Review

We started with Adele Diamond and her work on the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that is involved in mediating conflicting thoughts, making choices between right and wrong or good and bad, predicting future events, and governing social control.

According to Adele Diamond executive function breaks into three key areas:

• Inhibitory Control. This includes self-control, self-censorship, delayed gratification, impulse control, and the development of discipline. It is the part of the brain that does reflection and evaluation. Its functions include: Being able to think before you act. Being able to learn something new that conflicts with what you usually do. Acting appropriately when tempted to act otherwise. Paying attention despite distractions.
• Working Memory. This is the manipulation of information. This is imagination, problem solving, creativity and that whole arena. It includes: Being able to consider things from different perspectives. Being able to relate one idea to another. Being able to perform a set of instructions in sequence. Being able to monitor one’s own thinking.
• Cognitive Flexability. This is the ability to leave one task and focus on a new one. It is all about mental focus. “Mindfulness” is the popular Buddhist term. It includes: Being able to pay more attention when necessary. Being able to think ‘outside the box.’ (Metropolitan State College of Denver Tools of the Mind)

We then met Ellen Galinsky who wrote a book called Mind in the Making: The seven essential life skills every child needs. She takes Neuroscience and breaks it down into material manageable by most parents and most teachers. She takes executive function and breaks it down into seven simple skills. This is pre-frontal cortex stuff that weaves together our social, emotional, and intellectual capacities.

1. Focus and Self-Control. This is our ability to pay attention, to not be distracted, and it where we remember the rules.
2. Perspective Taking. This is where we develop empathy and view things from different points-of-view.
3. Communicating. This involves not only language skills, but our ability to grasp what images, metaphors, points-of-view will best communicate our insights to others.
4. Making Connections. Making Connections involves figuring out what is similar and what is different. (“One of these things is not like the other.”) Figuring out how one thing connects to another. This is associative and comparative thinking.
5. Critical Thinking. This is our ability to evaluate and to decide what evidence we are going to use to make decisions.
6. Taking on Challenges. According to Dr. David Bryfman, challenge is a definitional part of Experiential Education. Here is our ability to tackle the new and the difficult.
7. Self-Directed. Engaged Learning. Self-Direction is also an element of Experiential Education. It is where that which is demanded is transcended by that which were want to seek.

The Focus

Classical Jewish learning involves pairs of learners (hevrutot) who work with Jewish texts. They rehearse the text in preparation of a class wide lesson. Sam Heilman, a participant observer who has looked into the dynamic of Jewish text study, defines the lernen (classical Jewish text study) process as having four steps or moves, recitation, translation, explanation, and discussion. In his book The People of the Book he explains:

• The first of these consists of an oral reading of the text, usually by one person who is cued or echoed by the others who are with him…
• Translation, the second step, became necessary when Jews no longer were fluent in the primary languages…but it was always part of the necessary expansion of the sketchy text…
• Explanation, the third move, is the effort to briefly clarify the meaning of implications of what has been recited. During explanation, learners define questions and refine answers. They organize a text, determining where one object or inyan ends and another begins. They frame matters, detailing what the Talmud (text) is trying to do. Finally, they provide short glosses or footnotes to what they have just recited…
• Discussion, the last move, allows for the broadest possible consideration of the text. Mirroring the give-and-take of the sages… (they) evaluate the signficance of what they have read and debate its conclusions, digress to tell stories or ask and answer questions… The students’ concerns and words merge with the issues and language of the Talmud (text) they reviewed. This the ultimate step of the process, the point at which life and lernen become one.

In the remainder of this article we want to show how studying Rashi (doing text oriented Jewish study) we expand executive function and increase the learning skills of our students.

The Proof

Here is Rashi’s comment on one verse, Genesis 18.23. Here Abraham is just about to argue with God about the destruction of Sodom. This Rashi is dense and takes a lot of unpacking and decoding.

The Torah says, “And Abraham drew near (Gen. 18.23) Drawing near can mean preparing for battle: “And Joab drew near…” (II Sam. 10.13). Drawing near can mean pleading: “And Judah drew near…” (Gen. 44.18) And drawing near can mean praying: “Elijah drew near…”(I Kings 18.21) Abraham did all of these, he battled, pleaded and prayed.

Before we even begin to work on this Rashi, we need to form a Hevruta to begin work. This process of starting with a partner, begin the reading, and committing to finding a “translation” and working out “a solution”—plus developing personal meaning.

The very act of beginning involves, “focus,” “taking on challenges,” and “self-directed, engaged learning.” We are making two assumptions about this process. First, that the learners have some previous experience with decoding Rashi and working in hevruta. This means that students have already had success and reward from facing the “challenges” involved in this kind of text study.

Students begin to read to each other and decode (translate).the text by expanding it through logic (“critical thinking”) and making using context (“making connections.”)

(1) Let’s look at the beginning of the text. It begins, “And Abraham drew near (Gen. 18.23). The first questions that automatically comes is, “Draw near to what or Who?” The answer comes from reading ahead. Next Abraham is in the middle of an argument with God over saving Sodom. Therefore we know that Abraham drew near to God.

(2) The next question is “How do you draw near to God?” (Here “perspective taking “ comes into play. This question could be one generated by the students, (“self-direction”) or it could be found from reading more of the Rashi.

(3) The first thing you learn about Rashi, that we are not teaching in this lesson, that needs to be part of the back drop to this lesson, is that Rashi is always answering questions, but Rashi rarely verbalizes the question. Rashi is a game of “Jeopardy.”

(4) If we look ahead we see that Rashi gives three answers: (1) “And Joab drew near…” (2) And Judah drew near…” and (3) “Elijah drew near…” Here comes the question, “How does one draw near to God” and Rashi finds the answer by knowing that the Bible gives us three examples of how people draw near to God.

(5) Next “self-direction” is really required. We will not understand this Rashi unless we know what each of the three did to draw near. Rashi (or actually whoever annotated Rashi) gives us the chapter and verse of the three incidents. (Depending on the edition of Rashi, there may also be footnotes or other hints to how the three drew close to God). “Perspective taking” tools have already clued us that Abraham will draw near in all these ways—and that we, too, have the capacity to draw near to God in the same way.

