Curriculum Philosophy
WHERE HAS ALL THE KNOWLEDGE GONE?
OR
WHY DO OUR CHILDREN LEARN SO MUCH AND KNOW SO LITTLE?
We are all familiar with the Chazal which tells of the angel who touches each child on the lip just prior to birth, causing the child to forget all the Torah taught in the womb. As many teachers will attest, that malach seems to reappear, and touch the child again and again. How else could we explain the fact that the average day school student has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours learning Torah, being exposed to the words of Chazal, building textual skills and a significant knowledge base, and yet has very little to show for it. Most of the ideas students have learned are either totally forgotten or hazily recalled. Textual skills improve little as students move from grade to grade. In many cases third or fourth grade students can translate pesukim with similar or even better accuracy than middle school students.
We wonder why?
It is well known to us that after finishing what might amount to 13 years in our day school system, many students when asked what they have learned, will inevitably answer, “Nothing”. A few weeks ago I met with a group of Seminary heads in Israel, and was met with the following charge, “What’s going on in your day schools, these girls barely know anything!” Is it really too much to ask of our schools, after the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars, that our children graduate with a significant fund of Jewish knowledge? With so many talented teachers, with so much intensive effort, we ask, why do our children learn so much and yet know so little?
Other than the malach theory presented above, how do we explain this phenomena?
I would like to respond by presenting a simple and all-inclusive rule of all education, which we will call the Rule of Great Expectations. It states:
‘Students will rise or fall to the level of communicated (appropriate) expectations’.
When we clearly communicate to students what we do want them to remember, and what we want them to know how to do, they will rise to the level of that expectation. Conversely, when we clearly communicate to students that they may forget a body of knowledge or a specific skill, they will meet that expectation as well.
According to the above theory, methodology, while of tremendous importance, takes a secondary role to clearly defined content. It is built on the assumption that while it is obvious that we cannot expect students to remember everything they learn, we can significantly enhance their level of skill and attainment of knowledge by both clarifying and organizing for them what it is we expect them to know. It claims that it is precisely because we present all things taught as being of equal importance that students, realizing they cannot remember everything, forget almost all they learn. In effect, by not communicating what it is we want them to know, we are communicating that they need not remember almost anything, because, after all, they cannot remember everything.
In short, it is not classroom teaching styles that negatively effect knowledge retention, but rather, the clarification and organization of content that is the root cause of our problem. When a second grade teacher asks for the Chumash curriculum as is told, Lech Lecah through Toldot, we have a problem. Until we can clarify for ourselves what precisely children should know at every grade level in every subject, we are ensuring that they know almost nothing.
But how do we choose? What things are more important than others? Where do we set the bar?
When trying to explain a similar phenomenon in general studies education, why children learn so much but do not truly understand the purpose and application of that knowledge, Wiggins and McTighe[1] claim true understanding is lost due to the fact that educators do not clearly differentiate between various forms of knowledge. Rarely do educators define for students that certain parts of the curriculum are simply worth being familiar with, while others are important to know and do, and yet others supply enduring understanding. Various filters can be employed by which decisions can be made as to the nature of each section of the curriculum.
Borrowing form their work, we can apply identical delineations when referring to enduring knowledge. We must remember that not all that we teach carries the same curricular weight. There are facts or ideas that are simply worthwhile being exposed to. That exposure might be useful for its power of impression, the ‘wow factor’, or for its ability to engage students and initiate them into a specific thinking process associated with a specific discipline. However, there are knowledge pieces which sit at the very heart of the discipline in that they help lay the very foundation for all consequent learning and understanding.
