Jewish Education

Education feature

Let’s start with why

By: Paula Levin

“Mom, exams are over, why do I still need to go to school?” my 12-year-old daughter recently asked me, with a week of school still to go. And it seems like a fair question – if school is about grades and reports. Somewhere along the line, for many children, teachers and parents, school has become conflated with academic outcomes. So what is school for? One young adult I know once told me that school is basically babysitting – so parents are free to work – an answer I found horrifying! Isn’t schooling too long, too central to our lives and frankly too expensive to be fuzzy on its purpose?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that the Jewish story begins with education. Avraham was chosen by G-d because he could be relied upon to instruct his children in the right way to live. Centuries later, the Jewish People were the first to establish formal schooling for children – driven by the words written in the mezuzos on our doorposts, in the tefillin, and recited twice each day – “and you shall teach your children”. Let’s see if we can get more clarity on what it’s actually about.

The Hebrew word for education, chinuch, is instructive. Rashi says that this word connotes the initiation – that is, the beginning of the entry – of a person (or an item) into the task or role in which he/she (or it) is destined to function. So the term “chanukas mizbe’ach” refers to the initial use of the Altar, and the term “chanukas habayis” refers to the dedication of the Beis HaMikdash as G-d’s Temple. (It shares the same root as “Chanukah”, which was the moment in Jewish history when the temple was rededicated to G-d after the Syrian-Greeks had appropriated it as a pagan temple). In plain English, chinuch means to be dedicated for a purpose.

In Jewish thought, the commandment of chinuch – directing our children towards their purpose – halachically begins as soon as a child can understand (as young as age three) and is ultimately focused on the development of the whole person. Chinuch goes far beyond the acquisition of knowledge and information (for which we have the word limmud), it is integrally concerned with the formation of a mentch – a fully developed person with refined moral character. The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that chinuch is not about teaching subject matter but about building a person.

Schooling therefore, needs to be geared towards setting the student up for life – not for a good matric. The simple answer to my daughter’s question then, is that the purpose of school should be to prepare our children for a lifetime of purpose. So what is purpose? Dr Heather Malin is former Director of Research at Stanford’s Centre on Adolescence and defines purpose as “a future-directed goal that is personally meaningful and aimed at contributing to something larger than the self”. In her book “Teaching for Purpose” she shows how educators can prepare youth to live intentional, fulfilling lives. Purpose plays a key role in optimal youth development and in motivating students to promote the cognitive and non-cognitive skills that teachers want to instil.

Teacher, artist and therapist, Rebbetzin Tsivia Abraham explains that our true purpose is ‘Gilui Elokus’ – to reveal the Divine that lives at our core – the part of each one of us that is an actual piece of G-d. She believes that chinuch is a life-long endeavour analogous to creating a work of art – a refined human being who shines his or her essential G-dly midos (soul personality traits). “Chinuch is how we allow each neshama to shine openly. When making good choices that reveal this G-dly essence, we create a Dira Lo Yisborech B’Tachtonim (a dwelling place for G-d in this world). Being in touch with our true qualities is essential to healthy relationships – with ourselves, with other people and with G-d. Authenticity is key. Living authentically, without fear is the key to emotional and mental wellness,” she says.

Tsivia is passionate about creating transformative, experiential education opportunities, and has worked in schools to bring her vision into the classroom. “I think we need to ask how primary schools and high schools can retain the joy of learning that is so obvious in nursery school. How can we continue to nurture children’s natural curiosity and encourage playful exploration? As children get older, learning has become almost exclusively a cerebral exercise. But humans are far more than just heads to absorb academic knowledge,” she says.

Every person is made up of many parts, emotional, physical, social, spiritual and intellectual. All of these parts must be nurtured and developed. “Teaching must be an appreciative relationship, never disconnecting or damaging,” says Tsivia, “but school – particularly in the higher grades, often becomes a place of fear. Students are all too often stuck in a fear-driven emotional space resulting from comparing themselves unfavourably to their classmates. ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I’m unworthy’ are common debilitating false beliefs that too often lead to shutdown or other emotional problems.” Many people I spoke to about this subject could count on one hand the number of times they were praised at school, and these moments were life-changing! Teachers are trained to diagnose weaknesses and tell children where they need improvement. Can teachers also be trained in spotting micro-talents, developing them and reinforcing them verbally and structurally? At my daughter’s school, the highlight of primary school graduation is to be addressed by their teachers and have their unique qualities validated. Identifying these gifts in a structured and intentional way throughout school would be transformative, so that every child leaves school with the feeling they are special – and so is everyone else!