(6) Our research shows us:

• “And Joab drew near…” shows us that Drawing near can mean preparing for battle. The rest of passage teaches us: (II Sam. 10.13) and then (he) went out and defeated the Syrians.
• “And Judah drew near…” shows us that Drawing near can mean pleading: The rest of the passage teaches us:” (Gen. 44.18) and then begged for Benjamin’s life.
• “Elijah drew near…” (I Kings 18.21) just before he out-prayed the priest of Baal on Mt. Carmel.

(7)`Next comes out need for “perspective taking.” We need to understand the connection between these events and Abrahams forthcoming debate with God over Sodom.

Rashi says: Abraham did all of these, he (1) battled, (2) pleaded and (3) prayed.

Next comes the Heilman final stage, the discussion. Here is where we personalize. This is the place we use “communication.” Either with our partner or with the whole class we answer two questions:

• How did Abraham “draw near” to God in these three ways at this moment.
• When do we need to battle,  plead and pray to get close to God.

By the time we are done, the passage from Rashi comes out:

We want to know what it means to “draw near to God” if God is everywhere? Obviously, “drawing near” is an emotional or spiritual place, not a physical one. Here are some examples: Drawing near can mean preparing for battle: “And Joab drew near…” (II Sam. 10.13) and then went out and defeated the Syrians. Drawing near can mean pleading: “And Judah drew near. . .” (Gen. 44.18) and then begged for Benjamin’s life. And drawing near can mean praying: “Elijah drew near…”(I Kings 18.21) just before he out-prayed the priest of Baal on Mt. Carmel. Which of these kinds of drawing close was Abraham trying to do? He was prepared to do whatever it took, to speak harshly, to plead, and to pray. There are indeed many ways of reaching God!

We have hit all the elements of executive function in puzzling out this one passage. Students will do as much as she can on her own—then the teacher will help them complete the process.

Conclusion

In a recent NYTimes story “A Silicon Valley School that Doesn’t Compute” there is a focus on the Waldorf school in Silicon Valley. Paul Thomas,  a former teacher and an associate professor of education at Furman University, says:

“Teaching is a human experience. Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy and critical thinking.”

My friend Idie Benjamin taught me, “I tell a parent that their child has trouble focusing.” They respond, ‘You should see the hours he spends in front of the computer.” The right question is, “Can they focus without the computer.”

Pierre Laurent, 50, who works at a high-tech start-up and formerly worked at Intel and Microsoft. He has three children in Waldorf schools. He says, “Engagement is about human contact, the contact with the teacher, the contact with their peers.”

I will not argue against technology, I am now reading books on my Nook. But, I will argue that somethings are better done in person. Jewish schools can build important learning skills if they focus on being Jewish schools—places that work in Jewish ways to use Jewish texts to explicate the human condition.

“The theory of executive function is not an exact science, nor is it a standard diagnostic category. Even so, it can provide a framework in which parents and professionals can understand a child’s level of cognitive ability.”  Stanberr, Kristin. Executive function: A new lens for viewing your child. This theory of how we mentally navigate life offers a new way to view a child’s strengths and struggles. It also points a future direction for Jewish Education.

Ellen Galinsky wrote a book called Mind in the Making: The seven essential life skills every child needs.  She takes Neuroscience and breaks it down into material manageable by most parents and most teachers. She takes executive function and breaks it down into seven simple skills. This is pre-frontal cortex stuff that weaves together our social, emotional, and intellectual capacities.

1. Focus and Self-Control. This is our ability to pay attention, to not be distracted, and it where we remember the rules.
2. Perspective Taking. This is where we develop empathy and view things from different points-of-view.
3. Communicating. This involves not only language skills, but our ability to grasp what images, metaphors, points-of-view will best communicate our insights to others.
4. Making Connections.  Making Connections involves figuring out what is similar and what is different. (“One of these things is not like the other.”) Figuring out how one thing connects to another. This is associative and comparative thinking.
5. Critical Thinking. This is our ability to evaluate and to decide what evidence we are going to use to make decisions.
6. Taking on Challenges. According to Dr. David Bryfman, challenge is a definitional part of Experiential Education. Here is our ability to tackle the new and the difficult.
7. Self-Directed. Engaged Learning. Self-Direction is also an element of Experiential Education.  It is where that which is demanded is transcended by that which were want to seek.

Before I go any further, I want to give a shout out to Marci Dickman, the Director of Life Long Learning at Congregation Beth Emet in Evanston, Illinois. I was privileged to watcher us this book and this material to train her teachers.

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

Neal Stephenson is a writer of speculative fiction. One of his creations is the “Dynabook”  In his novel, The Diamond Age, he comes up with the idea of a tablet like book that is continually programmed and acted out so that the protagonist can grow her executive functions. Actors and writers are always in the background creating the next part of the story the protagonist needs.

It is not impossible for computers to activate and grow executive functions. But empathy and the rest of these skills are best modeled and reinforced by real people.

The Best Argument for Textbooks

I have a friend who sent me this link: Increase Student Engagement by Getting Rid of Textbooks it is written by Shelly Blake-Plock, a high school classroom teacher from Maryland. He argues:

As a teacher, I’d say that the best things textbooks do are

1. make my life easier by supplying me with reading passages, questions, and projects for the kids to do,
2. organize the class material in such a way that we can stay on a steady course, and
3. make it easy for colleagues and I teaching the same classes to “keep on the same page,” so to speak. And in all three cases, the textbook serves the teacher quite well.

What I know about complementary Jewish education is that it is powered by teachers who need all the help they can get. A good collection of texts and a function sense of organization can improve most Jewish classrooms. If you want to see how this works, look at Experiencing the Torah or Torah Toons I  OR You Be the Judge  or The Jewish Law Review.