To illustrate, consider a lesson regarding the beginning of Vayera, where the angels come to Avraham. The teacher might expect students to know how many angels came, what each one’s mission was, etc. In addition, the teacher, in order to deepen the ideal of welcoming guests, would add the fact that Avraham was recovering from his brit milah, and also teach the concept of “Gedolah hachnasat orchim yoter m’kabalat pnei Shechinah”, welcoming guests is a greater Mitzvah than greeting Hashem. The details of the visit are pieces of knowledge certainly worth being exposed to, however, the latter lesson teaches a fundamental hashkafah concept, central to the very core of Jewish thought. It is precisely these types of concepts that we would like students to retain long after other facts are forgotten. However, how has the teacher communicated this expectation to the students? Have the students been made aware that the knowledge of the former is not on the same epistemological level as the latter?
I frequently urge teachers, when preparing a test to first ask themselves the following 4 questions, the arbah kushiot. 1. Do I truthfully feel that the students will be able to answer this questions in 2 year’s time? If the answer is in the negative, the teacher must then ask themselves, 2. If the students will not remember this in 2 years, why bother asking them now? Follow that with the subsequent question, 3. Are there any pieces of information that I would like them to remember in 2 years? And finally, 4. Have I successfully communicated this expectation to the students?
The above illustration highlights the fact that the first step on the road to enduring knowledge is in identifying fundamental knowledge concepts. Afterwards, we must clarify to students exactly what we expect them to remember, and, finally, to create a school-wide system that reinforces this philosophy.
Identifying and Clarifying Knowledge Concepts:
In general, we can divide that which we consider important to remember into two categories. The first involves fundamental skill acquisition, and the second fundamental concepts. The first will include prefixes, suffixes and shorashim which all serve to build the student’s foundation of textual skill. Lists of the shorashim learned in each parasha, which can be reduced to those occurring more frequently, should be given to students at each grade level. In addition, students should be exposed to lists of the variations of each shoresh, to focus review of prefixes, suffixes and the fashion in which words are built.
The second, which will term musagim, can be characterized as crystallizations of halachik or philosophical ideas which form the basis of future learning and understanding. Scores of such musagim are imbedded in the pesukim we teach, in the form of divrei Chazal, most are quoted by Rashi. These musagim will focus the students (and teachers) attention on the central message or messages of each unit, the fundamental ideas that teachers feel should be committed to long term memory. Teachers must provide students with lists of these musagim, again at each grade level, created with an eye for age appropriateness. In addition, teachers must clarify for students how they want the musagim to be remembered. Depending on the age or aptitude level of the students the teacher can decide whether to hold the students accountable for the entire musag or only certain parts; should the student know the musag in lashon hakodesh or only the translation.
Building a School-wide System:
However the teacher wishes to present these concepts, the major concern is that they be presented to students independently of general subject information. While they are certainly to be a central aspect of the class lesson, the teacher must afterwards clarify that these concepts occupy a unique place in the curriculum. Furthermore, the teacher must clarify the expectation that these concepts must be remembered well beyond that specific perek or parsha test. Thus, tests should be divided to reflect this expectation. Information that will only be asked for this test alone should be separated from information that must be remembered throughout the year (and beyond). The teacher must communicate to students that these concepts might well appear on any or every test until the end of the year. Constant class review will reinforce this expectation.
The most effective means to accomplishing this task is to create a school-wide assessment system which reflects these expectations. At the end of each year, students should be tested, school-wide, on these concepts, possibly, as a prerequisite for promotion to the next grade. Since many concepts, especially text skill concepts, repeat themselves, consistent assessment will ensure repeated review. This system will, again, require that the concepts be clarified and these expectations be clearly communicated.
In summation, students do rise to meet communicated expectations. When those expectations focus on achieving enduring knowledge it is truly amazing what students can and do achieve. The fault of our educational system is not found in the methodologies being utilized, but rather the fault is found in the lack of clarity and hierarchal organization of the content being taught. Our mission as educators is to rethink and retool the content of our curriculum to enable this worthy goal. Identifying and clarifying the fundamental concepts in each and every area of the Judaic curriculum (and indeed the secular as well) should be the focus of curriculum development. We can reduce the malach’s visit to once in a lifetime if we pay the required attention to what it is we teach our talmidim.
[1] Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, ASCD Publications , 1998