“Many children learn in an atmosphere of fear – of being seen as not good enough. Too often they believe their worth is reflected by their grades,” Tsivia explains. “We need to teach them that their worth is intrinsic. One way to do this is to praise the deed and the qualities it took to do it, instead of global praise like ‘you’re amazing’ which actually creates anxiety and invites comparison. Comparison kills creativity. No soul can be compared to any other. Children also need to understand that there is absolutely zero correlation between their grades and their self-worth!” Tragically, there have been cases of suicides and mental breakdown caused by an undue emphasis on academic outcomes – which children mistake as being synonymous with their worth as human beings and their future prospects. “Fear blocks our unique personalities. We are afraid to shine. We are afraid to be seen. And we become so busy hiding from judgement, that we don’t have the capacity to see ourselves or others. Fear blocks learning,” says Tsivia.

The root of chinuch is also chein, hinting that teachers need to approach children with warmth and chein. “A teacher needs to be someone who sees, and cares, and who can facilitate growth of the whole child,” says Tsivia. “The three Cs of Connection, Compassion and Creativity are essential in a healthy social learning environment.” Where is the time at the start of the day, or the lesson to check in where each child is holding? To make regular times to become aware of what is going on in the body, and to self-regulate so that learning can happen? To be playful and creative? School is characterised by standardised tests, standardised pacing and standardised classrooms. What children need is personalised learning journeys, project-based opportunities aligned to their interests and flexible ways of showing mastery. Another problem is that teachers are expected to cover a huge syllabus. Syllabi are designed to be broad instead of deep. The goal should be to uncover – not to cover!

Long-time researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang has found that it is neurologically impossible to think deeply about things you don’t care about! Children need exposure to real-world roles, that makes their “why” more concrete and while teaching and learning remain primarily cognitive – they need to also be aesthetic, ethical and affective acts.

The school system has become misdirected towards exclusively academic outcomes and developing the linguistic and logical reasoning skills that are essential for law professors – but not many other people. Already from 1980 the world of education has been aware of eight types of intelligences, as first pointed out by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner. These types of intelligences should have huge implications for both learning, lesson planning and educational goals, but are yet to be tapped by the school system. Briefly, they comprise the following capacities that each person has, in various combinations of strengths and weaknesses: Linguistic (ability to use words effectively), logical-mathematical (ability to use logic, solve problems, and think in terms of numbers and abstract patterns), musical (capacity to recognise and compose musical patterns), bodily-kinaesthetic (ability to use one’s body to solve problems and create things), spatial (ability to think in three dimensions), interpersonal (ability to understand and interact with others effectively), intrapersonal (ability to understand oneself), naturalistic (ability to recognise and classify things in nature) and existential (ability to ponder deep questions about life and death). Are our schools tapping into these miraculous and multi-faceted abilities? Are we allowing children to explore the strengths they’ve been given in these areas?

Some schools have come a long way towards educating the whole child but the lion’s share of emphasis is still on IQ, with children (and adults!) still struggling to understand their own and others’ emotions (EQ), social situations (SQ) – with bullying as ubiquitous as ever – and how to recover from adversity, and achieve post-traumatic growth instead of living inside trauma (AQ). Imagine if we developed these forms of intelligence at school?

Ross Wehner, founder of World Leadership School and K12 Change Lab, is an education entrepreneur who believes that purpose needs to be the design principle for schools. It needs to be consciously and intentionally built into the curriculum and into every aspect of the experience. He quotes Sir Kenneth Robinson who said that education should be “the journey inside to discover our gifts, and the journey outside to discover how we can use these gifts to contribute”.

Wehner says we need to start where kids are now. And help them become. Children should be taught how to express what they believe their purpose in life is. And then find the words to identify what gifts, talents, passions and interests they have been given to fulfil that purpose. To fully flesh out this exercise, children should identify what takes them away from their goals and what internal and external challenges they may face. Finally, and crucially, they need to develop a narrative that gets them through the hard work it takes to develop all that potential into reality. This internal narrative builds the resilience and will to overcome the inevitable obstacles that will stand in the way of achieving their purpose. One example of a tool that builds this narrative is to help children create an affirmative story. A true life testimony of when they did something hard, or succeeded despite a struggle. This helps them choose to rise to the occasion when it counts.

Our schools get so much right and perhaps as parents and the community we can lessen the pressure to produce academic results and lessen their emphasis. Let’s begin with the end in mind – to help each child reveal the unique vibration of Hashem’s light that is his or her soul! Let’s start with why.