The Jewish Present

In his sci-fi novel Martian Time Slip Philip K. Dick envisions an arcade where the games are actually computers with personalities who interact with the students. E.g. it is possible to play with Albert Einstein. We can all envision better Jewish futures. The question that needs to stand is “Can we build a great Jewish present?”

The reality is that today, the majority of Jewish students will be educated in classrooms fronted by teachers. That is the frustration and that is the reality. They are not the best teachers, most are untrained and part time. Many are volunteers. They are hard to gather and harder to train. But they are what we have to work with.

Conclusions

Shelly Blake-Plock, the teacher who argued against textbooks actually understands Ellen Galinsky. Neuroscientists have conducted studies that show that success Executive Functions can predict success in later life better than academic text scores. While Headstart students do not do better than non-Headstart students in their later years in public schools, they do much better in life. Here is where the Executive Functions really kick in.

We have to work with what we have. Our best resource is teachers who want to succeed—who care about the future of the Jewish people. If we can get our teachers to focus on executive functions, if we can get them to exude: Focus and Self Control, Perspective Taking, Communicating, Making Connections, Critical Thinking, Taking on Challenges, and Self-directed Engaged Learning we can promise parents that “Hebrew School” can lead to student success in life. Not a bad promise. The good news, all of these can be learned by studying Jewish texts—something that should be the core of what we do.

Eventually, they were too successful (and probably were the subject of too many conference workshops and articles). A major American textbook publisher decided to make them simpler. They made one color snap-together shapes that had indentations for every number. Snap together plastic was easier to clean-up. Eventually, the publisher gave up on producing manipulative materials and put pictures of them in their textbooks instead. It was like “Video Killed the Radio Star”, which could also be seen as an application of Gresham’s Law as taught by Shelly Dorph), “In Jewish education, ‘Bad money always drives good money off the market.’”

The same narrative functions in Jewish education. Here is an example. About thirty years ago family education was the hottest new technology in Jewish education. It became too successful. Now every synagogue in the country (except for those with a collective AARP membership) is family-oriented and every school actualizes experiences called “Family Education.” Recently, the Consortium for the Jewish Family (a new name is coming) received a grant from the Covenant Foundation to jump-start the movement so that the quality and impact of these experiences can be improved. You can find out about this summer’s family education conference, check out the Jewish Family Education Conference in Detroit.

Right now, the latest ‘hot topic’ in Jewish education is experiential education. It has just been adopted as a retro-fit to the entire curriculum of one of the major publishers. Believing in the movement, I am scared that it will go the way of Cuisenaire rods.

Text Me an Experience

For the past four years I have been working on creating materials that are specifically designed for experiential education. In other ways, since the founding of Torah Aura Productions we have been creating experiential materials. We are a company founded at camp and rooted in camp. I know that a number of people believe that textbook and experiential are oxymoronic. But, I do not. I believe that education starts with a nugget of understanding or insight that we are trying to enable students to grasp. For the Jewish tradition, these insights are usually locked into texts. And I have always believed (a) that for Jews good text study is experiential and (b) they can be at the heart of powerful Jewish experiences. I have always envisioned my work as experiential, confluent, and a lot of other terms that have grown out John Dewey’s work. We have been shaping our materials to be used in groups, to be short and precise, and to defeat the reading out loud of long passages.

While I am anything but an expert, defining experiential education seems useful.

First, it is education, so it is connected to planned change. This is not that vicarious learning doesn’t happen in all learning environments, but education is by definition about backwards planning. It starts by defining outcomes and finding ways to hit that target.

Second, Experiential Education is active learning. Learning happens when students “do” something. The learning comes from the doing.

Aristotle said, “For the things we have to learn first before we can do them, we learn them best by doing them.” (Bynum, W.F. and Porter, R. eds. [2005], Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations. Oxford University Press. 21:9.)

Third, the deep learning in Experiential Education is in the reflection on learning. It is when they verbalize the experiences they have had.

A non-educative experience is an experience where a person has not done any reflection… (Dewey, John. 1938. Experience and Education. Macmillian)

Experiential Books

Any book can be used experientially. That is just a question of adaption. But it is possible to create books that specifically create experiential moments. We play by these rules.

• First we envision the experience(s) that will culminate the lesson or lesson segment.
• We create the text needed (and only the text needed) to actualize that experience.
• We figure out an experiential way of digesting that text piece (often a group task).
• We then segue into the primary learning activity—making sure that reflection on that activity is part of the process.

The things to know are that textbooks are not the opposite of positive experience. They can indeed be tools that enable and actualize experiential learning. Materials that are shaped in reading level, focus, and length make their use in active learning easier.

Experiencing the Future

Here is the problem. We know that experiential education is a valuable resource for Jewish education. We know that there is a large conversation that involves talking about its application and techniques. We also know that the larger this conversation gets, the greater the chance that experiential education will be trivialized. Success comes with risks of sustainability as “everyone” begins to jump on the bandwagon. New ideas are subject to entropy.

What can we do? We can accept the inevitable. We can hold to best practices. And, we can integrate these tools into our on-going skill set. It can join values clarification, inquiry, open classrooms and a whole host of past innovations that no longer have the buzz, but are still integrated (in one way or another) into the way we teach.

There is a huge difference between a fad and an innovation that has a natural flow and ebb. Our job at the moment is to create the best practices, the important resources; the serious applications of experiential tools and not worry about the future. Education always winds up being about today’s practices. What we innovate now will become memories and history. Right now, we need to be careful about quality applications of Experiential Education and let the rest take care of itself.

By the way, you can still buy Cuisenaire rods.

Anyway…The six points at the end are a great articulation of what all of us believe, and have believed for a long time. (And it feels good to have neurology back us up.)

But that articulation depresses me, because it feels so big. I have 41 teachers. Maybe 6 of them can do those things.

(And that’s nothing new. Hebrew school teachers have always sucked. But now that neurology’s involved, it feels like I can’t help but notice just how much they suck.)

I have continued reading in the areas of Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and education. I am presently working my way through a book, Mind, Brain, and Education: Neuroscience Implications for the Classroom, David A. Sousa, Editor.

