas, will offer guidelines for educators who wish to understand such conceptions as "experience"; it will tell them what is admissible in thinking about experience and "reality" and "worth." On the basis of the theory. one may maintain that "knowing" is "really" insight, or an internal- Aspects ofNormative Religious Education 29 ized moral code, or sensual contact, or technical competence; armed with beliefs , one may decide whether, in principle, chemistry or Talmud is deserving of more time, or whether both are equally worthy-or equally insignificant.3 The...