Facing the Future

The Jewish education world has decided that “the drop-off Hebrew School” has failed and that we now need to build bold alternatives. One movement wants schools to become more like summer camps; the other movement believes that technology is the answer. Both movements agree that the future must be dramatic and must be now. I want schools to be camp-like. I want them to use technology, and I want them to sacred communities that are powerful and unlike anything else students experience elsewhere.

Evil Teachers

America has been blanked by No Child Left Behind, a legacy with of mercy left behind empowered, George Bush’s  educational change. Explaining No Child Left Behind, the website ed.gov says:

These systems must be based on challenging State standards in reading and mathematics, annual testing for all students in grades 3-8, and annual statewide progress objectives ensuring that all groups of students reach proficiency within 12 years.

Many educators, your blogger included, believe that a system based only on math and reading test, destroys learning. It creates a tense, narrow, test centered mess where little learning can take place. It also blames teachers for student failure and fails to give them much credit for success. But worst of all, it makes them teach the wrong things, in the wrong way, to students who have other needs. In short there is no setting left for a student just to write a poem.

…believes that students’ academic performance is solely a function of the quality of their teachers. If students have low test scores, it is their teachers’ fault, while students with high scores had great teachers. …social science research has demonstrated for many years that what families do, and the advantages or disadvantages that family income confers, have even more influence on academic performance than what teachers do. Poverty makes a difference: When children start school at age 5, before they ever meet a teacher, there is already a gap in their vocabulary and readiness to learn. (Diane Ravitich, The Washington Post)

If you want to understand how NCLB is destroying American Education read Diane Ravitich or “Obama’s War on School” in Newsweek.

If, secular teachers are being blamed for the failure of the American educational system and are having their dignity peeled away in the process, complementary school teachers don’t have a chance.

Change

Which of the following is an easier change: (a) creating power-point with video for every lesson, (b) making sure that the classroom is free from stress.

A or B:

(a) Figuring out how to use Google Earth to teach about Natanya or (b) making your classroom a safe place.

(a) Running a five group simulation of the destruction of Jerusalem, or (b) making sure that the environment is confluent with the values being taught.

While we need to make changes in our school, a mean teacher using Skype [www.Skype.com] to tutor may save the family a round at carpool, but is still a mean teacher.

The truth is, neurologically sound pedagogy is easier to implement than radical technology or active experiential education—and those media still need to work with student brains to succeed.

The Short List:

Here are a few basic lessons from neuroscience for the classroom. These all should be steps that any of the 41 teachers can be guided towards.

a.  A sense of safety enhances learning. Stress inhibits it.

b. The schools culture impacts the learning outcomes.

c. Being “relevant” and teaching “meaning” and “context” helps to move things into short term then long term memory.

d. Real live people make a greater impact on learning than do video images. This validates the teacher, small groups, and classroom community.

e. Joy enhances learning. Success at learning releases dopamine that builds a sense of joy.

f. The brain has intact filters (RAS). Teaching in unexpected and new ways helps to get learning through the RAS. “A novel experience also has a great chance of becoming a long term memory.”

g. What makes computer games such engaging learning experiences is something labeled “achievable challenge.” We learn our lessons when our lessons are also based on achievable challenges.

h. Success based on taking risks also releases dopamine and increases pleasure.

i. Letting student move around increases the blood flow and learning.

j.  Frequent honest assessment builds the sense of success.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some of the things that caught my eye.

Basically, when it is all boiled down, we just have to stop offering bad classrooms. Our job is to lead all of our teachers to enable student success (dopamine). Bad classrooms have to be fixed. No matter what future we envision, the teachers have to stop sucking and that is our responsibility.

Jamie Oliver is a British Chef who is very much part of the local and sustainable movement. He is also an upstander who has changed the nature of the food served in British State Schools, opened a restaurant where he trains and employs at risk teenagers, and in a reality TV show – Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution – has come to America to try to teach American’s about healthful eating.

His first season was in Huntsville, Alabama – the most overweight city in America – where he made some significant impacts on school lunches among other things. This year he came to Los Angeles and was pretty much defeated by the local ennui. His one big accomplishment was to get the Los Angeles School district to agree to remove flavored milks. Flavored milks (common practice in American public schools) are seen “as the only way to get kids to drink milk” have three times the sugar content of most soda and are probably significantly responsible (with other villains like pizza and fast food) for the dramatic escalation of diabetes in children.

Last year I wrote a probably incoherent tweet about Jamie Oliver being a fabulous role model for Jewish education—having the fortitude and skill to induce people to do what is right even if it isn’t the easiest or most fun choice.

Recently I sat at a conversation to discuss the future of the complementary school. I don’t know what the complimentary school is except that it is the hip-term now used by federated culture to indicate what most Jewish parents describe as “Hebrew School” and “Sunday School.” It joins Religious Schools, Religion Schools, Supplementary Schools, Torah School and Congregational schools in the list of euphemisms for what started life as the Talmud Torah.

All I can figure out is that a complementary school is a place where you get a lot of positive feedback. I hope it doesn’t mean that we are an accessorizing secular education.

Among the people participating in this discussion of the future of majority Jewish schooling was the local communal camp director. His comment was: “We had a school group out to camp for a retreat and at the end of the year the school voted the camp experience their favorite experience of the year.”

Chocolate and Strawberry milk always score highly when students evaluate their food choices.

Let me make two things absolutely clear:

1. I am NOT saying that camp and camp-style learning present a clear danger the way that flavored milks do, and
2. I am NOT saying that schooling should not be “fun,” but, I will continue to quote the mission statement drafted by the Brookline High School faculty, “We believe that education is an addiction to the tart and not the sweet.”
   (Quoted by Tom Peters in A Passion for Excellence.)

What I am saying is that good Jewish education should be “local and sustainable.”
By “local” I mean, that Jewish education should take place within the dynamic of a living Jewish community. Judaism that cannot be lived can’t be all that functional. Likewise, those who teach should be part of that Jewish community. This does not mean that one can only hire members to be teachers—BUT RATHER—communities need to work hard at making faculty feel invited to participate.

By “sustainable” I am meaning that Jewish Education should lead to future Jewish living. It is impossible for me to define what is adequate learning to sustain Jewish life. For me, it includes a lot of text literacy and tools for “making-meaning” out of primary Jewish sources. These are the tools to remix the Jewish tradition. But, I am more than willing to admit that adequacy has a lot to one’s definition of Jewish living.

I fully believe that the community built at a camp retreat is a useful and highly functional expression of the community that creates “local,” but I doubt that it transfers a lot of sustainability. I know that you can’t teach until you have engaged. That makes engagement necessary, critical, and probably achievable, but it isn’t sufficient to the task of continuity.

We no longer live within the physics of “if you teach them they will come” but I can’t support reduction past the point of sustainability just to achieve demographics. My tradition teaches me that sha’ar yashuv. We will be sustained by a surviving remnant.

Unflavored milk is best for kids even when it isn’t their first choice.

and the Prefrontal Cortex

Joel Lurie Grishaver

I was at a gathering put together by the Covenant Foundation where I wound up in a small group with Lisa Colton who told me that I should know about Adele Diamond and instantly sent me a link. Yesterday, a couple of months later, I listen to the podcast and was blown away.

Suddenly neuroscience was backing up everything I was saying. I have been arguing in this column/blog for several years (1) that complementary schools are not only important to the Jewish future, but to the overall development of individual students. And (2) that schools need to evolve their process to maximize not only their Jewish impact, but their overall educational excellence. That excellence can be sold to parents. This article will expand in this direction.

The Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex is the front part of the brain underneath the forehead and is involved in mediating conflicting thoughts, making choices between right and wrong or good and bad, predicting future events, and governing social control — such as suppressing emotional or sexual urges. The prefrontal cortex is the brain center most strongly implicated in qualities like sentience, human general intelligence, and personality. Said simply, the development of the prefrontal cortex can make you a good student and a good person. The prefrontal cortex is the last to develop and the first to go in diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The workings of the prefrontal cortex are grouped together in a series of abilities that are filed under executive function. According to Adele Diamond executive function breaks into three key areas:

1. Inhibitory Control. This includes self-control, self-censorship, delayed gratification, impulse control, and the development of discipline. It is the part of the brain that does reflection and evaluation. Its functions include: Being able to think before you act. Being able to learn something new that conflicts with what you usually do. Acting appropriately when tempted to act otherwise. Paying attention despite distractions.
2. Working Memory. This is the manipulation of information. This is imagination, problem solving, creativity and that whole arena. It includes: Being able to consider things from different perspectives. Being able to relate one idea to another. Being able to perform a set of instructions in sequence. Being able to monitor one’s own thinking.
3. Cognitive Flexability. This is the ability to leave one task and focus on a new one. It is all about mental focus. “Mindfulness” is the popular Buddhist term. It includes: Being able to pay more attention when necessary. Being able to think ‘outside the box.’

Tools of the Mind

We know that the more activity that nurtures the brain, the more it develops. Play, sports, music, memorization, arts, meditation nurtures the brain. And according to Adele Diamond, that which nurtures the spirit develops the brain.

The Worst Kind of Hebrew School

Think of a Hebrew school where they do nothing but Hebrew reading drill, check off prayers on a chart where they get a star, and each student has to wait patiently for their turn to be the reader.

Even this Hebrew school, the one we all remember, and the one that every student remembers to hate has some good. Forget about the content. Hebrew is good but that is not our issue. Developing patience is good. Memorizing letters is good. And, beneath the surface of this classroom the Stockholm Syndrome bonds students to each other as they form a community of resistance. And, interpersonal activities are good. Adele Diamond says, “People feel physically better if they are socially involved.”

The Better Complementary School

Diamond says, “Sometime older paradigms are better.” There is ancient wisdom that that helps us, “Storytelling, creative play, singing, dancing, and even sports are central to brain development. The more activity, the more involvement, the more the brain is nurtured. Diamond quotes Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Action teaches the meaning of the act.”

A school that centers itself in experiential education – that is a place of doing that builds sacred community as part of its process and is joyful – all builds the better individual. It develops the brain. Problem solving and other skills are far more important than information, even though facts and names are easier to test. Memorization gets a bad reputation, but it too (think Hebrew letters) is good for mental development.

What we learn is that older wisdom offer great developmental possibility. Telling and retelling and creatively playing with stories are really powerful. Luckily, Judaism is a tradition loaded with stories. The goals of developing good people are as important as other educational goals—and that we are good at. Problem solving is important—and often happens through interpretation. Jewish texts are studied through interpretation and problem solving. Know, that brains work better in joyful settings and shut down when stressed. Surprise and mystery enhances learning. We got a lot of those.

Tell parents that Lev Vygotsky taught that social experiences and continued social interaction is critical. A child’s ability to play creatively with other is a better predictor of success than IQ. Now “make it so.”

Try This at Home

Here is a brain science trick that is really good for us. If a child has a problem with mirror writing, there is a very simple fix. Give the student a red pencil in addition to a regular one. Ask the student to put down his/her regular pencil and pick up the red one every time one of the letters that s/he reverses comes up. The little bit of reflection involve in switching pencils will solve the problem.

Torah Aura and the Prefrontal Cortex

Adele Diamond is involved with a curricular process called Tools of the Mind. It is all about developing curricular resources that promote the development of executive function and other prefrontal cortex areas.

The Jewish School of the future needs to be more concerned about Tools of the Mind than touch screens. And yes, the two are not mutually exclusive.

An example: Diamond tells the story of a class of four year olds that are paired (put in hevruta) each given a story they could not read, and asked to make up a story using the pictures. This is a classic form of creative dramatics. The problem came when no one was willing to listen. Everyone wanted to go first. They solved the problem by giving each team two pictures: one of a mouth and one of an ear. Each person got a card that defined their role—listener and speaker—and then the four year olds tapped into their Inhibitory Control and took turns. Here, brain science both informs and enables this activity.

If we are smart, on complementary schools of the future that we are now designing will take these insights to mind. They will be:

1. Kind, caring communities that work with respect and feel safe and nurturing. Solo learning doesn’t do for the prefrontal cortex what communal learning does.
2. It will involve experiential activities that involve whole body learning, problem solving, tools and skills—not centering on the mastery of, but the application of, information.
3. That the arts, music, dance, plastic arts, and storytelling will be part of the learning. There should be a great focus on creative dramatics.
4. That learning should not challenge but grow Executive Function, especially in the arena of Inhibitory people.
5. In order to make our schools good places, we should model, teach, and coach becoming good people.
6. In our rush for the new, we should not forget that ancient wisdom about learning has much to inform our efforts.

My exposure to Adele Diamond (thank you Lisa Colton) has added another lens to the way I now vision Jewish education. Her Tools of the Mind has given me a new vantage point for looking at the work we do—and I recommend it as a way of looking at the work you do in running schools. To quote Diamond one more time, “Education is not what we teach, but what happens in the prefrontal cortex.”

Soccer is probably less successful than Jewish schools. Fewer AYSO participants grow up (especially in America) to be professional soccer players than Jewish students grew up to affiliate with Jewish institutions. The Passover Seder is probably more repeated item in adult Jewish lives than the corner kick.

But, Soccer is really good at teaching some things and instilling some values. Soccer is really good at teaching players that they have obligations to their teammates. Youth soccer is really good at dealing with diversity and drilling in the acceptance of less successful players. It does teach the value of practice, the importance of conditioning and the thrill of victory (sometimes). Any questions about the good of sports, watch The Bad News Bears.

Ironically, if there is one criticism of Youth Soccer is that it is a drop-off activity that doesn’t involve the family. Like the Bravermans’ on Parenthood, we probably need more times when the whole family plays sports together.

Perhaps the only significant criticism of Youth Soccer (and the other drop-off activities) that our students participate in comes from Joseph Chilton Pearce who criticizes the adult involvement and control of organized sports. He teaches, “Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.” He is the parenting philosopher who best gives voice to the teachings of Vivian Gussin Paley.

Here is the bottom line: Soccer manages to be compelling while Jewish studies rarely play as well in the elementary years. (Very few Jewish preschoolers have negative experiences). The drop-off part of the experience is more a parental complaint than a destructive force. Drop-off is not a reason to end Jewish schooling, though teaching about belonging as well as soccer teams do is a worthy goal. It remains our challenge to make students’ time in Jewish schooling as “rewarding” (notice I didn’t say “fun”) as soccer.

If I was going to choose the number one sport activity it would be skateboarding for its affirmation of individuality and its goal of progression. But, the simple truth is this, I no more choose our students leisure time activities than I do their media use.

My truth, I don’t want Jewish learning judged on the leisure time scale, any more than I do real school. Compelling, individual, affirming and caring is the goal of all learning. Our job, is not the corner kick, but doing those things well.

The first voice is Amy Chua, author of  ”Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,”  who says give your child no room to do anything but succeed. The other voice is Wendy Mogul, whose long overdue second book, “The Blessings of a B-Minus,” cajoles us to accept our child as human beings. Both books are now coming to prominence. One is about high achievement, the other is about resilience. Both take a swipe at the long over emphasized issue of self-esteem.

Chua wants us to be tougher on our kids and demand “perfection.” Mogul understands that “failure” is a useful growth opportunity. Both of them wind up as commentary on new reports about the failure of American schools to even teach the difference between facts and opinions and the overall failure of American Universities to make any impact on the learning of many of their present students. Richard Arum, lead author of the study, “Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (University of Chicago Press) came out in January, too, is the third voice putting the foundations of the way we parent at risk.

Believe it or not, all this comes back to the role and optics of Jewish schools, particularly Jewish supplemental schools. Who we are as a school has a lot to do with what our parents believe a school is.

We are simultaneously being told be like regular schools and become technological. At the same time we are being told, don’t be like a school at all (we’ve had enough of that) be a camp or a program or something interesting (and do that using a lot less time). What is common knowledge every where but in our classroom, is the universal belief that the present Jewish schooling system is a total failure.

Here is a radical idea. We ought to play to our own strengths. We know that the Jewish tradition centers on learning how to close-read texts. (Think reading comprehension!) That we use a thing called “Talmudic Logic” that teaches you how to evaluate evidence, reason, and know the difference between fact and opinion.

Jewish schools can and should do camp pretty well. We need to get better at technology. For sure, our tradition centers on building both self-esteem and resilience. But, what Judaism really is good at is learning—deep learning.

In the future, when the alternative (for example) is 10 minutes of Skype a week plus one informal event a month probably involving families, we will brag:  “We help our students become better learners.”

Camp will do camp better than we do. Other schools will always have more money to spend on technology than we do (and Web 2.0 apps only go so far). But what we can really brag about is “let us teach your children the Jewish tradition and they will do better in life.”

We will incorporate the camp selling point: “You children will make friends to last a lifetime.” We will have the technological appeal: “We allow your children to remix the Jewish tradition.” But our unique promise is about learning skills. Right now we teach not language but mechanical reading. Language provides useful insight. Mechanical reading is self-serving. We are geared to teach names and facts, but “meaning” and “insight” are what are precious. We have to work to make our classrooms both challenging and responsive, and those are goals we can achieve. It is perhaps the only truth that will keep us in business.

To stay on the weekly schedule, to make it worth the carpool time, Jewish Schooling has to have advantages. The good thing is that we own them: Friends, Remixing, Creativity, Resilience, and Academic Excellence. We know how to do this—we simply need to become good Torah teachers and not a pale imitation of secular schools.

“The eyes of the Fair are on the future – not in the sense of peering toward the unknown nor attempting to foretell the events of tomorrow and the shape of things to come, but in the sense of presenting a new and clearer view of today in preparation for tomorrow; a view of the forces and ideas that prevail as well as the machines. To its visitors the Fair will say: “Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made. They are all interesting and much effort has been expended to lay them before you in an interesting way. Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.”

This world’s fair not only began the “cult of the future,” it was the first time we were promised the Jetson’s vision of a flying car. The flying car is the one part of the great promises of 1939 that has not come true. We have the robots, the stainless steel kitchens, the computers, televisions and more. But we still don’t have the flying car. Not even Top Gear has gone there, but we are being promised one.

Honestly, my concern is more mezuzot than flying cars. Jewish education is presently locked into the “cult of the future.” We have forgotten the lesson of the Trylon and Perisphere – (the futuristic symbols of that World’s Fair) – that “Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.” I want build a shining future. I think that our dreams are important. But, I am also concerned with the present.

I know that someday classrooms will have three walls of smartboards like on the CSI shows. I know that every kid will have tablet textbooks that whir and spin and do flip-flops. I envision personally creating an interactive Rashi program that teaches process rather than content. And, I have a suspicion that Jewish classrooms will come with bunk-beds to better recreate the camping experience because the future is not only technology.

My favorite educational future can be found in a Philip K. Dick novel, Martian Time Slip. In his future Mars all hands are need for work so a series of teaching machines care for the children. School is an arcade of cyber personalities. You can hang out with Plato, Albert Einstein, and Abraham Lincoln, etc. Each of these machines is interactive. They build relationships with the students and come to know what each student needs. I fantasize the Jewish version, being able to learn with Akiva, Maimonides and Rashi (all in kid friendly versions). The fantasy extends to early members of Hovevei Zion, Rick Recht and Martin Buber telling child friendly versions of Hasidic Tales.

I am not afraid of Skype Bar Mitzvah tutoring but I am concerned about the reduction of Jewish connection to ten minutes a week and one shabbaton a month. Because I believe in cognitive dissonance I believe in carpools and time spent together.

I went to one of the last of the Urban Hebrew schools. I walked there, spent between a half[H1] -an-hour to forty minutes to hanging out, fooling around (all but unsupervised), while waiting for class to begin. That free-form time spent together with other students is my strongest memory and the real bond in my Hebrew School experience. It is no different than pizza before Hebrew High. What Philip K. Dick understood is that students and teachers, even with teaching machines, need to build relationships. As my friend Danny Siegel says in one of his Psalms, “…they know you well enough to know you.”

Right now I know that electronic textbook technology is not ready for affordable use, so I got to do the best I can to make ideas jump off printed pages. I know that a few non-day schools have a smartboard or two, but it is not a technology we can expect. Even access to video projectors is limited. I have been to several workshops that have told teachers that social networking is the future, but few of these teachers are paid for training or preparation, let alone updating their profile.

I want to dream about the future, and talk about it and work on it; but I also want to know about the best contemporary best practices. As long as most Jewish education takes place in classrooms with teachers, I still want to work on making those settings better. Jewish education is about the future, but it is also very much about the now. In between our dreams and experiments (“It’s Alive!) we still need to worry about being effective this afternoon.

We will have smart-classrooms and remote learning, but right now most Jewish learning takes place on whiteboards and I want them to be used well. I want to maximize family education, continue to create powerful Jewish experiences, and not give up on youth groups.

First we need the flying cars, then we can worry about whether or not they halakhically need a mezuzah. We can give up on the present when the future is ready. We need to build all kinds of alternatives but not abandon improving the normative until they are ready.

Once upon a time upon a time there was Dr. Samson S. Benderly the founder of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater New York. He, with his good friend Dr. Mordechai Kaplan, reinvented Jewish Life. Benderly, who was one of the giants of Jewish Education is in need of a Wikipedia page. (Anyone need a project?) The New York Times ran a story on Dr. Benderly with the head line, “HOW THE KEHILLAH WORKED AN EDUCATIONAL MIRACLE; Faced a Big Problem in Teaching 200,000 Jewish Children, Only One-Quarter of Whom Had Religious Training and Solved It in a Way That Is Pronounced Unique in American Educational History.”

The Kehillah was the first large-scale communal tzadakah organization (a precursor of the Federation model). The standardization and professionalization of Jewish Education through the Bureau of Jewish Education was one their first projects. Benderly was hired to and succeeded at creating a modern education system in New York. The goal, here, was for Jewish education to become a professional school system, just like the public schools. The idea was, just as the public school system had “Americanized” a generation of Jews, a profession, modern, Jewish school system could “Judify” them.

I do not dislike this new name change though I am perplexed by it. Two things surprise me. The first is the equation of newness with goodness. Their catch phrase, “We pioneer new approaches in Jewish Education for every age” doesn’t suggest striving for excellence, doesn’t ask for effectiveness, and doesn’t set impact as the target. Also, newness can be an idolatrous end. It stands in direct opposition of respect for the elderly and veneration for the past.

I fully believe in the technological. I brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I floss every evening with a water pick, and am fully addicted to using my Smart phone. Yes, this article is being written on a computer and facts researched on the internet. What I am looking for is balance. Meanwhile, I mourn the number of veteran teachers and educators who are now jobless and unemployable because despite their years of experience they fail to know the secrets of worshipping the gods of “the future,” while they have many many tools and skills derived from experience and learning. Dr. David Bryfman, a staff member of the Jewish Education Project and one of the heroes of “the newness,” recently tweeted, “How can you learn Jewish texts in 140 characters?” 140 is the magic number of characters in a Tweet.

I recently attended the Jewish Futures Conference at General Assembly of Jewish Federation Councils in New Orleans. There was a lot I liked, some I will learn from and use, and some that repulsed me. Not bad on average.

I could have lived without “I would take a bullet for my Facebook friends” (no attribution will be given). I  was deeply riveted by a presentation by Russel M. Neiss and Charlie Schwartz. These two are young masters of the internet who are presently working on a project called MediaMidrash that links videos with compelling Jewish curricular content. They were among of the winners of The Jewish Futures Competition with a video you can see on line.

Charlie and Russel say that four factors should be the foundation of the Jewish Educational future. That future must be open, re-mixable, meaningful & relevant, and community building.

Open
Open means that this material should be “open-sourced.” Simply put, it should be available for free on the internet. That is really good for the learner. I resented having to buy a back issue of an important Jewish Educational publication just to get information on Samson S. Benderly.

I do like Google and use it because it is free. Open is good for all but the producer who must either sell his creation (and therefore not be open), be independently wealthy, or get funded by a foundation to produce it. Foundation funding is a null sum game, and much of Jewish educational creativity has been entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurial is one of those buzz words from the past. The beauty of commerce is that you are successful because people are willing to pay for what you create. We once sold Torah Toons and created a company. Torah Toons is now open-sourced and available for free at YouTube. It is accessible via Media Midrash.

Even though I have some problems with “openness,” I completely affirm their other three attributes.

Remixable
Thomas Mann wrote a novel called The Glass Bead Game or Magester Ludi. It is a study in the sociology of knowledge. The center piece of the book is a game that is played following patterns of an idea or image through its appearance in all of human culture. In the book one can follow a piece of literature into music into mathematics. I loved the novel as a teenager (and have been less successful at re-reading it recently).

For the first Jewish Teachers Handbook (Alternatives in Jewish Education, Denver, 1981) I wrote a short story called The Pin Game. This was a Jewish adaption of The Glass Bead Game. It told the story of a synagogue where students played a game using a deck of cards filled with Jewish quotations and had to build “runs” out of different quotations that expressed the same idea. This was a vacuum-tube era version of remixing.

The idea of remixing is that one can take parts and pieces of the old, cut and paste them, and create one’s own new whole. I have always liked that idea. When we created Torah Aura Productions, I spoke of our educational mission as vocational. This is essentially remixing, where students take parts and pieces of the Jewish tradition and reshape them into a Judaism they can live. In a 1996 essay, “Welcome to the Gorilla Habitat” I wrote:

The job of the Jewish Educator in North America is close to that of the Zoo keeper. Both jobs require the creation of an artificial environment in which the species can hopefully survive and breed. The original habitat of the gorilla can never be reproduced in the zoo–rather the zoo keeper is sent searching for “essences.” S/he is busy, trying (with the resources at hand) to bring the right minimal elements which will support and sustain gorilla life. The literature of Jewish education, both philosophical and methodological, when viewed from this perspective, is also a search for the “essense” of Jewish survival…

Text learning is a communal process. It usually takes a combination of insights to crack a text open. In class direction, it often happens when enough energy has been pumped back into the ancient words that the text regains living voice. It is at these moments that the teacher gets a chance to withdraw. What is left is student challenging student, student questioning the text, student defending the text, and the ongoing insights of 2,000 years of consideration alive in the classroom. Text teaching can be magical for it bring the past book to its own new life.

Russel and Charlie do not limit their vision of Jewish education to text study (though they do actively include it.) Rather, as children of Web 2.0, they understand sampling and adapting, picking and choosing as an artistic vision that can create a way of life.

Meaningful & Relevant
Who could disagree? I would only add one caveat. In A Passion for Excellence, Tom Peter’s sequel to A Search for Excellence, he quotes a mission statement from Brookline High School. He says, “We believe that learning is an addiction to the tart, not the sweet.” It understands that most really addictive things (other than sugar) are acquired tastes. It takes someone to guide you into coffee, wine, and the rest.

The job of the teacher, especially the Jewish teacher, is to make the Jewish tradition be more than Twinkies and chicken nuggets. Meaning & Relevant should be an end goal, not a starting requirement. That doesn’t mean that one should have a long period of boredom before the good stuff kicks in, but that deep, worthwhile Judaism isn’t necessarily the first click on a website. We have to get learners past moments of impulse and move them into the area of reward for accomplishment.

Recently, I was asked by a rabbi why I included the idea that angels were not dead people. He asked me, “How am I going to sell this idea to my students?” I explained the idea that Jews, if they go anywhere after death, return to the Garden of Eden, and not to choir robes and wings. I told the Rabbi, “You don’t have to sell it. You just have to open it as a possibility.” The idea may be uncomfortable for some learners who live in a pop-Christianity (The Horn Blows at Midnight) bubble. But, “uncomfortable” is a major part of real learning.

Community Building
Yes. Judaism is not a game played solo against a backboard. I believe that Jewish community can be started, deepened, and maintained on the internet. I am just not convinced that it can happen without moments of sharing physical space. PunkTorah’s (2nd place winner in the competition at the GA) vision of online Jewish worship communities doesn’t do it for me. Let’s build socially networked communities, but let’s not rule out the value of classroom, gatherings, and teachers.

One of the end goals of a Jewish Education and Jewish Life is the formation of community. We must embrace the goal of community and any tools that can build it.

I will admit that I may be stuck in real life gatherings where teachers meet with students. I believe community that gathers in real space and where students can connect directly with a Jewish dating pool. That may be my lack of vision. Neil Postman wrote Teaching as a Subversive Activity and then, later, Teaching as a Conserving Activity. He said,

“A new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.” ⁽Talk given at the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart.⁾

Teachers have survived the television, let’s hope that they also transcend the silicon chip. As I have blogged before, I believe in classrooms and technology, not classrooms or technology.

Russel and Charlie ended their presentation with “And on Friday we turn off all of our gagets and celebrate Shabbat.” There is the balance of future and past that I was hoping for.

Today, the word “new” scares me. It often means “less.” And more often, it means “killing off the old.” What I learned at the Jewish Futures conference is there are tomorrows that can make me comfortable and even excited.

Harlene Appleman, Director of the Covenant Foundation opened the Jewish Futures Conference by saying, “As professionals, educators, and forward-looking thinkers making an impact on the Jewish future, we will be inspired, challenged and energized to be agents of change within Jewish education and our greater community”

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Jonathan Woocher, the Chief Ideas Officer of the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and Director of the Lippman Kanfer Institute borrowed this quote from Alan Kay, computer scientist and visionary, to end the Jewish Futures Conference. And let us say, “Amen.”